Multilateralism in China's ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration

This article aims to study the origins and patterns of China's involvement in regional multilateral institutions, as well as its characteristics and implications for China's ASEAN policy in the post-Cold War era. To this end, the study focuses on China's participation in three ASEAN-initiated and -driven multilateral institutions, namely the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN-China cooperation, and the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process. The article shows that China's perceptions and policies toward multilateral institutions have been going through significant changes, from caution and suspicion to optimism and enthusiasm. Instead of perceiving multilateral institutions as malign arrangements that might be used by other states to challenge China's national sovereignty and to limit its strategic choices, Beijing now views multilateral institutions as useful diplomatic platforms that can be utilized to advance its own foreign policy objectives. Such perceptual changes have slowly but significantly led to a greater emphasis on multilateral diplomacy in China's ASEAN policy. It can be argued that multilateralism now plays a complementary, rather than a supplementary role to bilateralism in the conduct of Chinese foreign policy towards ASEAN in the new era.