East Asia Order Reshuffle: Features and Challenges

YU Zhengliang   2012/4/23 source：

In 2010, China had entered into the period of strategic challenge in East Asia due to the Korean peninsula crisis, the East China Sea crisis and the South China Sea crisis successively, reflecting the intensification of the chronic, structural and strategic contradictions and the worse-off of the security environment in East Asia. This can be called a dramatic change. In 2011, the factor of the U.S. was fermenting, the challenges grew, and the situation was critical. The crisis, limited previously, had now turned into a full-scale one. It is obvious in a strong manner by the U.S. announcing its strategic priority in East Asia, strengthening its overall strategic operation, and launching a comprehensive offensive in power politics in East Asia. The U.S. destructive intervention had divided the economic cooperation and strategic defense in East Asia to some extent, and interrupted the East Asian integration. Meanwhile, China’s comprehensive rise have greatly changed the balance of power in the region and hence brought China’s relations with many countries in the region in a period involving a new round of conflicts of interests that were strategically sensitive and remarkably contradictory. As a result, the existing regional security framework can hardly meet the security requirement and deal with the emerging contradictions. The framework is under an unstable and uncertain period of reconstruction. The dramatic change of the East Asian situation kicked off a new round of metamorphosis with a comprehensive and profound reconfiguration and reconstruction of order.

East Asia is where China’s vital interests and strategic priority lie, though China has not fully prepared, nor has it substantially put the strategic priority in East Asia. China’s East Asia diplomacy is even lesser than its Africa diplomacy in terms of size and vigor, let alone its great power diplomacy and the global resource diplomacy. If we do not face up to the reality, and regard East Asia as the geo-economic and geopolitical centers, trouble will emerge for sure. We should continue to comprehend the development of East Asian situation, to fully identify the new features and new challenges in the evolving regional order, to take the initiative in creating strategic opportunity, to reinforce strategic implementation, to strengthen China’s role in restructuring the regional order, and to push the regional order to the direction in favor of China, before China seizes the strategic opportunity period.

I. The Economic Attribute of the East Asia Order Reshuffle

The world economic center is shifting to East Asia, where the regional economy grows as a whole, looms large in its importance, and soars in its strategic status. But its economic feature is separating from its political feature, i.e., the regional configuration and order are still under control of the extra-regional power.

China is rising along with East Asia as a whole. The East Asian market centered on China has taken shape, where China plays a pivotal role. The economic situation of the region is particularly favorable to China. Nevertheless, China is not an absolute economic power. Its relative economic advantage cannot be translated into favorable political, security and strategic advantages, as they were in the cases of England and the United States. As China is rising continually and comprehensively, the East Asia order will be entirely restructured to the advantage of China in the long run, though China cannot play a key role in the restructuring of the East Asia order at the present stage, given the considerable gap existing between China’s economic advantage and its lesser political, security and strategic advantages.

China should be aware of the innate limitation of the relative economic advantage. The primary bonus that the small and middle countries want the big powers to provide is the security protection, while delivering economic interests is secondary to the security interest. China should attach equal importance to the expanding “convergences” and the lingering “divergences”. China should pay special attention to the delicate change of the mentality of the East Asian countries. The more their economic relations with China get closer, the more they suspect and fear of China, their neighbor. They will do their best to hedge against any possible “threat” brought by the rise of China. They “enjoy” China’s business opportunity in unease, to quote the “Financial Times”.  If we are not aware of the change of the mentality while making our foreign policy decisions and taking foreign policy actions, we will see opposite outcomes of the policies. This “sino-phobia” is extremely apt to be exploited extra-regional powers.

The small and middle countries in East Asia are gaming on “strategic opportunity period” with China. Especially those that have territorial and maritime disputes with China attempt to take the advantage of the opportunity that China is but “a great power candidate”. They bind together and use both tough and soft hands on China to seek maximum interests of their own respectively. They play the so-called politico-economic separation tactics to gain economic benefit from China as usual and at the same time lean on extra-regional powers, especially the United States in political, military and strategic terms, to balance China and profit from Sino-American competition and contradiction. This so-called “Mongolianization” tendency is wide spread. This has extremely complicated both the power structure in East Asian region and China’s strategic reaction to the challenge. As a result, the East Asian geopolitics went closer to the United States, giving rise to an extraordinarily complex and egregious posture and an extremely grave security situation, which completely defy the Asian economic situation. In other words, the dichotomy between China-centered economic system and the U.S.-centered security system is worsening. In addition, most hotspots of the present world are surrounding the peripheries of China, which are procrastinate and intractable. The geopolitical environment around China is so unstable that maintaining stability at home and at the periphery becomes a tough task for China. The Financial Times quotes China as increasingly resembling a fallen giant.  The Foreign Policy viewed China as the most isolated rising power in modern history.

The disassociation of economics from politics, security and strategy is attributed to the two reasons identified by Zheng Yongnian, President of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore: one has to do with China’s persistent policy “foreign policy serves the economy”, while the other has to do with the policy of opening to the region. He hoped China to divert its strategic priority to Asia, to strive for strategic advantage, and to solve tough issues in a case-by-case manner, for sake of accumulating advantages. “Keep-a-low profile” policy is good, though “to make some contribution” is as much important.

Meanwhile, the United States is working along two lines. It continues to reinforce the Asian security system under its leadership on one hand, and on the other, it stepped up its economic campaign by promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), an anti-China agreement to a certain extent, in order to penetrate and substitute for the China-oriented East Asian economic system and to ride on the economic fast track of the rising East Asia. “Our own long-term security and prosperity depend on it,” said Secretary of State Mrs. Clinton.

Therefore, China on one hand has to deepen economic cooperation with East Asian countries to establish and substantiate the bilateral and 10 3 free-trade areas, to cement cooperation foundation, and to develop an effective economic interdependence in order to promote the construction of a 10 6 great Asia economic area, and to foster a tightly pan-China economic belt. Given that Japan, Canada and Mexico have turned to TPP, and the ASEAN summit in Bali decided to establish a 10 6 free trade area after 2013, it is a good opportunity for China to join hands with ASEAN. On the other hand, China is not only a country that merely exports industrial products, but also tries to translate the precious asset into political, security, strategic and even cultural competitiveness, into the realistic soft power competitiveness, and into the regional advantage. In a word, the rise of China is the rise of civilization. Mere economic power is far from enough. China must come up with political power, military power and cultural power, albeit the economic leverage remains our trump card for a considerable long period of time to come.

II. The Power Attribute of the East Asia Order Reshuffle

Thanks to the rise of East Asia as a whole, which lacks internal mechanisms and order, and the gravity of the world power shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific, power competition is inevitable, while extra-regional powers actively intervene into East Asia configuration and closely interact with big and small powers in the region. Now, the United States, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, Russia and ASEAN are strengthening their East Asia strategic planning, building up strategic inputs, making realignments if necessary, and endeavoring to expand their own rooms of strategic maneuver, which gives rise to a trend of regional power politics, making the strategic situation in East Asia more complicated than ever with a soaring strategic pressure and having dramatically increased the difficulty of China’s strategic response.

In the eye of some countries, the rise of China will inevitably break the balance of power in East Asia and cause instability. Owing to the lack of effective arrangement of regional system and balance of power, their worry can hardly disappear. Lee Kuan Yew assumes that Japan, South Korea, India and the whole ASEAN put together will impossible play the role of balancing China. The region will not keep balance without the United States.  Zbigniew Brzezinski has way earlier made the point in his book The Grand Chessboard, that the United States has obtained the hegemony in less than a century, whose main geopolitical demonstration is its unprecedented role in the Eurasian continent. He added, the United States is now the arbiter of the Eurasian continent. No important issue on the continent can be solved without American presence or against American interest. 

While Brzezinski thought it faintly possible if a challenger to the United States emerges,  the Americans now think differently. A self-confident America vis-à-vis the rise of China in the past now feel itself declining and extremely insecure. The rise of China is a short-term concern rather than a long-term concern. The United States is suffering from strategic panic or strategic anxiety. Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda explicitly pointed out that China is a threat. Other countries come to the conclusions alike. The rise of China is becoming the strategic concerns to the world. China is often kept in check as a hidden “enemy”, which is a great strategic and diplomatic pressure on China.

Things went even worse as the United States remains to be led by the Cold War mentality. It made a strategic retreat in general to ensure its “returning to Asia” in a comprehensive way. By this strategy, the U.S. puts priority to East Asia, controlling East Asia with a new form, which comprises three characters. 1. The U.S. cultivates a kind of vassalage in some of the East Asian countries with Achilles' heel, pushes its alliances and allies to the fore front to share the burden, concentrates advantages, bolsters the U.S. dominant position in East Asia and establishes a long-term control over the sea lanes around the region of East Asia. 2. The U.S. has diverted its attention to alternative designs and arrangement of relative norms in order to restrain rivalries in East Asia. 3. The U.S. strategically combines and reconciles the geo-politico-economics with politics, military and economics. The United States disregards at all the logic of East Asian cooperation, and unscrupulously produces regional tensions. It wants not only to become the balancer of power in East Asia to “balance off” China, but also to become the arbiter of the disputes in East Asia, to play the role of a divider in the region, to implement the divide and rule tactics in the region and to behave like a military monopoly to call the shot and dominate in East Asia.

The intensive visits to East Asia by President Obama, Secretary Hillary Clinton and other top officials demonstrate that the U.S. new diplomatic gravitation has shifted to East Asia and China, and the U.S. attaches great importance to the “mini multilateralism” and “smart power”. The U.S. has embarked on “forward deployment” on diplomacy as well, including the three steps, namely, listening, cooperation and leadership; the three instruments, namely, traditional allies, new partnership and regional organizations, and the three conduits, i.e., the diplomacy and economic diplomacy of like-minded coalitions, alliance and partnership, to deepen its relations with East Asian countries. Even the Hillary Clinton’s visit to Burma becomes an important step of the U.S. East Asia strategy. The U.S. counts on the strategic priority shift, concentrates political and military advantages, exploits the burgeoning East Asian hotspots, consolidates alliances and partnership system and penetrates in East Asian economic system in order to prevent China from rising and from dominating the East Asia configuration and order. The U.S. had succeeded in waging a combination blow, riving off a strategic breakthrough that reversed the East Asian geopolitical trend before setting the stage for a new bout of a great game.

To be specific, the United States has at first strengthened its alliance relationships with Japan, South Korea and Australia and deepened the tension between the three countries and China. Secondly, the U.S. strengthened its strategic cooperation with India, encouraging India to contain China to the east, which is also the strategic goal of India per se. Thirdly, the U.S. intervened in the issue of South China Sea by internationalize the issue to isolate China. The last, the U.S. geared up related military, economic and diplomatic commitments in West Asia, Central Asia and Mongolia to seal off China. The U.S. is shifting to the priority of preventing China from “challenging and threatening” America. Secretary Hillary Clinton expressed this “sense of crisis” in March 2011. She emphasized in the article named “America’s Pacific Century”, “Asia is critical to America's future; China represents one of the most challenging and consequential bilateral relationships the United States has ever had to manage; A strategic turn to the region fits logically into our overall global effort to secure and sustain America's global leadership; One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise--in the Asia-Pacific region.”  The U.S. former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also assumed that the American concern is not to permit one country to dominate all of Asia. As the hegemon in the current international system, it is logic for the United States to prevent the Eurasian continent from an emerging power appearing to challenge the hegemon. John J. Mearsheimer warned that the balance of power in Asia is expected to change significantly in the next few decades, as China increases its military capabilities. China and the US might end up in an “escalating strategic competition”.  The U.S. intends to impose military containment and strategic pressure on China, a tit-for-tat and confrontational policy. Generally speaking, a traditional security dilemma of a country comes from the military and strategic threat of another country. However, it should not be interpreted as a new cold war launched by the U.S. against China as assumed by the Huffington Post, which overlooks the courteous and balanced action of the Obama Administration and the complexity of the U.S. China strategy.

III. The Maritime Attribute of the East Asia Order Reshuffle

Seas and oceans have vital impacts on East Asia configuration and order. China, and other countries and regions in East Asia and South Asia develop and rely on seas and oceans unexceptionally. The extra-regional powers of U.S. and Japan dominate the west Pacific Ocean. India, another extra-regional, has apparently showed its resolve to “strongly intervene” the South China Sea in military terms and energy exploration, in addition to its attempt to control the Indian Ocean. One of the Indian media stated that it is entirely a counterattack against the China’s launch of “pearl chains” in the Indian Ocean. It added that if the Indian Ocean is not Indian’s, the South China Sea is no China’s. Among other extra-regional powers, Australia wants to step in; Russia is nostalgic to its old dream of “maritime power” in the Far East; and even EU offers to act as a mediator to the sovereignty disputes on the South China Sea.

China has long been locked in by the Western media as a so-called “continental power,” hence the geopolitical competition involving maritime rights was implicit. Now the competition appears to be explicit thanks to China’s comprehensive modernization, including its continuingly growing defense modernization and naval modernization and taking to oceans on a large scale. This happens especially in the context that Asia’s maritime cooperation mechanism has yet to be established and the extra-regional power, the U.S., controls the oceans as ever. China’s shift from a continental power to maritime-continental power has brought about both economic growth and political tension in Asia. Asia has entered into a maritime era with the two aspects of growth and tension. China on its part is faced with opportunity and challenge. However, in the current East Asian maritime strategic posture, China is under a larger pressure, and caught up in a passive and defensive position.

In the Chinese maritime strategy, Taiwan shares a pivotal status, and Dalian/Lushun and Hainan Island share the status of the escorting belt. The maritime power over these sea zones are strategically vital to the defense of the arc areas comprising China’s political heart, the Southeast China (the economic golden-belt), and most of China’s nuclear power stations. China’s security strategy must foot on land and face the seas, and must attach equal importance to both sea and land.

The South China Sea issue emerged in 2010 to the surprise of China, becoming the No. 1 maritime challenge to China. Rows on South China Sea heated up in 2011 to the test of China’s diplomacy. China needs to draw up lessons. “The Stratagems of the Warring States (Chinese classics) wrote, “It is most dangerous to pronounce policy immaturely.” If we pronounce our strategies immaturely, meaning taking actions without sophistication of the strategies within the policy-makers, we will arouse misfortune, as giving Secretary Hillary Clinton a chance to exploit our weakness. Geoff Dyer thought that Secretary Hillary Clinton laid a trap for Beijing in the South China Sea. If China stands up to the US interference in its backyard and presents itself as the regional power, it risks driving the wary neighbors into the US camp. The more dependent Asian countries become on China's economy, the more uneasy they will be about its power.  Otherwise, China will look helplessly at its sovereign territories to be nibbled up, its maritime resources to be swallowed, and its strategic space to be compressed. The United States wants to leave China in dilemma. Hillary Clinton added that U.S. was seeking to develop a more results-oriented agenda instrumental in efforts to address disputes in the South China Sea. She actually wants to internationalize and institutionalize the course of solving the disputes to get China tied up. The U.S. Defense Department added a new article of “South China Sea” to the 2010 Annual Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, alleging that “Current trends in China’s military capabilities are a major factor in changing East Asian military balances, and could provide China with a force capable of conducting a range of military operations in Asia well beyond Taiwan.” In recent years, the U.S. navy frequently takes moves and drills in the South China Sea equivalent in warning China: the United States is able to seal off the South China Sea lanes. U.S. has adopts smart power combining the soft power diplomacy and the hard power military to cope with China’s maritime rising, which has dramatically deteriorated the China’s maritime strategic posture and made it more difficult for China to make a breakthrough to seas and oceans.

For the time being, the South China Sea issue has no solution. China has to use the delaying tactics in order to maintain stability and rights, to highlight “the concept of the sovereignty of the territories belongs to China”, to strengthen the presences of laws, administration, economy, military and opinions, and to draw the “impassable redlines”. China should be soon equipped with the capability to defend China’s maritime rights of the Sea and explore the resources of the Sea substantially and independently before the South China Sea will be made the locomotive of future development. It will take time to set up the norms of the behavior of the South China Sea. The competition between China and U.S. on South China Sea is on rise as Taiwan is falling in its strategic value to U.S. The fast growth of China’s military strength may sustain their competition in a peaceful manner, for U.S. only respects the strength of rivalries. China’s navel power development is not point to the U.S. hegemony or to the violation of the maritime rights of other nations. It is aimed at the defense of sovereignty, i.e., the national unification, the maritime rights maintenance, and better exercise of the international responsibility in rescue and other non-traditional security.

Given the trend of multilateralism on the South China Sea issue and China is pushing for bilateralism vigorously for the matter, China can also use the tactics of “mini-multilateralism” at the cost of “big multilateralism”, in order to exclude the non-parties, and dismiss attempt of vertical and horizontal realignments. Thus, China can shift from passivity to initiation, i.e., China will take the initiative to hold the South China Sea five-party talk with Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, to dominate the process of direct negotiation and in the process of negation for seeking long solutions, to set up crisis control mechanism, to explore short solutions, to push for pragmatic cooperation in low-sensitive realms, including joint development, maritime R&D, maritime environmental protection, combating pirate, maritime rescue, and to provide public goods. Those adoptions should be advanced gradually by taking the easy ones first, by increasing confidence and dismissing doubt, to create advantageous conditions for the final solution of the disputes. At the same time, we should make full use of the contradictions of the parties involved and make full use of the tactics of “political-economic inseparability” in order to provide economic good to press for concession from counterparts, “to reward the good and punish the evil”, i.e., to translate China’s economic advantage into political, security and strategic ones. China’s maritime presence in the South China Sea is mainly a presence of deterrence. It will take a defensive deterrence based on reason, benefit and restriction. This defensive posture is proactive. Any offensive, if true, is defensive by nature. China must be true to its bottom-line. In addition, China needs to cultivate military diplomats to integrate military strength into regional system, to exchange visits of friendship, to make military exchange and military cooperation, to keep stability, to the rescue of disasters, to make soft-landing of military building-up, and to become good neighbors.

East China Sea issue is particularly intrigue, which must be handled prudently.  At present, China should approach the issue mainly by maintaining the status quo and strengthening the actual-controls. And China should build up maritime crisis management mechanism to maintain stability, regularize the demarcation negotiations on the East China Sea, oblige the Japanese recognition of the status quo of territorial disputes, and prevent Japan from launching unilateral, political and judicial provocations that might result in the U.S. formal intervention.

Since China is relatively disadvantaged in maritime conditions, it must handle maritime issues prudently. China must treat legality with legality, and treat evil with justice. China must prepare for long-standing struggle. Anything unsolvable in this generation can be left to the next, unless it humiliates the nation of China and forfeits its sovereignty.

IV. The Maritime Attribute of the East Asia Order Reshuffle

Paul Kennedy recently wrote that the world is crossing over a watershed into a chaotic new world, among the four disorders of it is the massive arms race in almost the entire region of East Asia and South Asia. All countries are committed to developing blue-water navy, building new military bases, purchasing more sophisticated fighters and test-firing longer ranged missiles.  Military competition in East Asia is intensifying and many countries strengthen the security ties with U.S. and ask to keep U.S. military presence in the region to balance the rising China.

The United States released National Military Strategy in Feb 8, 2011. This is the first renewed national military strategy in the last seven years. The new military strategy sees a shift in the strategy posture to Asia-Pacific region and cyber-war. It emphasizes that, in addition to the continuation of counter-extremism, it will include ending invasion forces, strengthening international and regional security, creating future armed forces. The U.S.-led extra-regional powers will mainly resort to military supremacy and inter-military cooperation especially with small and middle powers in the region, intervene in East Asian affairs and attempt to pursue the so-called the strategic steward vis-à-vis China. The regional security is extremely complicated therefore.

The United States is a maritime power whose enduring supremacy on the Asian continent is based on maritime power over continental power. Asia-Pacific will become the strategic priority of the U.S. military, of which East Asia is the top priority. By virtue of its overwhelming navy and air force supremacies, U.S. controls the East Asian periphery waters and their passages, surrounds the skirt of the region, off-shore balances, and penetrates the continent from three directions and pincers big powers in East Asia. To compare with Russia that endowed with deep strategic hinterlands, China confronts a larger military and strategic pressure. It is an imperative strategic task for China to protect the security of the sea routes and its growing interests overseas. 

The United States persists in the chain-island strategy in the Western Pacific Ocean. Since its withdrawal from the Subic Bay Naval Base in 1990s, U.S. has lost the most important foothold in Southeast Asia, left a discontinuity bellow the first island-chain of Okinawa, showing a considerable weakness. Out of the strategic consideration of “forward deployment”, the U.S. pursued a “retuning to Southeast Asia” strategy, by compensating partnership for lack of alliances, strengthening military ties with countries in the South China Sea areas, mending the first island-chain and expanding military presence. The U.S. naval fleet visits and conducts regular military exercises with Philippines frequently. The most advanced U.S. coastal warship is poised to deploy permanently in the Changi Naval Base in Singapore. In order to compensate for the weakness of the first island-chain, the U.S. military is actively strengthening the forward deterrence of the Guam Island, compensating the second island-chain and the third island-chain centering on Hawaii for the defense force of the first island-chain. In December 2011, the U.S. Defense Department advanced the Air-Sea Battle Concept (ASB) and set up a new office to integrate air and naval combat capabilities in support of emerging national security requirements and developed the so-called comprehensive concept to counter emerging anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) challenges from China in the Western Pacific Ocean. The China containment policy has entered into a new phase. The U.S. China hedging strategy is suspected to have shifted to the priority of containment strategy. By its nature and in terms of grand strategy, the U.S. move is defensive, rather than offensive against a confirmed enemy.

One of the most notable updates is the full-scale upgrade of U.S.-South Korean alliance. The other is that India has spent $60 billion for its naval modernization in the coming 10 to 15 years. The third is that U.S. and Australia have escalated their military cooperation level. Australia in between the Pacific and Indian Ocean is extremely important in geostrategic terms, boasting of the anchor of the Asia-Pacific strategy of America and the “south anchor” of the operational chain of the U.S. military in the Western Pacific. It provides U.S. troops with a huge room of strategic maneuver and the important station and the aggressive bridgehead in the Asia-Pacific direction for U.S. military. At present, the Australian strategic adjustment is focusing on Asia-Pacific and its defense white paper unambiguously noted that China is its potential threat, which is breaking the delicate balance between its trade relations with China and its security relations with U.S. Australia is quick to lean to America to have confirmed the agreements with America on U.S. military deployment in Western Australia and the Northern coastline, making a large step forward in the bilateral military relations. Thus, U.S. will have secured a military foothold between the two oceans to respond to China’s military ascent. This is no different from the encirclement of “the arc of democracy” made of India, Japan, Australia and America, which was first developed by the U.S. former president Bush junior.

All of those have produced a predicament to China’s grand strategy option. On one hand, China has to set up a defense force of strategic deterrence strong enough to serve as the bottom line of safeguard and the foundation, and a solution to various practical issues. On the other hand, China has to prevent from being trapped into arms race, military confrontation and going to war with U.S. Given the present situation, the competition between U.S. and China will shift to a large extent to the military dimension at which the U.S. remains the strongest. If so, China will inevitably become enemy of America and fall into the fate of USSR. To avoid this, China should strive to make U.S. veer into economic cooperation and competition in the realm of technology innovation, “a controlled competition” between the two countries. At the same time, China has to think out how to prevent the U.S. from making broad alliance to containing China. In fact, the U.S. reliance on alliance and partnership indicates that China is getting stronger and U.S. is weakening. China’s rise is diminishing the U.S. hegemony in the Western Pacific and nudging the U.S. sphere of influence outward.

V. Proposals

In sum, China will undergo a golden decade of continuing growth of its strength as well as a delicate decade of mounting strategic challenges. In face of the complicated and tough East Asian conundrum, China has to adjust its mindset, stand fast, keep a low profile, be flexible and deft in response, face up reality, store up energy and look forward to the future.
China should of course put its strategic priority in East Asia since the world strategic gravity has shifted to the area. China has to update its strategy under the new situation, to substitute strategic wisdom for stereotypes, to put the priority of summit diplomacy in this area, to reiterate China’s principles, and to dispel the suspicion of the East Asian nations by tangible actions. China wants a systematic strategy lest improvise actions and over-responses take place. Do not view East Asian problem as of somebody else’s or something to be exploited. It should be viewed as China’s own problem. China should cast off passive or eschewing tactics but be active in action to dispel crisis instead. China should be soft in body language and adept in skills. When it comes to the issue of protecting rights, we prefer act to speech. When it comes to the issue of maintaining stability, we prefer both. Any cooperation will be rewarded, and any provocation will pay price. We should lose no sight that China is the only hope to those countries looking for sustainable economic growth. They face the dilemma of “taking side”: security or prosperity. ASEAN is afraid of its autonomy to be deprived. What China seeks in the East Asia order is tranquil neighbors, stable East Asia environment and further regional cooperation process. China wants to integrate the requirements of sovereignty, development and responsibility and develop larger and deeper relations with those countries to show the comprehensive strength, diplomatic competence and international responsibility of a rising China.

China nowadays is no longer a passive player. It is completely able to put together the geo-economics and geopolitics, and equally able to seize the opportunity brought about by the optimized East Asia strategy. China will preempt its own strategic choice, push for the 20 issues of functional areas in East Asia, and their consolidation. Status comes along with contribution, which mainly includes the following two aspects:

Firstly, China should lose no time to take the advantage of the particular opportunity brought about by the present world crisis and its own distinctive superiority, to take hold of the initiative, to dominate the construction of the regional mechanization, and to build up China’s ability in the shaping of the region.

Regional financial cooperation is a very good point for making a breakthrough, which can highlight China’s financial advantage. China shall actively play the role of domination, take initiative in working out a long-term program, by starting with a general goal and followed with phased actions to establish regional development and investment banks, regional monetary funds, Asian currency, and Asian monetary market, etc. China should strive for setting up headquarters of agencies in China, and share responsibility of leadership in order to provide public goods and make contribution to the regional financial stability.

China should take lead in promoting regional integration by taking over the slogan of Commonwealth of East Asia, initiating programs, and guidance, and acting as a generous leader to promote an open regionalism. A gradualist path is most advisable. It can begin with 10 3, and then 10 6, which are finally followed by enlargement to all countries including the United States. Timetable, procedure and conditions should be given in the process.

Sub-regional cooperation is also important, which should be integrated into China’s economic belt. Mekong River sub-regional cooperation is a case to the point. China has already guided the security cooperation in the area immediately since the massacre occurred. China’s central and local governments and their collaboration are both important in advancing the sub-regional integration. The frontier provinces can take their special advantages in terms of historical, geo-economic and geo-cultural ties to establish close relations with East Asian neighbors, which serves as an important pillar of, and a supplement to, inter-state relations.

Secondly, China should pioneer in the new direction of the East Asia cooperation by creating new cooperation agendas. Domination comes from creation. Priority should be put on the issue of promoting common development and regional governance, which needs China to take regional responsibility proactively. For instance, we can further strengthen China-Japan-South Korea cooperation, take a leading and organizing role in technology transferring and funding in regard of clear energy; advance pan-Asia rail network, highway network and maritime interconnection; establish regional food security cooperation network and epidemic prevention network; establish and improve regional networks of earthquake, typhoon, tsunami early-warning mechanisms; advance maritime security navigation cooperation, joint enforcement of law, maritime rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-pirate on the South China Sea.

Rescue diplomacy has been a very successful diplomacy of China in non-traditional security field long since. China has been offering generous helping hand with qualified rescue materials and funds whenever East Asian countries were hit by natural disasters. In recent years, China has made a new breakthrough and tendency in launching the “fighting-flood diplomacy” in recent years. China sent rescue team of medical experts abroad for the first time, which has the humanitarian aid developed in a far-reaching direction, and provides East Asian diplomacy with a very good platform. Equally important are the other issues in societal, livelihood and cultural realms.

Over the last year, Chinese top leaders frequently visited East Asia, launching charm offensives as fully demonstrated that China has coped with the new situation and retrieve the strategic initiative by strategic adjustment instead of over-reaction. It will take time, however, before China will thoroughly renew its diplomacy mindset, find out an ultimate solution, and work out a complete set of diplomatic strategies accompanied by a set of systematical and coherent foreign policies. Time is on our side though. Anyway, god knows when and how the U.S. and Europe will have come out of the financial and economic crisis. Will they involve into another Middle East whirlpool?  Russia has waged a strong counterattack against the Western geopolitical offensive. The Western predicament, the West Asia/North Africa chaos and the East Asian change are the three mountains lie in front of U.S. In short, it seems that East Asia order is restructuring after the U.S. way in short term, but not in the long term. For the reason one, the U.S. East Asia strategy runs against the trend, and its dominancy is too immoral to last long. The strategy might be a mistake. The reason two is that the East Asia order will determined not only by geopolitics and military strategy, but also by the fundamental change of the balance of economic and financial power. It is a general trend that China will rise persistently and the United States will decline relatively. In this sense, China will undergo a period of strategic interval before a period of strategic breakthrough.