Chinese dilemmas in thinking about regional security architecture

From about the middle of the 1990s China's leaders began to articulate a new concept of security that they called ‘cooperative security’, which was seen as more appropriate to the post-Cold War era than the more traditional military alliance systems. It sought to promote mutual trust and consultation as a means of addressing security problems between states that were neither adversaries nor friends. The new approach was better suited to a China that felt more comfortable about itself and its growing integration into international society. It involved a more proactive approach that was ready to take initiatives for the first time in multilateral settings. It also reflected current Chinese interests by seeking to reassure neighbours that they had little to fear and much to gain by the rising China in their midst and by implicitly dissuading them from participating in any significant attempt to contain China. But the new approach is not without its problems. It will need to show a greater readiness to pay attention to the concerns of others, it will require greater transparency in the conduct of foreign policy and it will need to find a way of accommodating the American approach. But in itself most of the countries of the Asia-Pacific will find this a welcome development even though it does not as yet provide a satisfactory basis for erecting a new security architecture to supplant that established under the aegis of the United States.