China and Regional Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract: Prior to the end of the Cold War, China's foreign policy was in large shaped by a confrontational, power-based discourse. However, since the early 1990s, China's foreign policy in general and its regional policy in particular has undergone significant change. Today, China operates in large with, and within major international and regional institutions and regimes. This is also notable concerning regional multilateral security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. Since the mid 1990s, China has gradually changed its stand from sceptical and ambivalent, to actively and positively promoting further and deeper regional security cooperation. By applying a social constructivist approach, this study seeks to explain and understand China's engagement and participation with regional security cooperative arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region. Social constructivism emphasises the constructed nature of actors, their interests and identities, and that norms, rules and symbols shape the way actors construct an interpret their environment. Furthermore, through the constant ongoing interstate interaction, states identities and preferences are capable of being molded and re-molded by norms through subtle and discursive processes of socialisation. Although somehow tentative, the findings in this study point to a subtle, but gradual process of changed Chinese foreign policy interests and preferences. China is currently subjected to a transformation of identity where the engagement and participation in regional security cooperation has exposed China to a socialisation process of new norms and rules guiding regional interstate behaviour, making China sensitive to its role and image in the Asia-Pacific region. Keywords: China, Asia-Pacific, Security, Regional Cooperation, Social Constructivism Characters: 68 032