The commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the
ASEAN-China strategic partnership this year will be met by greater skepticism
than at its launching in 2003. Recent developments in the East Asian region
point to still huge mistrust between the two sides, particularly between China
and the ASEAN states that are embroiled in territorial and maritime disputes
with China in the South China Sea. Of late, security tensions have been
compounded by escalating geopolitical rivalry between China and the region’s
other big powers -- the United States and Japan, both also vital partners of
ASEAN.
That said, healthy skepticism underscores the challenges but
does not belittle the importance of this relationship between East Asia’s now
preeminent economic and rising military power on the one hand, and its most
successful regionalist collective and key catalyst of multilateral dialogue and
cooperation on the other hand. It may be argued that ASEAN-China cooperation is
bound to have even greater impact in the near future, not only on their current
shared bilateral interests such as free trade, economic cooperation and
infrastructure connectivity, but also on matters beyond their own geographic
reach. Much, however, depends on each side’s vision of its own regional role.
