Chinese Perspectives on the Feasibility of an Asia Pacific Community

The ongoing worries complicating China's rise are exacerbated by China's perceived double-bind dilemma: China is attacked as a threat to regional stability when it is active in the regional arena and damned as an irresponsible stakeholder when it is not. As an emerging global power China is naturally seeking to secure its ever-increasing interests abroad. Therefore, China's double-bind will intensify as China's foreign policy evolves from 'biding its time and hiding its capacities' to that of an increasingly proactive regional actor. The author argues that, in light of this likely transition in Chinese foreign policy conduct, the time is more pressing than ever before to mitigate anxieties and maximise the chances of China's positive-sum integration within the region. The argument correlates with the proposal by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 that the region begin contemplating the realisation of an Asia Pacific community (APc) concept, as a framework to rehabilitate the region's multilateral architectural melange and implicitly reform the ASEAN Way-driven modus operandi with a more muscular APc Way. Such an outcome may be realised through streamlining the region's institutional alphabet soup and reforming the lacklustre ASEAN Way.