Susan Shirk on China's Foreign Policy at 25th Asia-Pacific Roundtable
Fine-tuning unknowns
06/05/2011
Bunn Nagara,
The Star
Perhaps inevitably, China's rising impact has now spread to the agenda of international conferences.
The more the international strategic scenario changes, the less any presumption about change holds up.
Consider the giant in the hall, China, and perceptions about its rise buzz and flit incessantly. And so it was at the 25th Asia-Pacific Roundtable organised by ISIS Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur over the week.
In opening the conference involving non-government security specialists, independent analysts and government officials in a private capacity, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin talked about "equiproximity" in maintaining balanced relations between the US and China.
The concept is not new, having been practised by others like Nepal between China and India, and Russia between the US and China. The point, however, is that equiproximity is seen as more positive than equidistance for all concerned.
From Muhyiddin's keynote speech on, it was China at centre stage for much of the day and beyond in the three-day conference.
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Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at IR/PS. She founded in 1993 and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
