CICA and China’s soft balancing act towards the US

Abstract

At the 2014 summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, Chinese President, Xi Jinping with New Asian Security Concept, announced the slogan of ‘Asia for Asians’ or ‘Asia belongs to Asians’, and he played a leading role in the reactivation of CICA. In this sense, it can be stated that China has aimed to play a more active role in shaping the existing regional security order in Asia-Pacific. Although the regional policies of the United States, starting with the ‘Pivot to Asia’ and continuing with the ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ strategy and the regional and international developments in China’s strategic environment have increased China’s need for CICA, it served as a kind of soft balancing act, rather than hard balancing act, that increased diplomatic maneuverability for China. In this regard, the article attempts to explain why CICA remains a soft balancing act in China’s regional security policies, taking into account a number of factors such as power parity/disparity, economic dependence/interdependence, threat perception and increasing institutionalization in the international system, and attempts to explore why CICA is becoming an increasingly important regional security institution for China.