China’s relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has seen its ebbs and flows. Historically, China considered ASEAN as an instrument designed to “encircle China” and therefore kept a safe distance from the regional body. [1] As China started to develop its economy beginning in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping, and in the following decades harboured ambitions for a global role, it realised that it needed to first achieve dominance regionally, close to home. [2] As Yuen Foong Khong, Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, once wrote, “Asia is where China must establish its prestige or “reputation for power.” [3] In the 1990s, Beijing opened up, “to seek the settlement of divergences and disputes among nations through peaceful means.” [4]
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