After The Cold War In East Asia Security Order Transformation And The Strategic Choice For China

After the end of the Cold War, the original East Asian security order is broken, but a new one has not been established in the process of evolution.To study the security order’s transition in East Asia after the Cold War, we must first review and reconsider the security order in East Asia during the Cold War. After World War Ⅱ, the prototype of post-war security order in East Asia was ruled by the Yalta system. With the development of Cold War, United States and Soviet Union built their own alliance system in East Asia through a series of bilateral agreements to seek their own regional security interests, so the hegemonic order was constructed with the balance of power between United States and Soviet Union. This security order features sharp ideological, political, and military conflicts as well as those concerning geopolitical interest. Positively speaking, the order constrained Japanese right-wing forces and helped maintain the short-time stability of East Asia. But it also had the negative effect of Cold War mentality, secession and ethnic rivalry, outdated security structure and behavior and so on, thus not only worsening the East Asian regional security and development environment, but also damaging the security order’s transition in East Asia after the Cold War.After the end of the Cold War, the global security situation has changed. The East Asian actors regulated their strategy according to their own varying powers. In the process of strategic adjustments, the actors had collision and interaction on regional security issues in East Asia. Cooperative security therefore became positive response to the complex security challenges, strengthening the benefit links among the East Asian actors and enabling cooperative security to solve various security difficulties. So building the Security Community in East Asia is becoming a clear and ambitious goal. In the process of advancing the security order’s transition in East Asia, such things as the common interests between regional actors, security cooperation, and economic cooperation are becoming important driving forces. However, in East Asia there are still many uncertainties including territorial disputes, the Korean Peninsula issue, and the problems left over from history, which lead to international confrontation and conflicts, so the East Asian security order transformation faces resistance.East Asian security order in the transition is crucial to China’s peaceful rise, and China will also play an important role in the transition. On the one hand, Cina is highlighting the image of a responsible big country, by developing bilateral relations, advocating security cooperation and practising confidence-building measures. On the other hand, under the importmant premise of safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity, China upholds the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to deal with the regional hot issues in the right way and uses its own power to render better service for maintaining the region’s stability and common development. Since the East Asian security order’s transition has a long way to go, China will work hard with other East Asian countries, to improve security cooperation, political mutual trust, pragmatic cooperation, and security mechanisms so as to achieve mutual benefits; to uplift the level of strategic coordination and consultation mechanisms, to expand mutual beneficial cooperation and to cultivate shared safety values. In East Asia, China together with other actors will strive to build a new security order characterized by lasting peace and common prosperity.