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its face against the Soviet idea of an Asian Security Conference is not surprising, precisely because the idea is a Soviet one and could be construed as seeking a new, sustainable form of droit de regard for the Russians throughout the region. But there are also deeper Chinese motives involved, as argued at the start of this paper: lack of commitment to the status quo, and determination to keep room for manoeuvre for future political/military development, as well as the evident profitability of tactics of divide and rule. The prospect of peace breaking out in Asian hot-spots reinforces rather than challenges these instincts by making the situation both more fluid and less threatening.
21.
Whether China is losing out or will lose out in future because its diplomacy projects no vision of regional structure is a moot question. In the short term Chinese manoeuvres are working quite well, especially vis-a-vis Moscow, though the risk of being out- smarted by a penitent Vietnam remains. Things could change later if, in peaceful conditions, ideas of political as well as economic pan-Asian cooperation become more fashionable forcing China to choose between following fashion or going on the defensive and/or if other Asians demand from China some clearer statement of its own long-term intentions. The trouble is that, China's ambitions being what they are (and if we are right about the race-based "hidden agenda" in paragraph 17), it is hard to see what regional model the Chinese could present that would not also scare people off: and that would not merely highlight the key unsolved problem of the relationship with Japan. If the Chinese themselves have thought the question through thus far they might well be speculating on ways. of defusing the issue by going straight for inter-regional or even global patterns of political regulation. (The "new international political order" again ....)
British Embassy Peking
5 May 1989
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