The proactive initiatives and a dynamic status quo: China's policies toward Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War era.

This research examines China's Southeast Asia policy by applying game theory simulation to clarify the rationale of China's foreign policy towards its Southern neighboring countries during the post-Cold War period. This paper argues that there has been a consistency between China's grand foreign strategy and China's Southeast Asia policy. For China, the primary goal is to seize the peaceful international environment for economic development, which has been the most critical strategic concerns dominating China's proactive diplomatic actions in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, this consideration also constrains China's military expansionism in the South China Sea disputes. By applying multiple games simulation, this research respectively investigates China's good-neighborliness policy toward Southeast Asia, its policy towards the South China Sea disputes, and China's multilateralism in terms of joining ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) and ASEAN plus one (China), as well as its initiative of China-ASEAN FTA. The findings demonstate that China's Southeast Asia policy has been consistently constrained by its grand strategy consideration. China's proactive multilateralism and its self-restraint on the South China Sea dispute are a two-edge sword serving the objectives of its grand strategy, which leads China to willingly sacrifice the short-term interests, and to focus on the long-term gains. Nevertheless, this paper also argues that China's Southeast Asia policy could be a useful indicator to sense the possible change of China's grand strategy. The game theory simulation demonstrates the close links and mutual interactions between those two policy areas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]