China's Good Neighbor Signaling to Southeast Asian Countries in Asymmetric Perspective
In intemational relations with asymmetric power and information,intention identification is an important challenge that plagues diplomatic interactions,especially in the context of power transfer,the security anxiety of neighboring countries is amplified.Southeast Asia is an important region for China's good-neighborly diplomacy and a key window to observe China's commitments in this regard.After the Cold War,China's good-neighborly diplomacy in Southeast Asia can be divided into the trust-shaping stage of"building friendship and partnership with neighbors"(1997-2002),the golden stage of"fostering an ami-cable,secure and prosperous neighborhood"(2003-2012)and the strategic mutual benefit stage of jointly building"a community with a shared future"(2013-present).In order to alleviate the pressure from asymmetric power and information and to build Southeast Asian countries'trust in China,China's good-neighborly signaling has achieved remarkable results through three strate-gies:strengthening emotional rhetoric,demonstrating the sincerity of self-restraint and the goodwill for mutually beneficial coop-eration.Southeast Asian countries adopt a variety of signal recognition strategies towards China based on asymmetric cognition,and understand China's strategic intentions through bargaining tests,institutional constraints and reciprocal exchange,etc.The good-neighborly signaling of China's peripheral diplomacy requires attention to the"needs"of small countries and enhance the credibility of its commitments in the process of balancing deterrence and security.Only if attention is paid to the needs of small countries first can the credibility of the commitments of big countries be better analyzed.As the signaler of good-neighborly com-mitments,China needs to understand each other's concerns and needs,and shape its image of a peaceful and credible major coun-try in a targeted manner.However,as a major developing country,China needs to resolutely defend the bottom line of major na-tional interests,forming two images of China:strong and moderate.Looking to the future,Southeast Asian countries'perception of China's image will be affected by the competition between big countries and the hedging policies of small countries,and will become increasingly complex amid periodic fluctuations.
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