The Post-cold War Northeast Asian Multilateral Security Features And China's Diplomatic Strategy Choice

The northeast Asia has been a hotspot in the 21th century where four big powers'interests, China, USA, Japan and Russia, converged together. Multilateral secure situation in this region is getting more and more complex because all these interests meet together, which leads to a high frequency of conflicts. As we all know that the northeast Asian region was the front line in the conflicts between the US and the USSR during the Cold War period. However, things changed and the secure situation got its own characters which include the coexistence of traditional and non-traditional security, cooperative security has become the leading secure model in this region and the construction of bilateral and multilateral relations. All these characters are the reflection of the policies taking by countries in this region. Consequently, as a member of these countries China's foreign policies would be surely affected by the northeast Asian security situation. This paper systematically analyses the multilateral secure characters in this region during the Cold War period as well as the post Cold War period. On the basis of theoretical analysis, it also elaborates what strategic choice should China adopt in the light of northeast multilateral security characters.There are three sections in this paper.The first section mainly focuses on the characters of northeast multilateral security during the Cold War period. The northeast Asian political structure in the Cold War can be divided into two periods which are"North triangle against South Triangle pattern"(the USSR bloc against the U.S bloc) and"the Grand Triangle"(China, USA and the USSR). This paper elaborates the main characters in these two periods and the influence made by such patterns."The North Triangle against South Triangle pattern"has the characters of strong confrontation, complicated interests involvement and relationship of affiliation. The main influence of the"Grand Triangle pattern"is mainly about maintaining the Northeast Asian region's strategic balance, and as a result of this, the strategic force got reassembled.The second section mainly focuses on the characters of Northeast Asian multilateral security in the post Cold War period. The main characters can be summarized as: cooperative security has become the leading secure mode in this region, which made the cooperation in a dominate position. And this plays an important role on the secure issues in this region, which made the U.S involvement necessary. The nuclear issue in the Korea peninsula has become a focal point, which put the security in this region somewhat in a high sensitivity. The coexistence of traditional and non-traditional security issues made the security in this region more complex. A new kind of partnership is built up after the Cold War, which plays a main role in the region and makes the security issue more multilateral charactersThe third section is mainly about what strategic choice China should take. The multilateral characters of its security are the main factor which may have an affect on China's foreign policy and foreign strategy. China has to take a more realistic foreign strategy in the light of the Northeast Asian security situation if China wants to maintain the peace and stability and play an active role. The main foreign choices are: China pursues an active and practical economic strategic cooperation; China strongly maintain the peace and stability of this region; China pursues an independent and nonalignment policy; China strongly promotes multi-polar political strategy by way of rebuilding the political structure in this region; China actively participate in the regional cooperation, which aims to construct a steady big power cooperative regime.