China’s “Community of Shared Future” with Southeast Asia

By Mehmet Enes Beşer

Over the last few years, China has been marketing the vision of a “Community of Shared Future” (命运共同体, mingyun gongtongti) as part of the support columns of foreign policy rhetoric. First articulated by President Xi Jinping amidst controversy about evolving world governance, the vision has since been extended to regional domains, no less China-Southeast Asia relations. Its own vision, itself, sees a utopia of harmony, cooperation, and interdependence among a people focused on common goals of development, political stability, and cultural identity. Politically compelling as the vision is, and because of evolving Chinese thought, realization of such a vision within Southeast Asia is complicated. Essentially, the “Community of Shared Future” rests on the premise that China and Southeast Asia are destined, historically, and geopolitically bound together.

The nomenclature is one that resonates with people diplomacy norms at the ground level way deep within—the like non-assertiveness, mutual benefit, and harmony—and resonates with the ASEAN call for consensus and inclusion. The language has been employed freely by China to pursue its options with ASEAN, dominated mainly under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), pandemic coalitions, digitalization, and climatic resilience. Through the construction of infrastructure, people-to-people diplomacy, and regional multilateralism, Beijing aims that China and ASEAN would create a win-win regional order. The vision extends China’s policy of soft power further by redescribing its rise as a non-zero-sum challenge to the present order but rather as an opportunity for co-development.

Beijing’s calls for “win-win cooperation,” “Asian values,” and “non-interference” are to convince Southeast Asian governments that Beijing has no interest in hegemony, but only in partnership. Whether it’s Chinese investment in Lao and Indonesian high-speed rail, vaccine diplomacy in the face of COVID-19, prosperity in harmony frames the story for Beijing’s regional charm. Yet it comes with several flaws and contradictions.

China’s strategic trust with a couple of the ASEAN countries is precarious in the beginning. China’s maritime claims within the South China Sea continue to test the patience of the relationship with Vietnam and the Philippines as concurrent economic relations also continue to exist. China’s expansive maritime claims and naval adventurism at artificial reefs have tested the underlying motives. To them, the concept of “shared future” is being challenged against sovereignty reality and perceptions of unequal power discrepancies.

Second, economic asymmetry of dependence incites fear. Chinese investment has brought real dividends-structure, trade, and employment—and still fear of over-reliance by poorer ASEAN members on China. It is most directly applicable in Cambodia and Laos, where China-funded super-projects raised concern about debt sustainability, environmental degradation, and political manipulation. Grievance is that “shared future” rhetoric hides unequal terms under which agency is not being returned.

Third, geopolitics have changed. As more powerful competition in the making between America and China, ASEAN members are becoming worried about being drawn into one another’s rival spheres of influence. While a few member nations are more inclined to look at Chinese alternatives, Singapore and Vietnam hedge by intensifying their cooperation with America, Japan, and Australia. China’s challenge is that its “shared future” vision is open to presuming some level of convergence which it politically difficult for diverse ASEAN states to buy on an across-the-board scale. Second, ASEAN centrality and cohesion are the region’s largest issue of concern. Anything that would delegitimize ASEAN-led efforts—i.e., the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP)—would be resisted. For the “Community of Shared Future” to find long-term purchase, it should be defined so that it reinforces and not supplants ASEAN institutions. That involves respect for consensus, inclusivity, and rules-based regional architecture.

Despite these challenges, there are potential areas to advance the vision. Climate coordination, disaster preparedness, building a digital economy, and public health are low-politics areas where shared interests obviously overlap. China’s joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), its digital Silk Road, and green development also are potential areas of greater cooperation. Likewise, greater people-to-people exchange, educational exchanges, and cultural diplomacy can foster trust and make miscalculations more manageable.

Conclusion

Beijing’s “Community of Shared Future” in Southeast Asia is diplomacy boilerplate—it’s genuinely a sensible strategic rhetoric trying to make China a benevolent, unifying co-patron of Southeast Asia’s shared future.

Perhaps, it strays across some needs of ASEAN’s norms and gives concrete dividends, but even so, its operation is its ace.

To win, the vision has to force China to move from words and economic investment to Southeast Asia. China has to board a parity platform with Southeast Asia, pursue large security agendas, and allow words and actions to catch up. To ASEAN, it must prove that it has agency, be as one and united, and have regional engagement by China or any other great power add a multipolar and inclusive architecture.

It is only then that the vision of a “shared future” can transition out of the realm of political metaphor and into real partnership.