Building security in Asia(2)

Thus, the fact that Asian cooperation has long been confined to the sub-regional level makes people doubt whether a cooperative mechanism can be set up in Asia that includes all regional members.

However, since the end of the Cold War, Asian countries have never abandoned such an attempt. At the 47th United Nations General Assembly in October 1992, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, proposed that a platform including all regional countries be set up in Asia, to carry out dialogue and consultations on regional security and promote security cooperation, which was the original idea for the building of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia.

Over the past 22 years, the CICA, as it is known, has played a positive role in promoting Asian security through pushing forward cooperation among regional countries. With its membership expanding from the original 16 to 24, the CICA is broadly representative of Asia and serves as an effective platform for Asian countries to enhance mutual understanding and trust.

With the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence as its basic norm, the CICA is committed to maintaining peace, stability, and security in Asia and providing different cooperation chances for countries in different regions on varying issues. The purposes and principles of the CICA have increasingly been recognized by Asian countries, and its distinctive manner of cooperation has contributed to the peace and stability of Asia and the world as a whole.

Asian affairs should be determined by Asia itself. As a big Asian country, it is China's mission and responsibility to promote Asian affairs being decided by Asian countries themselves and to push for the construction of a multilateral cooperative platform that covers the whole of Asia. China has extended support to the CICA from the very beginning. The active participation in preparatory work for the CICA from 1992 to 2002 made China one of its founding nations, and the new security outlook expounded by China's leaders at its 2002 and 2006 summit meetings received extensive endorsement from other participating countries.

The complicated security situation decides that Asia needs a widely recognized security concept and consensus to keep its security cooperation from being disturbed by regional hotspot issues and tensions.

The new Asian security outlook should focus on Asian development, given that the security issue in Asia has proved to be more of a development issue. The new security outlook should also focus on win-win results, given that only a win-win result can promote mutual adaptability among regional countries and promote common security. At the same time, it should also aim at creating good expectations for a security environment in Asia, as a driver of Asian development and cooperation.

The author, Han Liqun, is a researcher with the Institute of World Political Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.