China’s institutional balancing strategies for “multilateral leadership” in the Asia Pacific

Abstract

China’s bid for “multilateral leadership” in the Asia Pacific is the first step for China to challenge the US-led international order. This chapter introduces a “prospect-institutional balancing” model to explain how China has utilized two types of institutional balancing strategies to pursue a “multilateral leadership” in the region. Using China’s policies in the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) as two case studies, the study concludes that China’s institutional challenge to the international order will be more peaceful than widely predicted.