The Changing Asian Perception of China’s Rising: A BRI Context

Abstract

China has been pursuing a harmonious neighborhood but it has to face various volatile and even hostile social-political attitudes of its neighbors that have geopolitical tensions with China. Facing China’s rising, some of Asian countries have found that they were trapped in so-called security dilemma with China and a “hedging” strategy has been adopted by quite a few countries in the Asian-Pacific region to cope with the Sino-US Competition in the region. Against this background, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2013 has been trying to improve relations between China and its neighbors by providing various projects of infrastructural investments and free trade, some of these projects being international public goods that can benefit people across countries. To some extent, the tension of “security dilemma” has been reducing alongside the development of the BRI and more and more Asian people recognize that a rising China can bring more public goods and benefits to this region. Using the 2014–2016 Asian Barometer Survey data, this research wants to discover what is the perception of China’s influence among Asian people along with the rising of China in course and whether or not they have seen China’s impact on Asia as favorable, especially in the BRI context. Surveyed data of Eleven Asian countries are divided into two groups: four countries that have major sovereign disputes with China and seven countries with no such disputes. We analyze and compare different perceptions of the two groups on China’s rising. Besides, we examine how people of the total 11 Asian countries viewed China and the USA regarding their influences in Asia, at present and in the future. Generally speaking, geopolitical relationship, cultural proximity, and economic benefits from collaboration with China have common while differentiated effects on their perceptions of China’s rising and impact. The BRI is playing a positive role in easing many geopolitical tensions on one hand and is also incurring some complicated feelings like fear of asymmetric economic inter-dependency among Asian people on the other hand. Besides, China is still in need of enhancing its soft power to win over Asian people and the international community in order to become a real world leader.