China's syndrome : Chinese military modernization and the rearming of Southeast Asia

Abstract

As China rises as a military power in the Asia-Pacific region, the countries of Southeast Asia are hedging against Chinese military adventurism by rearming themselves.

Nevertheless, China is hardly the only, or even the most important, reason for the ASEAN states' current military modernization efforts. In fact, other external and internal factors - such as new regional security requirements, changing military doctrines, lingering regional suspicions, domestic politics, and supply-side economics in the international arms trade - have played much more important roles as drivers of this process. Consequently, one should not look at the regional process of defense modernization entirely - ore even principally - through the prism of any actual or potential "China threat" to Southeast Asia.