omplication or as a ganging up on China. Both territorial disputes and separatist movements are considered threats to China's security and as a result China insists upon dealing with these concerns bilaterally without foreign intervention. It should be noted that this fear of containment is a very real possibility as neighboring Asian states and the United States vacillate between containment and embracement. Beijing hopes that neighboring countries will react to a Chinese emergence by jumping on the bandwagon rather than attempting to balance out or contain China's rising powers (Roy p. 192). This partly explains China's new enthusiasm in multilateralism but with minimum costs. Economic multilateralism has proven to be relatively costless considering the amount of benefits Beijing gets from it. In return for economic cooperation such as lower tariffs, technology and capital infusions, as well as ameliorating the apprehensions of her neighbors, all China has to give up is lowering tariffs (which is has reluctantly somewhat done). In contrast, security multilateralism would give China the important result of soothing its neighbor's fears but at the high cost of limiting its freedom of action in dealing with potential security concerns. This is a tradeoff Beijing is not yet ready to accept on a mass scale. Its then no surprise to see China warming up to economic multilateralism while remaining cold to security multilateralism. For the time being, China would like to keep the status quo in security multilateralism because it does not see any advantages in a more comprehensive security framework in the region (footnote).This perception may change as China becomes more modernized, more familiar with multilateralism in general and gains confidence that its neighbors and the world are not out to contain its growth through the use of multilateralism. However, this may never happen if indeed the United States, ASEAN and the rest of Chin...
