ommit themselves to something that may limit their freedom of action in the future (Wang p. 84). Finally and perhaps most importantly China favors dealing with its neighbors bilaterally is because this lacks the complications that might arise from a multilateral security framework and maximizes its leverage over its smaller neighbors. A perfect example of this would be the Spratly Islands dispute. Currently there are six claimants to the Spratly Islands- China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines (Roy p. 185-186). China has insisted that each claimant deal bilaterally with China on this issue (Roy p. 190). Obviously, this is done to maximize China's greater power, as each individual claimant is much smaller than China. China regards any efforts to resolve this issue in a multilateral forum an unnecessary complication 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 ...
