Beijing Revives Asian Values in Regional Push
Executive Summary:
- The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is focused on deepening influence in its neighborhood. As this year’s APEC host, it sees an opportunity to drive its regional agenda through multilateral institutions.
- General Secretary Xi Jinping, informed by Party theorists, is promoting “Asian values” to advance PRC discourse power. This understanding of “Asian values” is explicitly anti-Western, pro-authoritarian, and sees the Party’s interests as synonymous with those of the entire region.
- Leader’s speeches, authoritative policy documents, and other official publications constantly link success in achieving the Party’s regional ambitions with expanding Beijing’s power globally.
This year, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the host country for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization. Beijing views the inter-governmental forum, which consists of 21 member economies—including four in the Americas—as a key multilateral institution for regional development. It also sees itself as the central node that drives that development: Chinese leader Xi Jinping has analogized the PRC’s relationship with the region to a sweet potato plant, in which the nutrient-rich tubers at the base fuel “vines that extend in all directions” (藤蔓向四面八方延伸) (People’s Daily, October 25, 2025). At the same time, the Party views the forum as an important platform for advancing its strategic goals in its own neighborhood, which, according to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) theorists and senior officials, is a launchpad for its global ambitions.
First Asia, Then the World
In a speech to APEC leaders last November, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping praised the Asia-Pacific region, recognizing it as the “most dynamic” (最具活力) part of the world economy” (Xinhua, November 1, 2025). In the run up to his speech, the People’s Daily said the quiet part out loud. Promoting the PRC’s centrality to the region, it proclaimed that “in the grand symphony of the ‘Asia-Pacific miracle,’ the ‘Chinese miracle’ is its most inspiring chapter” (在“亚太奇迹”的宏大乐章中，“中国奇迹”是其中最激昂的篇章). It also claimed that “the world sighs gratefully, ‘the planet needs a leader like Chairman Xi’” (世界感叹，“全球需要像习主席这样的领导人”). For the Party, attacking the West is key to advancing its own interests in the region. The article was full of such rhetoric: Noting that the region accounts for a third of global population, over 60 percent of the world’s economic output, and nearly half of its trade volume, it framed it as an “important battleground” (重要阵地). It also framed the PRC system as a better model for global governance, calling for the Party to continue using Chinese-style modernization “to promote and implement the modernization of countries throughout the world” (推动实现世界各国的现代化) (People’s Daily, October 25, 2025).
Promoting economic development is core to the Party’s stated agenda for the region. Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu (马朝旭), an accomplished and seasoned diplomat who is set to run the table at many of the APEC events this year, has made this clear. His stated focus for APEC in 2026 is to “build an Asia-Pacific community of common destiny and promote common prosperity” (建设亚太共同体，促进共同繁荣) through a focus on opening up, innovation-driven development, and cooperation (MFA, December 12, 2025, accessed February 18). But Ma, too, has broader ambitions. In a February speech, he argued that the PRC’s hosting of APEC this year “has significance … far beyond the Asia-Pacific region” （意义 … 远远超出亚太范畴) (People’s Daily, February 9).
Linking regional success through APEC to increased global influence for the CCP is common in Party-state discourse. For instance, a December 2025 article for the magazine Modern World (当代世界), a publication supervised by the Party’s International Liaison Department, argued that the PRC should use hosting APEC to “enhance [the PRC’s] discourse power and create a new pattern for the international economy and trade” (提升话语权、打造国际经贸新格局) (Modern World, December 2025). [1]
Good Neighborliness as Strategic Priority
As dialectical materialists, Party leaders see economic influence as fundamental to its regional clout. The Party nevertheless is also pursuing alternative methods to shift the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific. To do so, it is focusing on its “neighborhood” (周边), or periphery. As the scholar Dylan M.H. Loh has observed, Southeast Asia “is, and continues to be, the space where Chinese diplomacy is most visible and active as part of Beijing’s renewed focus on its periphery diplomacy” (Loh, 2025). [2]
The PRC has hosted APEC on two previous occasions, once in 2001 and again in 2014, leading to the adoption of the Shanghai Consensus (上海共识) and the Beijing Platform (北京纲领), respectively. In late 2013, just before assuming the role of APEC host, Xi Jinping chaired a conference on “neighborhood diplomacy work” (周边外交工作). He emphasized that the region held “extremely important strategic significance” (具有极为重要的战略意义) for the PRC (Xinhua, October 25, 2013). A similar pattern held this time around, with the Party holding a “Central Conference on Work Related to Neighboring Countries” (中央周边工作会议) in 2025. This time, Xi’s remarks focused much more on his personal foreign policy agenda: the need to build a community of common destiny (CCD) with neighboring countries, promote the One Belt One Road initiative, and advance an “Asian security model” (亚洲安全模式) (MFA, April 9, 2025).
Emphasis on the country’s neighborhood is apparent in the Party-state’s highest-level policy documents. The draft of the 15th Five-Year Plan, released in early March, frames the PRC’s neighbors as key assets in its bid to build a “new type of international relations” (构建新型国际关系). Assessing that “great power rivalry has become more complex and intense” (大国博弈更加复杂激烈), the Party seeks to “gain the strategic initiative in fierce international competition” (在激烈国际竞争中赢得战略主动). Its strategy for doing so rests in part of “deepening development integration with neighboring countries … and building a [CCD] for [its] neighbors” (深化周边发展融合，强化共同安全，巩固战略互信，构建周边命运共同体) (Xinhua, March 5).
Courting Neighbors With ‘Asian’ Values
Central to Beijing’s approach to neighborhood diplomacy are “Asian values” (亚洲价值观), which Xi stated should be taken as the region’s fundamental principles (MFA, April 9, 2025). Discussion of “Asian values” was a staple of international relations discourse in the 1990s. The debate was often crude, reducing the world into antagonistic normative domains, and has been largely dismissed in the 21st century. As the scholar Amartya Sen remarked at the time, “the so-called Asian values that are invoked to justify authoritarianism are not especially Asian in any significant sense. Nor is it easy to see how they could be made into an Asian cause against the West, by the mere force of rhetoric” (Sen, 1997). [3]
The CCP is nevertheless seeking to revive the idea, and is promoting its own values as a stand-in for those of the continent. The intellectual home for this drive appears to be the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), a think tank under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has devoted considerable attention to the topic in recent years. Writing in the Global Times in 2023, CIIS researcher Xiang Haoyu (项昊宇) argued that Asian values were being given “new contemporary meaning” (新的时代内涵). In Xiang’s reading, however, Asian values appear to be synonymous with CCP governance practice. For instance, he argues that they advocate “maintaining social stability and order through strong political systems and promoting rapid economic and social development through strong government leadership” (通过强有力的政治体制来维持社会的稳定和秩序，通过政府的强力领导推动经济社会快速发展来达到改善民生的目标). He even suggests that Xi’s Global Civilization Initiative “is in fact an interpretation and sublimation of ‘Asian values’ under new circumstances (正是对新形势下“亚洲价值观”的阐释和升华). He also makes clear that “Asian countries need to break free from the ideological confrontation trap set by the West” (亚洲国家需要跳出西方设定的意识形态对抗的话语陷阱), arguing that Asian values “still have instinctive appeal for most Asian countries in the face of Western ideological infiltration” (依然是多数亚洲国家面对西方意识形态渗透时的本能诉求) (Global Times, July 6, 2023).
Other CIIS scholars have put forward similar arguments. The deputy director of CIIS’s Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies has written that “Asian” values have “entered a period of reconstruction” (进入重构期) as the PRC has risen to the center of the world stage. Demonstrating how Beijing links success in its neighborhood to achieving its ambitions globally, Du goes on to predict that “Asian” values will contribute “a new paradigm” (新范式) to global governance (Xi Jinping’s Diplomatic Thought and China’s New Era Diplomacy, June 16, 2025). A third CIIS scholar heralds a degree of success in Beijing’s promotion of Asian values. Liu Qing (刘卿) notes that the PRC is formalizing “Asian” values in official documents, such as joint statements with Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, and Cambodia (People’s Tribune, November 3, 2025). Linking Asian values to Confucianism, the “China model,” and Beijing’s merging of security of development, Liu also argues that “Asian” values have become “an important symbolic concept” (重要标识概念) in Xi’s neighborhood diplomacy (China Brief, May 23, 2025).
Liu Qing also discusses Asian values in the context of building various CCDs. To date, he claims, the PRC has formed two major clusters of CCDs, in the Indochina Peninsular and Central Asia, in addition to various bilateral CCDs. Other scholars make this link too. In an article funded by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the international relations scholar Zheng Xianwu (郑先武) writes that Beijing is constructing a “multi-layered community of common destiny” (多层次命运共同体) in which the Asian CCD is an important component of surrounding CCDs as part of a cooperation framework that connects sub-regional, trans-regional, and bilateral/multilateral entities (Modern World, January 26). [4]
Conclusion
Beijing appears to believe that it is having some success in building its influence in Southeast Asia. Hosting APEC this year will provide it with additional opportunities to steer narratives and guide cooperation in its favor. it is less clear, however, that the rest of the region is receptive to its values-based pitches and hardline rejection of the West. In April 2025, the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore published an annual survey, “The State of Southeast Asia.” Among more than 2,000 respondents in the region canvassed in the first six weeks of the year, the PRC’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea was ranked as the region’s top geopolitical concern; and in its analysis of the responses, the survey report’s authors wrote that despite the PRC’s positive standing, “the region’s concern about [the PRC’s] growing economic and political-strategic influence outweighs its acceptance.” It also noted that the United States had “overtaken China to become the prevailing choice if the region were forced to align itself with one of the two strategic rivals” (Seah, S. et al., April 3, 2025). [5] These responses may change in this year’s survey, which is yet to be published. But it provides one indication that Beijing still faces an uphill battle in its pursuit of regional dominance.
Observers in the West can dispute, or even deride, some of Beijing’s attempts to draw the region closer into its orbit. But the logic behind Beijing’s primary focus on the region is sound. Constituting a significant portion of the world’s population, economic dynamism, and trade volume, Southeast Asia will likely be central to global prosperity in the decades to come. Absent persistent engagement with the region, however, Xi Jinping’s “sweet potato plant” will find fertile soil in which to grow, and its multi-layered CCDs space to expand.
Notes
[1] The research for this article in Modern World was supported by a grant funded by the PRC Ministry of Education.
[2] Dylan M.H. Loh, China’s Rising Foreign Ministry, Stanford University Press, 2025
[3] Amartya Sen, Human Rights and Asian Values, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1997.
[4] Like other scholars, Zheng appears to see Chinese and Asian interests as synonymous, noting that “Asian” values “had distinct Chinese characteristics from their inception” (初创之时便具有鲜明的中国特质).
[5] Seah, S. et al., The State of Southeast Asia: 2025 Survey Report (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2025).
