‘Crawling dissatisfaction’: understanding China’s bilateral approach towards South China Sea disputes

China's foreign policy behaviour has been highly scrutinized in the last decade. Its foreign policy approach towards neighbouring countries is no exception. Scholars have mostly focused on China's hard, soft, or 'dual' approach to explaining Beijing's current foreign behaviours corresponding to the South China Sea dispute. However, specific studies on China's bilateral approach remain understudied, while understanding regarding this matter might result in a better perspective towards regional peace and stability. This paper, thus, has two aims: firstly, it goes beyond rationalist perspectives in understanding China's bilateral approach; secondly, it provides an explanation of why China chose this approach. It is, therefore, argued that China's bilateral approach is vastly influenced by Chinese strategic culture as an effort to seek stability. It, moreover, also argues that China's bilateral approach is not a mere an image of its soft diplomatic approach but more deeply it is a practice of its dissatisfaction towards the liberal order embraced by ASEAN. By choosing a bilateral approach, while formally maintaining multilateralism, China 'crawlingly' promotes a non-liberal approach towards ASEAN.