China considers Tibet and Taiwan as part of China under the One-China policy and the 2005 anti-secession laws. China considers it as their own sovereignty therefore is not acting hegemonically an should be left to deal with it themselves under the rules stated in the ASEAN charter.
When it's in chinas best interest to become revisionist they will, but in their own eyes currently they are only taking care of what is their own.
China is not an ASEAN member, it is part of ASEAN+3 and any treaties that is signs with ASEAN states is only as useful as any member wants it to be at any time. Case in point are the comments made by ASEAN members regarding Ang San Suu Kyi and the election in Myanmar. Basically, ASEAN charter has zero to do with China and its sovereignty from the get go.
Secondly, the average Wang on the street may consider Tibet part of China but the average Wang doesn't write policy so what they believe is irrelevant and even less so being that the Average Wang cannot change the government if he disagreed with their policies. When dealing with grand strategy you need to be concerned with what the policy makers believe. One of China's strategic imperatives is to protect the heartland (like any other nation), which is the Pearl, the Yangzi and Yellow river systems. This is their fertile land and their population and economic centers.
To protect these one must keep the enemy at greatest distance and deploy your first defences as far out as possible, buffer zones. China has four; Inner Mongolia/Manchuria (which then also utilises Syberia), Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. All four of these areas have secessionist movements and non-Han ethnicities as their dominant population and culture.
Get a population density map of India and you will see that the bulk of India lives at the foot of the Himalayas. If China didn't hold the Tibetan plateau India would take it (they've had 3 border wars already) That means India would be a few thousand kms closer to the Chinese heartland and on China's side of a natural barrier and defensive position. Mountains are a force multiplier, less forces are required to defend them but it's easy to come down from mountains and move across the low lands (retreating back to the mountains and repeating until you succeed in holding the low land). Planes and valleys are horrible to defend, just ask Poland. So, as it stands now, China has a massive buffer zone, natural barrier and force multiplier...., can't drive a tank across a mountain, as the saying goes. Probably best to keep your opponent on the other side of the barrier, right?
Xinjiang is either mountainous or vast plain/desert (very hard to get forces across and supply them with fuel, water, ammunition, etc. just ask Rommel), Inner Mongolia is a vast plain that experiences severe winters, Taiwan is a forward deployed 'unsinkable aircraft carrier'. Each location difficult for modern armies to traverse, each location rings the heartland. See the strategy here?
China already is an empire, the Han empire that takes in over 50 ethnic minorities that unlike most countries are indigenous to the land that they are living on.
Please take note that I am not saying 'wrong, right, justified, unjustified' or passing any judgement on matters of sovereignty as I am talking strategy, not history or UN laws, just strategic importance. Each country has them, one might site Alaska, Hawaii, Guam if they wanted to qualify that argument.
Why? It's just not true that China relies heavily on it's exports. It's INCORRECT. Yes, China supplies a proportion of the worlds goods. It also has a bulging middle class that consumes, travels and spends liberally.
Sure, a middle class of around 300m, an upper class of say, 50m, leaving an underclass of migrant workers, labourers, farmers and production/construction workers of around 1 billion. China's richest province is the main manufacturing hub that exports the vast majority of its goods. There is no possible way that China's middle class could float this country, especially being that they are really only confined largely to Dalian, Qingdao, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing. that's a far eastern belt and one central spec. admin province. The socio-economic geographic spread already challenges development as it is, in an economic downturn there is no way we would see China support itself. I'd like to see any country that could preserve a way of life in a vacuum.
well yeah it would be stupid not to side with the US, but it would also be stupid to not side with the new super-power which is china.
the question is wether or not China is powerfull enough already for Australia to side with them and not effected greatly by the US
China is not even a regional power, let alone a super power. If it were a regional power the George Washington super carrier would not be sitting off the coast of the North China Plain (there's that idea of plains being vulnerable to invaders again). China would not be having territorial disputes with Japan over the East China Sea, China would not have US survey vessels mapping the sea bed for submarine warfare. China would not be challenging a number of ASEAN states for sovereignty of the South China Seas, China would not allow the US to sell weapons to Taiwan as it would be a province of China (by that I mean paying taxes to and following policy from Beijing, which is clearly is not at the moment).
If China isn't a regional power how could it be a super power?
China doesn't even have one aircraft carrier, the US has 11 carrier strike fleets. The US has been operationally deploying carriers since the second world war and has been engaging in modern battle ship combat since the American Civil War. The furthest China has ever operationally deployed its navy is to the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy missions and that has only been going on for two years. China retains a minimal second strike capability, but no first strike. The US has a massive second strike capability. The US and Australia are also allies based on the ANZUS treaty.
China needs the US as a market, the US needs China to by debt to fund that market. It's an interdependence however China has the vulnerability as a market is harder to replace than money. QEII is a good example of that.
Neither country wants war, the US is already in two theaters and is much more concerned about Russia than it is Iran than it is DPRK. Once they're out of Iraq and Afghanistan then we will see what happens. But you have a few years before we cross that bridge and there are a few heads that think DPRK will have collapsed by then. If it does China will execute their shelf plan of moving in and 'stabilising' until the UN can take over. In that time the economy will have been opened and the guns largely removed from the DMZ. China would dearly like a prosperous and Beijing friendly state in DPRK than the heatseeker they have there now.