Treaty design under geopolitical constraint: Managed legal uncertainty and trade policy risk in the ASEAN-China framework

Abstract

This study examines how geopolitical pressures shape treaty architecture in the ASEAN-China trade policy framework. It focuses on how treaty design manages trade-policy risk while preserving cooperation between ASEAN member states and China in a geoeconomically fragmented environment. Using provision-level doctrinal analysis, the study analyzes the ASEAN-China Trade in Goods Agreement and the ASEAN-China Dispute Settlement Mechanism Agreement, with particular attention to security exceptions, dispute-settlement clauses, forum-selection rules, implementation procedures, committee governance, and review mechanisms. The findings show that the treaty framework does not merely contain institutional gaps or legal weaknesses. Instead, it deliberately structures regulatory discretion through self-referential security language, bounded adjudicatory mandates, procedural flexibility, and committee-based governance. These design features allow parties to retain policy space while sustaining credible commitments to trade cooperation. The study further finds that legal uncertainty operates as a managed institutional feature rather than an accidental consequence of weak enforcement. Practically, the analysis helps public policymakers, trade officials, and public-administration actors understand how treaty architecture can balance cooperation, sovereignty, and security-sensitive discretion under geopolitical pressure. The study contributes to public policy and international economic law by explaining how ASEAN-China treaty design manages trade-policy risk through layered textual, procedural, and institutional flexibility.