The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is the most important governmental forum for multilateral security dialogue and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. It was officially initiated by ASEAN and the inaugural ARF Ministerial Meeting was held in Bangkok on 25 July 1994. For the past decade, all the annual ARF ministerial meetings have been hosted by ASEAN as the driving force. All the participants have exchanged views on security issues of common concern in a spirit of candour, thus reducing each other's suspicions and differences, enhancing mutual understanding and trust, and accelerating the process of security cooperation in the fields of common concern.

The Second ARF Ministerial Meeting adopted the Concept Paper in 1995, designing the three-phase process of security dialogue and cooperation. They are the promotion of confidence-building, development of preventive diplomacy, and elaboration of approaches to conflict. ASEAN is the driving force for this process with other participants as dialogue partners.

ARF has made substantial progress in promoting confidence-building and developing preventive diplomacy in the region for the past ten years. ARF has sought to increase mutual confidence and trust through dialogue and to promote peace and stability through multilateral cooperation on an equal footing. Such an approach is in line with the new security concept coming into shape in the course of security dialogue and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region since the end of the Cold War.

In 2001, ARF made substantive progress. All participants reached consensus on the three documents about the enhanced role of the ARF Chair, Experts/Eminent Persons (EEP), and Preventive Diplomacy (PD), which signifies an important achievement in the transitional process as ARF moves from confidence-building measures to preventive diplomacy.

In response to the situation after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the ARF has placed greater emphasis on anti-terrorism, non-proliferation of WMD and non-traditional security issues, and it has started substantive discussions on and collaboration in their solution. All this has added to the vitality and dynamism of the ARF process.

China has valued ARF and became its dialogue partner at the time of its founding. China has worked hard to strengthen its cooperation with the ASEAN countries within the ARF framework for regional security and stability.