Abstract: With China’s newfound economic strength it is now able to assert itself regionally. In the twenty-first century with many crises soon to peak; food, water and fuel scarcity to name but a few issues of regional security are as pressing as ever. China’s ability to strongly influence its neighbors as a result of economic dependencies or through direct military projection power will significantly reshape the rejoin over the coming decades. This study looks at issues of China’s ideology and its influential capacity to explore how its regional agenda is likely going to look. From this analysis, an assessment of the regional security environment is made and it is deduced that while other regional states and international powers will seek to obstruct and minimize China’s influence, it is now nearly inevitable that China will become the new regional hegemon and it will become relatively free in its actions to assert its agenda regionally.