China And The Indo Pacific

The definitive guide to the world's most contested region Updated edition covering the strategic impacts of Covid-19, China's economic coercion against Australia, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Joe Biden, the Quad and US-China rivalry. The Indo-Pacific is both a place and an idea. It is the region central to global prosperity and security. It is also a metaphor for collective action. If diplomacy fails, it will be the theatre of the first general war since 1945. But if its future can be secured, the Indo-Pacific will flourish as a shared space, the centre of gravity in a connected world. What we call different parts of the world - Asia, Europe, the Middle East - seems innocuous. But the name of a region is totemic- a mental map that guides the decisions of leaders and the story of international order, war and peace. In recent years, the label 'Indo-Pacific' has gained wide use, including among the leaders of the United States, India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia and France. But what does it really mean? Written by a recognised expert and regional policy insider, Contest for the Indo-Pacific is the definitive guide to tensions in the region. It deftly weaves together history, geopolitics, cartography, military strategy, economics, games and propaganda to address a vital question- how can China's dominance be prevented without war? 'The complexities of our region can easily bewilder those used to the Manichaean simplicity of the Cold War. Rory Medcalf's book is an elegant, keenly insightful tour of the Indo-Pacific's strategic horizon.' -Malcolm Turnbull

This book explains why the idea of the Indo-Pacific is so strategically important and concludes with a strategy designed to help the West engage with Chinese power in the region in such a way as to avoid conflict.

This book places the presidency of Donald Trump as well as the brewing Sino-American Cold War within the broader historical context of American hegemony in Asia, which traces its roots to Alfred Thayer Mahan’s call for a naval build up in the Pacific, the subsequent colonization of the Philippines and, ultimately, reaching its apotheosis after the defeat of Imperial Japan in the Second World War. The book, drawing on visits from Cairo to California and Perth to Pyongyang as well as interviews and exchanges with heads of state and senior officials from across the Indo-Pacific, provides an overview of the arc of American primacy in the region for scholars, journalists, and concerned citizens.

The book emanates from the geopolitical and geo-economic churning and transformations set in motion by the unprecedented economic rise of China resulting in its expanding political influence across the region and the world. In both the economic and the security realms, the United States and China alike are increasingly seen contesting in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional order to their own advantage. This book unfolds the contours and dimensions of China’s responses to various multilateral initiatives of the US and its friends and allies like Japan, Australia, and India and, to some extent, even ASEAN. While China’s medium-term strategy envisages a non-hostile external environment in order to focus on domestic priorities; reducing dependence of littoral nations of the Indo-Pacific region on America while increasing their engagement and dependence on China. China's expanding reach and influence overseas has resulted in US-led initiatives being China-focused inviting a response from China where adverse reactions have become increasingly palpable.

Bringing together a team of cutting-edge researchers based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific countries, this book focuses on the tug of war between China’s influence and forces of resistance in Hong Kong, Taiwan and selected countries in its surrounding jurisdictions. China’s influence has met growing defiance from citizens in Hong Kong and Taiwan who fear the extinction of their valued local identities. However, the book shows that resistance to China’s influence is a global phenomenon, varying in motivation and intensity from region to region and country to country depending on the forms of China’s influence and the balances of forces in each society. The book also advances a concentric center-periphery framework for comparing different forms of extra-jurisdictional Chinese influence mechanisms, ranging from economic, military and diplomatic influences to united front operations. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, international relations, geopolitics, Chinese politics, Hong Kong-China relations, Taiwan and Asian politics.

This book explores the most important strategic questions about the emerging Indo-Pacific region by offering an incisive analysis on the current and future patterns of competition and cooperation of key nations in the region. Examining emerging policies of cooperation and conflict adopted by Indo-Pacific states in response to a rising China, the book offers insights into the evolving Indo-Pacific visions and strategies being developed in Japan, India, Australia and the US in reaction to shifting geopolitical realities. The book provides evidence of geopolitical advances in what some see as a spatially coherent maritime zone stretching from the eastern Pacific to the western Indian Ocean, including small island states and countries that line its littoral. It also analyzes the development and operationalization of Indo-Pacific policies and strategies of various key nations. Contributors provide both macro and micro perspectives to this critically significant topic, offering insights into the grand strategies of great powers as well as case studies ranging from the Philippines to the Maldives to Kenya. The book suggests that new rivalries, shifting alliances and economic ebbs and flows in the Indo-Pacific will generate new geopolitical realities and shape much else beyond in the twenty-first century. A timely contribution to the rapidly expanding policy and scholarly discussions about what is likely to be the defining region for international politics for coming generations, the book will be of interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Diplomacy and International Law, East and South Asian Studies, East African Studies, Middle East Studies, and Australian Studies.

This book analyses the competing power politics that exists between the three major Asian powers - China, India and Japan - on infrastructural development across the Indo-Pacific. It examines the competing policies and perspectives of these Asian powers on infrastructure developmental initiatives and explores the commonalities and contradictions between them that shape their ideas and interests. In brief, the volume looks into the strategic contention that exists between China`s "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI; earlier officially known as "One Belt, One Road" - OBOR) and Japan`s "Expanded Partnership for Quality Infrastructure" (PQI) and initiatives like the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) that position India`s geostrategic and geo-economic interests in between these two competing powers and their mammoth infrastructural initiatives.

Middle-Power Responses to China’s BRI and America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy brings together an international, multidisciplinary group of leading experts to contribute a well-rounded, multifaceted view of the transformation that is currently taking place in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.