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Understanding the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific: US–China strategic

competition, regional actors, and beyond

Article  in  International Affairs · January 2020

DOI: 10.1093/ia/iiz242

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 Understanding the dynamics of the

Indo-Pacific: US–China strategic competition,

regional actors, and beyond

KAI HE AND MINGJIANG LI *

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As a geographical concept, ‘Indo-Pacific’ has existed for decades. As a political
and strategic concept, it has gradually become established in the foreign policy
lexicon of some countries, especially Australia, India, Japan and the United States
since 2010. The term ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) started to dominate the
headlines after Donald Trump’s repeated use of the term during his first trip to
Asia as US president in late 2017. In the US National Security Strategy (NSS)
issued in December 2017, the ‘Indo-Pacific’ was mentioned eleven times while
the formerly prevalent term ‘Asia–Pacific’ was barely used at all.1 In June 2018
the US Navy renamed its Pacific Command the Indo-Pacific Command. Some
commentators suggest that the shift in terminology might be symbolic in nature;
nevertheless, it indicates a potential extension of the US strategic vision from the
Asia–Pacific to the Indo-Pacific.2 In June 2019, the United States released its Indo-
Pacific strategy report; and in the same month, ASEAN adopted an ASEAN outlook on
the Indo-Pacific at its annual summit. As one commentator claims, the ‘Asia Pacific
is so last century ... We live in the Indo Pacific’.3
However, China seems to be reluctant to identify itself as part of the Indo-
Pacific. So far, no Chinese official document has used the term. For example, in
its latest defence white paper, released in July 2019, China continues to use ‘Asia–
Pacific’ to describe its geographical region. The term ‘Asia–Pacific’ was used ten
times; the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ did not appear at all.4 In practice, China’s economic
and strategic ambitions have moved across both the Pacific and the Indian oceans,
as we can see from the extensive scope of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).5 Why,
then, is China intentionally rejecting the new ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept? The answer

* This is an introduction to the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs on ‘Unpacking the strategic
dynamics of the Indo-Pacific’, guest-edited by Kai He and Mingjiang Li.
1
White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington DC, Dec. 2017).
2
Idrees Ali, ‘In symbolic nod to India, US Pacific Command changes name’, Reuters, 31 May 2018, https://
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-india/in-symbolic-nod-to-india-us-pacific-command-changes-
name-idUSKCN1IV2Q2. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were
accessible on 10 Oct. 2019.)
3
Melissa Conley Tyler, ‘The Indo-Pacific is the new Asia’, The Interpreter, 28 June 2019, https://www.lowyin-
stitute.org/the-interpreter/indo-pacific-new-asia.
4
Lu Hui, ed., ‘China issues white paper on national defence in new era’, Xinhua, 24 July 2019, http://www.
xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/24/c_138253180.htm.
5
Astrid H. M. Nordin and Mikael Weissmann, ‘Will Trump make China great again? The Belt and Road Initia-
tive and international order’, International Affairs 94: 2, March 2018, pp. 231–50.

International Affairs 96: 1 (2020) 1–7; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiz242

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 Kai He and Mingjiang Li
is simple: Chinese leaders believe that the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy aims to
contain China’s rise.6
Interestingly, unlike the Obama administration which openly denied that the
US ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy was aimed at containing China, the Trump admin-
istration has no qualms about openly confronting China. In the 2017 US NSS,
China was labelled a revisionist state and a strategic competitor of the United
States because it was seen to challenge ‘American power, influence, and interests,
attempting to erode American security and prosperity’.7 In the 2019 Indo-Pacific
strategy report, China was again labelled a revisionist power, seeking to ‘reorder the

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region to its advantage by leveraging military modernization, influence opera-
tions, and predatory economics to coerce other nations’.8 Clearly, China is no
longer perceived as the constructive partner for US policy-makers identified by
the Obama administration.9 In this context, it is no surprise that many in the
Chinese policy elite regard the trade war with the United States, which started
in early 2018, and the US-led FOIP as twin strands in a containment effort by
Washington directed against China’s rise.10
While the battle between the two geographical concepts ‘Indo-Pacific’ and
‘Asia–Pacific’ may be fairly easily settled in the future, US–China strategic
competition has just begun. Any unwise move might increase the risk of the two
countries falling into the ‘Thucydides trap’ of which Graham Allison warns, by
which increasing tensions between a ruling state (here, the United States) and
a rising power (China) may lead to military conflict.11 Will the Indo-Pacific
become a battlefield for US–China rivalry? How will China cope with the US
FOIP strategy? How will other regional actors respond to the US–China strategic
competition in the Indo-Pacific? What are the strategic implications of the ‘Indo-
Pacific’ concept for regional order transformation? How will the Indo-Pacific be
institutionalized, economically, politically and strategically?
This special issue of International Affairs aims to address those questions, using
both country-specific and regional perspectives. Seven articles focus on the policy
6
For more details, see Feng Liu’s article in this special issue: ‘The recalibration of Chinese assertiveness: China’s
responses to the Indo-Pacific challenge’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 9–28; Naná de Graaff and
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn , ‘US–China relations and the liberal world order: contending elites, colliding visions?’,
International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 113–32; Doug Stokes, ‘Trump, American hegemony and the future of the
liberal international order’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 133–50; Christopher Layne, ‘The US–Chinese
power shift and the end of Pax Americana’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 89–112; Joseph S. Nye, Jr,
‘The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump’, International Affairs 95: 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 63–80.
7
White House, National Security Strategy, p. 2.
8
See US Department of Defense, Indo-Pacific strategy report (Washington DC, 1 June 2019).
9
For Obama’s China policy, see White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washing-
ton DC, 2015), p. 24. It states that ‘the United States welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous
China. We seek to develop a constructive relationship with China that delivers benefits for our two peoples
and promotes security and prosperity in Asia and around the world’. See also Wu Xinbo, ‘China in search of
a liberal partnership world order’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 995–1018; Xiaoyu Pu and Chengli
Wang, ‘Rethinking China’s rise: Chinese scholars debate strategic overstretch’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept.
2018, pp. 1019–36.
10
For a criticism of the US FOIP strategy, see Michael Swaine, ‘A counterproductive Cold War with China’,
Foreign Affairs, 2 March 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-03-02/counterproductive-
cold-war-china.
11
Graham T. Allison, Destined for war: can America and China escape Thucydides’s trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2017).
2
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 Understanding the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific
responses of major players (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and ASEAN)
to the US FOIP strategy and related US–China rivalry in the region. A further
three articles examine the profound implications of Indo-Pacific dynamics for
regional institution-building and for geopolitical and geo-economic architecture.
Through an analysis of Chinese scholars’ perceptions of the US FOIP strategy,
Feng Liu argues that China has modified its assertive posture in foreign policy
towards its neighbouring states.12 For example, China has rebuilt its strategic
relations with India and Japan and has reassured the ASEAN states that it will take
a less assertive approach to the South China Sea disputes. China’s combination of

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restraint and wedge strategies seems to have been successful in preventing regional
powers from joining the US containment camp in the short run. However, in the
long run, whether or not a new Cold War emerges in Asia still depends on wise
strategic choices to be made by the United States and China, as well as by other
powers in the region.
Focusing on China’s policy choices, Xue Gong explores ways in which China
has enhanced its cooperation with the south-east Asian states in the non-traditional
security (NTS) domain as a geostrategic tool to offset the negative impacts of the
US FOIP strategy.13 Using two case-studies on China’s NTS cooperation with the
ASEAN states in the Lancang–Mekong region and in the maritime domain, Gong
argues that China’s NTS-based strategy might help prevent the south-east Asian
states from joining the anti-China camp led by the United States under the FOIP.
However, China’s influence in south-east Asia will remain limited because the
countries of the region may choose to support certain elements of the US FOIP
strategy relating to the maritime security issue with regard to the South China
Sea disputes in the future.
Japan was an early proponent of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept. The Japanese
prime minister, Shinzo Abe, proposed his famous ‘democratic security diamond’,
consisting of Australia, India, Japan and the United States (the members of the
original 2007 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or ‘Quad’), in 2012,14 and this
concept seemed to be revived in the form of the ‘Quad 2.0’ in 2017. However,
Japan’s new ‘open and free Indo-Pacific strategy’ adopted by Abe in 2016 now
encompasses the economic as well as the security domain, emphasizing the
economic connection between Asia and Africa, especially in the infrastructure
sector. Kei Koga argues that the Japanese version of the FOIP strategy primarily
aims to shape and consolidate regional order in the Indo-Pacific region on the
basis of the existing rules-based international order.15 In order to achieve this goal,
Japan has adopted a ‘tactical hedging’ strategy that enables it to flexibly incor-
porate other regional states’ preferences into its FOIP, thus making the concept
a common vision among regional states and beyond, and creating a coalition to
12
Liu, ‘The recalibration of Chinese assertiveness’.
13
Xue Gong, ‘Non-traditional security cooperation between China and south-east Asia: implications for
geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 29–48.
14
Shinzo Abe, ‘Asia’s democratic security diamond’, Project Syndicate, 27 Dec. 2017, https://www.project-syndi-
cate.org/commentary/a-strategic-alliance-for-japan-and-india-by-shinzo-abe?barrier=accesspaylog.
15
Kei Koga, ‘Japan’s “Indo-Pacific” question: countering China or shaping a new regional order?’, International
Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 49–74.
3
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 Kai He and Mingjiang Li
cope with challenges from China. However, Koga is not optimistic about the
making of the Indo-Pacific regional order in the future, owing to the divergence
of strategic goals among major powers, even those who share Japan’s vision of
the FOIP.
India is a key player in the US FOIP strategy: first, it is seen as a natural balancer
against China’s rise; second, its activism in the Indo-Pacific is mainly driven by
its need to balance against China, as Rajesh Rajagopalan suggests.16 However,
India is cautious about following the United States in making the ‘Indo-Pacific’
a purely security-based concept directed against China. For example, Prime

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Minister Narendra Modi emphasized in the 2017 Shangri-La Dialogue that ‘India
does not see the Indo-Pacific Region as a strategy or a club of limited members.
Nor as a grouping that seeks to dominate. And by no means do we consider it as
directed against any country.’17 Rajagopalan explains the policy dilemma facing
India in the context of China’s rise. He suggests that India’s ‘evasive balancing’
strategy, which combines the elements of balancing and reassurance, might not
work because it will not please either China or the United States, nor will it
achieve a stable, non-hegemonic Indo-Pacific order.
Australia, as one of the strongest and most active advocates of the Indo-Pacific
concept, was the first country to use the term in official documents. In its 2013
defence white paper, the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ was used 57 times.18 Brendan Taylor
suggests that Australia’s enthusiasm for the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept is rooted in the
two dominant traditions of its foreign policy: a ‘dependent ally’ tradition and a
‘middle-power’ approach.19 On the one hand, as a dependent ally of the United
States, Australia follows the lead of the US FOIP strategy. On the other hand,
Australia intends to take a middle-power approach or a normative leadership
role to mediate Great Power competition through various institutional means.
However, as Taylor points out, there is a discrepancy between what Australia
says and what Australia does. Its Indo-Pacific strategy, in fact, follows a third
‘pragmatic tradition’. It seems that Australia will, just like India, face the strategic
dilemma of picking sides between the United States and China.
Indonesia, though originally lukewarm towards the Quad countries’ use of the
term, has more recently played a leadership role in promoting the ‘Indo-Pacific’
concept in south-east Asia. Dewi Fortuna Anwar suggests that the adoption of
the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific at the ASEAN summit in July 2019 can be
seen as Indonesia’s major foreign policy victory in strengthening the centrality
of ASEAN in the evolving Indo-Pacific construct.20 Drawing on middle-power
16
Rajesh Rajagopalan, ‘Evasive balancing: India’s unviable Indo-Pacific strategy’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan.
2020, pp. 75–94.
17
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Prime minister’s keynote address at Shangri-La Dialogue’,
1 June 2018, http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/29943/Prime+Ministers+Keynote+Addre
ss+at+Shangri+La+Dialogue+June+01+2018.
18
Commonwealth of Australia, Defending Australia in the Asia–Pacific century: Force 2030 (Canberra: Department
of Defence, 2009).
19
Brendan Taylor, ‘Is Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy an illusion?’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp.
95–110.
20
Dewi Fortuna Anwar, ‘Indonesia and the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan.
2020, pp. 111–30.
4
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 Understanding the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific
theory, Anwar argues that Indonesia is behaving like a ‘Kantian middle power’ in
promoting a more positive outlook of the Indo-Pacific region based on coopera-
tion rather than rivalry. This proactive foreign policy serves three purposes: to
strengthen Indonesia’s unofficial leadership in ASEAN and its status as a global
middle power; to entrench ASEAN centrality in regional affairs; and to offer a
strategic alternative to offset Great Power rivalries, particularly that between the
United States and China. Because of ASEAN’s inherent weaknesses and disagree-
ment on key regional issues, however, it remains uncertain whether Indonesia or
ASEAN as a whole has the capabilities to take up these challenges.

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ASEAN, an intergovernmental organization consisting of ten small and middle
powers, has been a major player in the Asia–Pacific regional architecture since the
end of the Cold War. ASEAN has led almost all the main regional institutions,
including the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia
Summit, during the years when both the United States and China embraced the
Association’s centrality in regional affairs. See Seng Tan argues that Trump’s FOIP
strategy has now put pressure on ASEAN states to pick sides between the United
States and China.21 The escalating rivalry between Washington and Beijing has
also undermined the central role of ASEAN in the regional architecture built
on Great Power consensus and cooperation in the post-Cold War era. Conse-
quently, the ASEAN states, as a whole, have adopted a hedging strategy in order
to manoeuvre between the United States and China by enhancing practical bilat-
eral collaboration with each state. As Tan points out, through this ‘ASEAN plus
one’ arrangement, ASEAN has sought to redefine its regional centrality as well as
to indirectly limit the negative impact of the FOIP strategy on multilateralism.
Clearly, the US FOIP strategy has been a tough test for all regional actors.
China has modified its assertive policies towards its neighbours in order to prevent
the establishment of an anti-China containment camp led by the United States in
the Indo-Pacific. Other major powers, such as Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan
and the ten ASEAN member states as a whole, are now forced to choose sides
between the United States and China. Consequently, despite rhetorical support
for the FOIP concept, most players have tried hard not to side with the United
States in order to avoid publicly antagonizing China. The pragmatic approach
adopted by Australia (which is a close ally of the United States) allows its deeds to
depart from its words of support for the US FOIP strategy. The ASEAN states,
especially Indonesia, intend to play a proactive role in maintaining the Associa-
tion’s centrality in building the Indo-Pacific construct in the region.
Will the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept go beyond the scope of US strategy against
China? Will the concept of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ be institutionalized in such a way
that it can become a new catalyst for the development of regionalism and multi-
lateralism in this part of the world? Building on Oran Young’s ideas on political
leadership in regime formation, Kai He and Huiyun Feng suggest that the future
of the institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific construct lies in two key factors:
21
See Seng Tan, ‘Consigned to hedge: south-east Asia and America’s “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy’,
International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 131–48.
5
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 Kai He and Mingjiang Li
executive leadership and ideational leadership.22 While executive leadership is a
necessary condition for states to overcome ‘relative gains’ and ‘collective action’
problems, and other operational difficulties in cooperation, ideational leadership
can help states to locate focal points and expand common interests for coopera-
tion. Comparing the building of the Asia–Pacific construct with the construction
of Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation, He and Feng argue that it is the lack of
both executive leadership and ideational leadership that has held back the institu-
tionalization of the Indo-Pacific in the past decade. Under Trump’s administra-
tion, the United States might take up the executive leadership role; however, the

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success of institution-building in the Indo-Pacific will be limited by the relative
weakness of the epistemic community, which undermines the strength of the
ideational leadership. He and Feng suggest that China, in particular through its
BRI, might be a wild card in Indo-Pacific regionalism in the future.
Currently, the BRI appears to be primarily an economic initiative, but many
analysts believe that the massive Chinese investments in infrastructure and indus-
tries will inevitably generate significant geostrategic repercussions across Eurasia
and the Indo-Pacific region. Mingjiang Li’s article seeks to analyse the impacts
of the BRI on security ties between China and the other major players in the
Indo-Pacific.23 Li points out that the BRI is gradually transforming Beijing’s
international security strategy and policies in the Indo-Pacific owing to China’s
need to overcome daunting challenges to protect its commercial interests and to
ensure the safety of its nationals in the regions and countries that are involved in
the BRI. One result of the BRI is that China will be considerably more proac-
tive in projecting its power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The ensuing
significant expansion of Beijing’s security role may further intensify the security
competition between China and the other major players in the Indo-Pacific region,
primarily the United States. Li also proposes a new analytical angle for the study
of geo-economics that unpacks the role of economic activities and processes in
generating geopolitical intentions and catalysing geopolitical competition.
In a similar vein, Ling Wei argues that China’s ‘development peace’ experi-
ence in east Asia might shed some light on the future Indo-Pacific construct and
regionalism.24 Building on practice theory, Wei suggests that economic develop-
ment can serve as an ‘anchoring practice’ in embodying and enacting the consti-
tutive rules and basic norms for a broader set of practices in regional processes,
including peaceful coexistence and non-interference. Wei tests her ‘development
peace’ argument by using two empirical case-studies, on the transformation of the
ASEAN–China relationship from hostility to partnership in the post-Cold War
era and on the change in China–Philippines relations over the South China Sea
dispute. Wei’s constructivist approach seems to suggest a more optimistic future

22
Kai He and Huiyun Feng, ‘The institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific: problems and prospects’, International
Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 149–68.
23
Mingjiang Li, ‘The Belt and Road Initiative: geo-economics and Indo-Pacific security competition’, Interna-
tional Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 169–88.
24
Ling Wei, ‘Developmental peace in east Asia and its implications for the Indo-Pacific’, International Affairs 96:
1, Jan. 2020, pp. 189–210.
6
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 Understanding the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific
for the Indo-Pacific construct, in which economic development, infrastructure
cooperation and the code of conduct in the South China Sea can serve as vehicles
and best practices to facilitate the building of a rules-based order in the region.
The term FOIP implies a balancing or even a containment strategy of the
United States in dealing with a rising China that may pose grave challenges to the
US-led liberal international order after the 2008 global financial crisis. However,
regional actors, including other Quad countries—Australia, India and Japan—as
well as Indonesia and the ten ASEAN member states as a whole, have refrained
from meddling in the strategic competition between the United States and China

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in the region. The success of the US FOIP strategy against China will thus mainly
depend on the strategic interactions among the United States, China and other
regional powers.
One way to de-escalate the strategic rivalry between the United States and
China is to make the Indo-Pacific an institutional construct able to facilitate
interstate cooperation and thereby broader and deeper regionalism and multilat-
eralism. However, institution-building in the Indo-Pacific region is not an easy
task, and faces many institutional, ideational and practical hurdles. Who will take
the lead in institutionalizing the Indo-Pacific concept? How will the best practice
be achieved in east Asia? Will it be achieved through development peace? Or will
it be achieved by transcending the geopolitical contestations in the Indo-Pacific?
Will China’s BRI be a strategic blessing or a curse on the Indo-Pacific construct in
the future? Many questions remain unanswered regarding the profound ramifica-
tions of the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific for regional order transition. We hope
that this special issue of International Affairs will be among the opening chapters to
Indo-Pacific studies in the decades to come.

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