East Asian Policy

During the first few years of the 2020s, in the middle of COVID-induced supply chain disruptions, complex and overlapping economic arrangements have taken shape. The Japanese government has a vital role to play as a promoter of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific regional concept. This article examines Japan’s geoeconomic strategy in the overlapping initiatives to keep the United States engaged and make China compliant of the emerging regional economic order.

While historically providing ASEAN with both normative and strategic justifications for initiating “inclusive” multilateralism in the wider Asian region, great power rivalry has also functioned as a major impediment to the progress of ASEAN-led institutions beyond “dialogue” forums. In the age of fierce great power rivalry, these institutional properties have inevitably made ASEAN-led institutions become major fora for the “soft balancing” games of the great powers.

A successful launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) negotiations has posed new opportunities as well as challenges to all the actors in the East Asian region. The United States—the designer and initiator of the ambitious scheme—has displayed its intention to counter China’s expanding influence using this institutional initiative. This article examines the distinctive features of the IPEF and discusses its strategic implications as the economic instrument of the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy. It also explores the impact of the IPEF on the institutional reconfiguration in the region, which is swiftly underway amid the intensifying US–China confrontation.

In recent years the United States has placed the Indo-Pacific at the centre of its foreign policy and national security strategy. While the Trump administration introduced the United States’ first strategy for the Indo-Pacific, the administration fell short of implementing an effective policy that catered to the regional realities on the ground. The Biden administration has improved upon its predecessor’s shortcomings in the diplomatic domain but has yet to implement a comprehensive economic strategy for the region. This article compares the distinctive diplomatic, economic and security characteristics of the Trump and the Biden administrations’ Indo-Pacific strategies and argues that the latter administration crafted a more effective, albeit incomplete, strategy for advancing US interests.

Strengthening the South Korea–US alliance is South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s top priority in foreign and security policies. However, such a pro-American inclination is highly likely to create many diplomatic challenges caused by heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula and in its relations with China in the years to come. South Korea, as a middle power, should play a more proactive role in world affairs commensurate with its economic and cultural prowess in cooperation with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

The South Pacific region is in the international spotlight once more as resident and extra-regional powers jockey for influence and allegiance as part of a broader strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. This article reveals the geostrategic, geopolitical and geoeconomic issues at stake and provides a capsule analysis of the approach taken by all the key competitors. It also reveals the responses of the Pacific Island countries themselves to the strategic rivalry unfolding on their doorstep.

Unification with Taiwan is the most prominent among the Chinese Dream goals after the 20th Party Congress amended the Charter of the Chinese Communist Party to make this specific task a collective priority. This article discusses how existing disagreements regarding the historical, legal and political status of Taiwan today make the peaceful management of differences a fraught question. Recent geopolitical and geostrategic developments have also presented difficult dilemmas and choices for the People’s Republic of China on the Taiwan issue.

The new plan of building a national unified market was released in early 2022, indicating the urgency of breaking down local protectionism and market segmentation at the current stage of economic development. This article examines the driving forces of the new plan and the plan’s relationship with the “dual circulation” strategy proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. It also analyses the major barriers to building a unified market and the impacts on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the short run and in the long run.