East Asian Policy

The revival of the Quad with an “Indo-Pacific strategy” was initially not taken seriously by China. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in 2020, especially after the China-US trade war, the Quad is increasingly moving in a strategic direction aimed at containing China. From China’s perspective, the United States is staging a “five-four-three-two” formation in the Asia-Pacific, a form of an Asian NATO. In response, China’s diplomatic efforts will focus on breaking the strategic containment of the US-led Quad.

Given that there is no overarching regional organisation for the Indo-Pacific, there has been a proliferation of minilateral and plurilateral groupings focussing on ensuring a free, open and a rules-based Indo-Pacific. The Quadrilateral alliance comprising India, the United States, Australia and Japan falls into this category. India has always maintained a non- aligned foreign policy position. In recent times, however, with the mushrooming of these groupings, “issue-based partnerships’ partnerships” is the foreign policy road that India has embarked upon.

Japan’s balancing against Chinese power stretches across military, economic and soft power domains, representing a comprehensive effort to preserve the status quo against revisionism, working alone and with partners. Nonetheless, Japanese firms still depend on trade with China and business leaders expect continued expansion of the bilateral economic relationship. No single strategy drives Tokyo’s approach, which is the result of diverse interests in a pluralistic system.

The United Kingdom’s Indo-Pacific “tilt” has been warmly encouraged by Japan, its closest security partner in Asia. As UK-Japan strategic alignment evolves, the security and defence documents of both partners appear to also converge around a desire to “create” or “shape” a desirable regional environment. This paper illustrates how states may do so, using Japan and the UK as case studies. It investigates the theoretical premise and policy instruments available, before assessing opportunities and constraints.

The fragile Indo-Pacific security environment calls for recalibrating the Philippine-US alliance. Instead of attempting to revive the anachronistic hub-and-spokes system that tottered during the Duterte administration, Washington and Manila should move towards a polycentric type of relations that considers substate actors in conducting foreign affairs. This would be necessary to address traditional and non-traditional security concerns endangering the region’s stability.

This paper analyses Xi Jinping’s role in China’s foreign policy from elitepolitics perspective focusing on first, the policy preferences and worldviews of political elites; second, balance of power among political elites; and third, the sectoral interests behind political elites. China’s foreign policies have generally developed in line with Xi’s policy preferences and worldview. The current balance of power is in Xi’s favour. His administration comprises mostly local cadres, whose developmentalist policy preferences are reflected in foreign policies.

China-India relations are becoming increasingly competitive and volatile. The deep-rooted dynamic is the dysfunctioning of the previous interaction framework that had ensured relatively stable bilateral relationship for decades. This paper explores the main obstacles and dynamics of the current China-India relationship, including the border issue, economic relations and the Quad. It also shares some thoughts on what China and India should do to move forward the bilateral relationship.

The United States has used the Ukraine conflict to highlight Russia’s close economic and strategic ties with China and charge that China is responsible for enabling Russia’s aggression. Canada is highly dependent on the United States and Canada-China relations are tense. However, uncertainty about American reliability, and Canada’s racial and ethnic diversity, suggest that Canada has to consider the neutrality of the non-Western world on the Ukraine conflict as it positions itself for a changing world order.