East Asian Policy

Since 2022, Chinese officials have embarked on an international mobilisation campaign to promote China’s new Global Security Initiative (GSI), Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI). The three new initiatives espouse China’s principles of global governance, security and development in order to reinforce the domestic legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, reform the global governance system, expand China’s international influence, especially in the developing world, and compete with the United States’ conception of the liberal rules-based international order.

This article examines China’s soft power in Estonia since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. Findings have suggested that while Beijing’s domestic political values do not inform its projection of soft power, the Estonian government and general public perceive China mainly through the prism of its state-centric governance model and consequently view most of China’s deployment of supposedly “soft” power as sharp.

China and the United States have seen expeditious investment growth in renewable energy and climate-related industries. Due to differences in political environments and governance structures, monetary settings, and prevailing market technologies and geographic conditions, the two countries demonstrate varied strengths and weaknesses in promoting climate investment. Both countries can learn from each other’s distinctive strengths and weaknesses to identify potential opportunities both for domestic climate programmes and energy cooperation to jointly pursue pathways to achieve net zero carbon footprints.

In 2022, highly restrictive measures were imposed in China to contain the less deadly Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 virus or the COVID-19 virus. This study argues that these measures stemmed from a move away from pragmatic authoritarianism and towards totalitarianism since 2013 and that the lockdown of scores of cities such as Shanghai in 2022 carried quintessential features of totalitarianism. Revived totalitarianism in China has helped explain the longest and likely the most comprehensive strict epidemic control among all nations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The politics and the end of zero-COVID policy in China in 2022 are analysed.

This article addresses the complex landscape of Japan’s diplomatic engagement in Southeast Asia, spanning from the late 1990s to the present day, and explores the transformative role that Japan has played in post-conflict peacebuilding and regional security. Japan has reinforced diplomatic relations with conflict-affected Southeast Asian countries in the post-Cold War era, contributing to security cooperation in the region under the recent Japan’s diplomatic direction of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision.

This article examines the Marcos administration’s efforts to seek the elusive balance in managing its relations with the United States, China and Japan. At the beginning of his term, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr planned a balanced foreign policy marked by China providing the investments and market for the Philippines while the United States extended its security guarantee. In conclusion, the article argues that Marcos Jr’s foreign policy reflects the Philippines’ acumen in practising ASEAN’s age-old and proven statecraft in dealing with the significant powers that require the smaller Southeast Asian countries to accept the presence of big powers in Southeast Asia as a fact of international relations.

Middle powers have been defined in hierarchical and behavioural terms. They have significantly impacted on the global governance agenda, especially through their leadership within international commissions and through multilateral forums. Recent challenges to multilateralism have created an impression that the middle power moment is over, especially in East Asia. Yet, this article sees a way forward for the stronger, more regionally focused middle powers to continue to influence international governance.

After Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, the development of its relations with Taiwan has been full of twists and turns. Formal and bureaucratic interactions have stifled the strategic ambiguity needed to utilise Hong Kong as a buffer for cross-strait tensions. The subtle interaction between Hong Kong and Taiwan, being leveraged to reduce tension and facilitate communication in the cross-strait conflict, has been weakened since the mid-2010s even though institutionalisation was enhanced. Thus, the future development of Hong Kong–Taiwan relations may seem even more pessimistic than cross-strait relations.