China's Rising Influence in Asia: Implications for U.S. Policy

NDIAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 2022

China is an emerging power in the world and its influence in West Asian region is increasing rapidly. Since communists took over China, it maintained a good relationship with several countries in the region and now Beijing which has only friends and no enemy there, is seen as a competitor to US hegemony. Its rising economy, military power, market productivity and the so-called non-interventionist approach have given leverage to engage more with West Asian countries. Since China’s iconic project Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was announced, its expectations from these countries have increased. Beijing’s ambitions in West Asia are not limited to only oil, gas and market but the region also has a strategic importance and BRI includes all such aspects. The region is also very important because it comes between the Asia and Europe where Asia is known as the largest manufacturing region in the world in which China holds the key position and Europe and Africa are the important destinations for exporters. China’s trade and investment will be affected massively by any instability in the region and it will also affect its maritime activity and exports to Europe and Africa. Apart from the economic front, China is very much involved in the strategic issues of the region. It also has good relations with both Iran and Saudi Arabia and increasing its non-combatant presence in crises like the Syrian civil war. The aim of this chapter is to explain and explore China’s interest in the region and its impact on the region and global politics.

Geopolitics, 2024

The U.S.-China rivalry has emerged as a defining geopolitical issue in the 21st century, profoundly influencing the dynamics of Asia and the broader global order. This paper examines the historical context, economic competition, military strategic posturing, and technological advancements that characterize this rivalry. It explores key scenarios for the future-ranging from continued rivalry and potential cooperation to the risk of conflict-while emphasizing the critical role of diplomacy and multilateralism in maintaining stability. The analysis highlights the implications of the U.S.-China struggle for influence, considering how it shapes regional alliances, impacts international governance, and affects global peace and security. Ultimately, this study underscores the importance of understanding the complexities of this power struggle and its significance for the future of international relations.

International Security, 2005

In his recent article in International Security, David Shambaugh provides a far-ranging and thought-provoking account of China's engagement policy with the wider Asian region, 1 which he argues is "a principal catalyst in shaping a new order in Asia." 2 Shambaugh posits that "the traditional underpinnings of international relations in Asia are undergoing profound change, and the rise of China is a principal cause" (p. 64). Other causes of change that he points to include the relative decline of U.S. inºuence in the region; the growing role of norms espoused by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and attendant growth of ASEAN-linked institutions; increased technological and economic interdependence in the region; and improvements in China's relations with key regional states including India, South Korea, and Vietnam. As a result, Shambaugh asserts that in contrast to the situation just a few years ago, "the majority of Asian states currently view China as more benign than malign and are accommodating themselves to its rise" (p. 67). Following other observers, Shambaugh sees regional bandwagoning dynamics operating in China's favor. We contend, however, that there are serious problems in Shambaugh's thesis, which collectively leave us with much less room for optimism about China's Asia policy both in the present, as well as for the future. Three key points of critique merit further elaboration. First, Shambaugh devotes inadequate attention in his article to China's relations with two states, Japan and Taiwan, whose interactions in the last decade patently contradict his portrayal of skillful Chinese diplomacy. 4 Second, his claim that "most nations in the region now see China as a good neighbor, a constructive partner, a careful

The Asan Forum: An Online Journal, 2018

2020

In the post-World War Two era, the United States has sought to play the role of a regional hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region. This quest has been organized on multiple fronts, including the establishment of military alliances, efforts to foster open markets and trade relationships, and the development of political ties through diplomacy. Initial policy was rooted in the assumption that Marxist-Leninist movements and regimes posed an existential threat to the United States. Eventually, the US policymakers were compelled to acknowledge the fallacy of their earlier perceptions as to the monolithic nature of the so-called Communist bloc. By the early 1970s, the presidential administration of Richard Nixon indicated its willingness to engage with China (a movement motivated in part by the desire of both sides to counterbalance against the Soviet Union). The establishment of formal diplomatic ties with China in 1979 coincided with the launching of China’s economic reform movement. In sub...

Defence & Diplomcay, 2013

RISE OF CHINA AND ITS FOREIGN POLICY RAJ MONGIA INTRODUCTION The vast majority of Indians is worried about China's rise and considers it a security threat, an opinion poll has revealed, with the results exposing a serious trust deficit between the Asian giants. The survey, conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Australia India Institute, found that 83 per cent of Indians considered China a security threat. A possible war with China was rated a "big threat" by almost three in four respondents. Reasons included China's possession of nuclear weapons, competition for resources, and border disputes. Even though China is now India's largest trading partner, just 31 per cent of Indians agreed that China's rise had been good for India. 1 Both India and China, two of the most populous countries in the world, have been moving up the ladder, militarily, economically, and politically, but each has its own priorities, strategies, successes, and failures. These have been discussed and continue to be discussed in detail on several platforms. Today, these two countries are masters of their own fate and are well on their way to take their rightful place

2005

The program is on this book, Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics. David Shambaugh had the wisdom and foresight to see several years ago that something very important was going on in Asia as a result of China's accumulating power. This wasn't just quantitative, it was qualitative. And he brought together some of the best minds on China and its relations-myself excepted-to examine the subject, and the result is that book. I'll make one small advertisement. The book will be on sale at the break and after this session, so get your wallets out. What we're going to do this afternoon is to talk about the findings of the book with some of the authors. We're going to start right away with David talking about the book, and then examine some general issues. Before we do so, I would like to thank my staff for all their help on the arrangements, and Elizabeth Brooks of the China Initiative and the staff of the Communications Department here at Brookings. Without them, none of this would have been possible. Without further ado, David Shambaugh. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, thank you, Richard, not only for the introduction but, more importantly, to you and Jeff Bader and CNAPS and the China Initiative at Brookings for hosting today's event and book launch. Publishing a book is sort of like having a baby, except the pregnancy period is much longer-in this particular case, almost three years from, shall we say, conception to publication. Brookings Briefing Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics 4 If I could summarize the findings in one sentence-which is a dangerous thing to do when you have 17 or 18 chapters in a book-it's that power is shifting toward China in the Asian region, but not absolutely and not equally across different realms. We found, generally speaking, that it is shifting toward China most in the economic realm, less so but still noticeably so in the diplomatic-political realm, and least so in the security sphere; and that-and I'll come back to this point in my closing remarks-international relations in the Asian region are a very complex mix of multiple trends, not simply the rise of China. I'll come back to that. But as I say, this book is a culmination of three years of work and also intensive collaboration, I'm pleased to say, amongst the 17 authors who contributed to it-17 authors from six different countries, many of whom, I think, are the world's leading specialists in their particular areas. So I'm delighted to have collaborated with them. This is truly a collaborative effort. When we began the project three years ago, as Richard suggested, nobody was paying a lot of attention to China's regional role. But I had sensed that there were some important changes afoot qualitatively and quantitatively and that it had important implications for the regional order. So we went into the project, A, to explore empirically what China was doing in its region and what those implications were. During the intervening three years since we launched this project and had a conference two years ago, almost exactly, in which the initial drafts were presented, the subject did begin to attract attention, largely from journalists and secondly from diplomats in the region. Journalists such as Jane Perlez of the New York Times published a series of articles-she wasn't the only one-on China's regional role, and diplomats, around the region but also here in Foggy Bottom, began to pay increasing attention to China's regional role and, in the case of Foggy Bottom and the Americans, began to wring their hands about "China eating our lunch in Asia." I've heard that phrase many times over the last two or three years, China eating America's lunch in Asia. I don't know if that's the case, but there was clearly a sense of angst amongst American diplomats about China's new proactive regional diplomacy. Scholars, I would say, have been slower than journalists or diplomats to study and follow and understand China's new regional role. But scholars have begun to do so. This book is the second book to appear on this subject in the last six months, the other being Robert Sutter's very fine volume, "The Rise of China in Asia," I think is the title of it-Rowman & Littlefield-and I commend that book to you as well. Now, what I'd like to do in just a very brief time, 10 minutes or so, is to give you a sort of summary overview of the contributions to the book and finish up with the kind of principal argument about "so what?"-what does it mean for the regional order in Asia? Brookings Briefing Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics 5 First of all-and I do encourage you to go out and perhaps buy a copy later-but there are flyers that describe the table of contents. Let me briefly do so for you. First there's an introduction by the editor of the first section, on China's strategy in the region, in which I have a chapter but also two leading Chinese scholars, Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping from the Academy of Social Sciences Asia Pacific Institute, both of whom, I would say, have been instrumentally involved themselves in helping to think through in a think-tank kind of way what China's strategy should be in Asia. And they've been very involved in the ASEAN senior officials meeting and the various events that have led up to the first Asia Pacific summit-what was it called?, the East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur in December. Brookings Briefing Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics 6 will, and a number of sub-elements of that. And then a chapter by Michael Swaine from the Carnegie Endowment, next door, on China's regional military posture, the hard security, if you will. And this chapter by Swaine is really a tour de force, I think. It's a very up-to-date assessment of where the PLA is today, but also where it's going in the next 5 to 10 years, so good one-stop shopping for those of you who want to know what the state of the PLA is and where it's going to be. And then we move-there are two final sections to the book, both of which ask the "so what?" question. Section 5 of the books asks, What does it mean for the United States? Section 6 asks, What does it mean for the region, for the international relations of the Asia Pacific region? The two chapters concerning the United States, implications for the U.S., are by David Lampton, from SAIS, across the street, and Robert Sutter of Georgetown University, respectively. And they come to two rather different conclusions in their chapters. Lampton, in essence, argues that the United States need not look at China's regional rise in a zero-sum light, that China's influence around its periphery is very uneven, but that-and to quote him-"the overall direction in which China's regional policy has moved is consistent with fundamental U.S. interests" and that, if intelligently managed, the Sino-American relationship can indeed be very conducive to regional stability. Professor Sutter differs from that viewpoint and is less sure. He argues that China's influence in Asia actually remains quite limited, particularly when contrasted with that of the United States-a sub-theme that in fact Professor Garver's chapter also notes. And Sutter disagrees with those, like myself, who believe that American influence has diminished in the region. Sutter thinks that it's still very strong. Moreover, he argues that while it does not seem apparent that China is explicitly moving to evict the United States from the Asia Pacific region or to diminish American influence in the Asia Pacific region, Sutter argues that implicitly this is exactly China's strategy and that, while not wanting to confront the United States directly, around the margins, wherever they can, the Chinese are working to diminish American influence in the region. So you have two-in these two chapters, Lampton and Sutter-two very different perspectives on what China's regional diplomacy means for the U.S. in Asia. So I commend those to you. Then we examine in the final section, professors Yahuda and Pollack, respectively, what it means for the regional order. And I'm going to not try and summarize their chapters because that's the subject of the first panel. So that is a sort of thumbnail sketch, if you will, of what's in the book, in the 17 chapters. It's very rich in empirical detail, I think. There's a lot of data and, I think, some pretty sound judgments and analysis in the book, too. It is not a sort of journalistic analysis of the subject. So I encourage you to buy and read it for yourselves.

In this paper we bring to the forefront the complexity of the networked relationships in the Indo-Asia-Pacific space and their multi-layered structure (including economy, development, culture, security, defence, history, diplomacy). In spite of the dynamism and deep transformations of the Asian economies during the last decades, the US has only recently started to rebalance towards this region. Among the determinants of the new strategy there could be identified: tapping the economic potential of the region; countering the rise of China and counterbalancing regional alliances; redefining norms and rules in Asia-Pacific. From the variable geometry alliances in Asia-Pacific, we analyze two case studies, US-China-India and US-China-ASEAN and underline that: (1) not only the US, but also other stakeholders such as India are rebalancing towards Asia-Pacific; (2) the new strategy reflects two contradictory objectives of the US foreign policy: a constructive relationship with China, on the one hand and strengthening alliances to the detriment of China in order to counter its rise, on the other hand. In our view, until the US presidential elections are not expected major foreign policy changes, nevertheless starting with 2017 the " pivot " towards Asia-Pacific might become even more evident.

Asia’s growing economic prosperity led by China’s rise in recent years has caused the spotlight of international relations to turn eastward. Along with rising interest in China’s development, renewed attention has also gravitated towards Southeast Asia, a region slighted in the general discussion of power in the international realm. With Southeast Asia’s growing role as the hub of regional integration and increasing market potential, observers are watchful on how the development of regional trade agreements in the area may shape international relations in East Asia, particularly with the realization of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area. A further concern of China’s growing relations with Southeast Asia is its impact on Sino-US relations and what it entails for the balance of power in the region. The US return to Asia under the Obama administration re-engages the lone superpower with the region and Southeast Asia is an important testing ground of US cordiality towards Asia. Current US foreign policy has departed from the Bush administration’s emphasis on anti-terrorism and seeks engagement with Southeast Asia towards the goal of balancing China’s rise. This article seeks to explain and analyze the significance of Sino-US strategic competition in Southeast Asia.

2016

The geostrategic environment of Asia‐Pacific region has changed from the US' dominance to now also China's increasing existence. The US strategists think that their country must have a military capability of countering and defea ng an emerging compe tor, which in this case is China. The US' response to China's emergence in the Pacific region has also been full of confusion. For example, in 2012, Hillary Clinton (the then Secretary of State) said, “Pacific is big enough for all of us”. However, on the other hand, the US has been taking steps, militarily and otherwise, to counter China. The US has already established a military base in Darwin, Australia. Recently, the biggest trade deal, the Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP), was reached between 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the US and Japan as the key players. China was inten onally le out of the TPP agreement. This paper focuses on the constantly changing nature of compe on between the US and China in the Asia‐Pa...