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Chinese Expanded Perceptions of the Region and Its Changing Attitudes Toward the Indo-Pacific: a Hybrid Vision of the Institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific

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Abstract

The existing literature on the Indo-Pacific has largely focused on how and why the USA, Japan, Australia, India, and Indonesia have promoted the strategic concept of the Indo-Pacific, and how China has rejected it in the domain of maritime security. What has been overlooked, however, are dramatically expanded Chinese perceptions of the region and changing and complex Chinese attitudes and responses toward the Indo-Pacific. This essay aims to fill this gap by demonstrating how China has coopted certain components of the Indo-Pacific in its geoeconomic hegemonic project. This can be partially explained by unfolding and expanding Chinese perceptions of the region, characterized by geoeconomics and maritime/continental hybridity. This paper brings a missing perspective to the debate by highlighting China’s evolving, complex, and multifaceted approaches regarding the Indo-Pacific. It also offers a conceptual tool of a hybrid vision of the institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific for the enterprise of regional cooperation.

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Notes

  1. In contrast, India’s idea of the Indo-Pacific region “has tended to focus more on the narrower zone of the East Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific Ocean” [29].

  2. There are also examples of this in Europe. For instance, while Denmark, Sweden and Finland are members of both the EU and the Nordic Council, Iceland and Norway are members of the Nordic Council but not the EU.

  3. However, some states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, for example Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have managed to become members of the EU without the same reaction from Russia as has happened with Ukraine. Georgia has had a similar issue as Ukraine and is now split with some sections being under Russian authority but remaining legally part of Georgia.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like thank Professors Chengxin Pan, Mark Beeson and Kai He for their constructive comments and suggestions; Matt Hood and Tom Barber for their research assistance, and the participants for their critical questions on my keynote speech at PHISO International Conference, March 22–24, 2018, Davao City, Philippines.

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  1. Deakin University, Burwood Campus, Melbourne, Australia

    Baogang He

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He, B. Chinese Expanded Perceptions of the Region and Its Changing Attitudes Toward the Indo-Pacific: a Hybrid Vision of the Institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific. East Asia 35, 117–132 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-018-9291-8

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