Special contributor：Dennis Rumley, Emeritus Professor, Curtin University

The Indo-Pacific concept has little if any relevance in the conduct of current or future Chinese foreign policy. There is barely a mention of the term on the Xinhua website. Indeed, at an annual media Conference in Beijing in 2018 the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, reportedly ‘mocked’ the US-Australia preference for describing the Asia-Pacific region as the ‘IndoPacific’ as an example of “attention-grabbing”.

While there exists a diversity of views among Chinese academics, many believe that the IndoPacific strategy is a direct descendant and expansion of Obama’s ‘rebalance’ and is being usedas a US hedge against China’s possible future behavior. There is also a majority view that it isa “confrontational strategy” adopted by the US and its allies in order to contain China’s rise.

However, there is considerable uncertainty over its potential effectiveness.

Western commentators, on the other hand, who possess a strong adherence to the IndoPacific concept, generally have a firm view of continued regional United States predominance.

Geoff Raby, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has referred to the Indo-Pacific concept as “Orwellian” and as a “meaningless” geopolitical construct. The views of both Wang Yi and Geoff Raby have been criticised by Australian security analyst, Rory Medcalf, as being a “willful misreading” of the concept  since “key powers are fundamentally realigning” against China in the region. Rather, we are exhorted once again that the Indo-Pacific is “an objective description of the maritime region in which China is rising”.

According to Wikipedia:
“Orwellian” denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the “unperson” - a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practised by modern repressive governments.

In Raby’s view, perhaps the “unperson” is the “Asia-Pacific”? There is no such thing as an “objective” region since all regions are constructions and are designed for particular functions. To the coalition of analysts who continue to cling to the concept, as well as to its‘objective’ representation and its obvious security policy function, Indo-Pacific appears to possess a kind of ‘sacrosanct’ quality, which, especially when it relates to China, is never to be questioned.

China-US Regional Relations

It has been argued by some Western commentators that the nature of China-US rivalry is worsening due to a combination of a US insistence on primacy in Asia and a Chinese unwillingness to accept this position. Clearly, on the part of the West, there is a divergence of opinion on how to react to and/or ‘manage’ China’s rise, ranging on a spectrum of ‘containment’ to ‘accommodation’. On the one hand, it has been suggested that, in the United States too often the public debate centres on issues of dominance, leadership and primacy. Furthermore, some US scholars have argued that: “A wealthy China would not be a status quo power but an aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony”. After a lengthy and somewhat compelling discussion of the ways in which the structure of the international system causes great powers to compete for as much power as they can obtain in order to assure their survival, Mearsheimer concludes that future United States foreign policy should be devoted to “do what it can to slow the rise of China” – in short, the US should adopt a firm containment policy. Indeed, many authorities have argued that the reemergence of the Indo-Pacific concept is primarily due to a collective strategy led by the United States that seeks to inhibit China’s rise to pre-eminence. China, in turn, seeks to react to what it perceives to be a threatening curtailment by aiming to bolster its near borders and its perceived sphere of influence.

Kaplan poses the question and provides some answers as to how the inevitable creation of a Greater China can be contained by the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies:

How does the US protect its allies, limit the borders of Greater China, and at the same time avoid a conflict with China?

This is achieved, he suggests, by creating a ‘concert of forces’ among allies such as India,Japan,Singapore and South Korea, by regarding the US bases on Japan as South Korea as“guard towers”, and by strengthening US air and naval presence in Oceania. In short:

The US, as the regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere, will seek to prevent China from
becoming the regional hegemon over much of the Eastern Hemisphere.

It has been suggested in the West that there exists a “disturbing perception gap” between China’s Ind-Pacific intentions and the view from other regional states and the United States resulting in growing regional mistrust and instability. In order to create a “collective front”and thus to perpetuate US regional military dominance it has been argued that there is a need to establish an “Archipelagic Defense” (AD) system along the first island chain to create a “nogo” zone for the US military. This would be the “first step in counterbalancing China’s revisionist ambitions” and it would seem that both Australia and Singapore are “inclined to provide basing and logistical support” for this strategy.

As has been argued, however, this view is an example of “zero-sum thinking” that polarises the region and undermines the goals of peace and prosperity since China now has “outgrown subordinate status”. China therefore wishes to attempt to reduce its vulnerability to potential US threats and is motivated by uncertainty and insecurity rather than “a grand strategic vision of Chinese predominance”. Attempts to sustain US regional predominance cannot therefore be justified, are not necessary, will cause instability and will be difficult and expensive. Rather, the principal policy aim should be to develop a win-win scenario in which a transition can be made from US predominance to a more stable and equitable regional balance of power.
Clearly, such a shift is likely to take some time. However, the US and its allies need to understand the real underlying problem – that China is now unwilling to continue to accept a subordinate military position along its maritime periphery. This Chinese view “should be met with understanding rather than defensive aggressiveness”. Strategies aimed at managing the competitive process, deriving from US accommodation, and built around collaboration and cooperation with China on key regional and global issues of common concern are necessary in order to maximize regional stability. Policy elites in both states need to come to the realisation that neither China nor the United States can be a single dominant power and that Indo-Pacific regional peace and security can only be maximized by concerted cooperative attempts to maintain a balance of power.