scholarly journals Global Maritime Fulcrum: Indonesia’s Middle Power Strategy Between Belt And Road Initiatives (BRI) and Free-Open Indo Pacific (FOIP)

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-54
Author(s):  
Fadhila Inas Pratiwi ◽  
Irfa Puspitasari ◽  
Indah Hikmawati ◽  
Harvian Bagus

The purpose of this article is to correlate Indonesia’s global maritime fulcrum (GMF) as Indonesia’s middle power strategy to its responseto the two geopolitical strategies of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China and the Free andOpen Indo-Pacific (FOIP) of the Quad (the United States, India, Japan and Australia). This article used the process-tracing method to examine the information sourced from journal articles, news media outlets, government press releases and other resources. The article unfolds in four sections. The first explains the background of why the global maritime fulcrum was chosen as Indonesia’s middle power strategy response tothe BRI and FOIP. The second explains how Indonesia usesthe GMF as its middle power strategy. The third part explores how the middle power strategy through the GMF policy responds tothe BRI. The last part elaborates on Indonesia’s strategy when responding to the FOIP. It concludes that it is prevalent that Indonesia usesthe GMF as its middle power strategy when responding to the BRI and FOIP.

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 374-378
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Erie

The Indo-Pacific, given its economic and geopolitical significance as exemplified by the growing multilateralism in the region, is an incubatory space for innovative legal infrastructure. Against the backdrop of growing tension between the United States and China in the region, I emphasize China's expanding footprint through the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) and its capacity to shape institutions, practices, and norms of international economic law. I begin by providing context and then suggest six ways in which the BRI may offer a novel approach to international economic law, with particular salience for the Indo-Pacific region.


Napredak ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Žarko Obradović

The Chinese state has existed for more than five thousand years and in the history of human society it has always presented its own specific civilizational attainment, which exerted a considerable influence on the Asian region. In the years since its creation on October 1, 1949, and especially in the last decade, New China has stepped out beyond the region of Asia onto the global scene. With its economic power and international development projects (amongst which the Belt and Road projects stands out), China has become a leader of development and the promoter of the idea of international cooperation in the interests of peace and security in the world and the protection of the future of mankind. This paper will attempt to delineate the elements of the development of the People's Republic of China in the 21st century, placing a special focus on the realization of the Belt and Road initiative and the results of the struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic, all of which have made China an essential factor in the power relations between great global forces and the resultant change of attitude of the United States of America and the European Union towards China. Namely, China has always been a large country in terms of the size of its territory and population, but it is in the 21st century that the PR of China has become a strong state with the status of a global power. Such results in the organization of society and the state, the promotion of new development ideas and the achievement of set goals, would not have been possible without the Communist Party of China, as the main ideological, integrative and organizational factor within Chinese society. In its activities, the Chinese state sublimates the experiences of China's past with an understanding of the present moment in the international community and the need of Chinese citizens to improve the quality of life and to ensure stable development of the country. The United States and the European Union are taking various measures to oppose the strengthening of the People's Republic of China. These include looking after their interests and preserving their position in the international community, while simultaneously trying, if possible, to avoid jeopardizing their economic cooperation with China.


Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic

This concluding chapter explores the implications of the theory for great power politics as China continues to rise in the twenty-first century. If significant quantities of Persian Gulf oil could be realistically transported overland, away from U.S. naval interference, then the future threat to Chinese imports would remain low. Combined with a petroleum deficit that is likely to be large, Chinese coercive vulnerability could be held to a moderate level. Moderate coercive vulnerability should induce China to pursue indirect control as it emerges as a great power. Thus, the theory predicts that China is likely to eventually forge alliances with major oil-producing countries and transit states to keep oil in “friendly hands.” As yet, China is too militarily weak to shield friendly oil-producing states from interference by the United States or other potential rivals, but the beginnings of an alliance-based strategy appear to be taking shape under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), described by some analysts as a nascent framework for twenty-first-century Chinese grand strategy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7433
Author(s):  
Danny Chi Kuen Ho ◽  
Eve Man Hin Chan ◽  
Tsz Leung Yip ◽  
Chi-Wing Tsang

In 2013, China announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to promote the connectivity of Asia, Europe, and Africa and deepen mutually beneficial economic cooperation among member countries. Past studies have reported a positive impact of the BRI on trade between China and its partner countries along the Belt and Road (B&R). However, less is known about its effect on the sectoral trade between the B&R countries and countries that show little support of the BRI. To address that gap, this study examines the changing patterns of clothing imports by the United States (US) from China and 14 B&R countries in Asia. An extended gravity model with a policy variable BRI is built to explain bilateral clothing trade flow. A panel regression model and artificial neural network (ANN) are developed based on the data collected from 1998 to 2018 and applied to predict the trade pattern of 2019. The results show a positive effect of the BRI on the clothing exports of some Asian developing countries along the B&R to the US and demonstrate the superior predictive power of the ANN. More research is needed to examine the balance between economic growth and the social and environmental sustainability of developing countries and to apply more advanced machine learning algorithms to examine global trade flow under the BRI.


Author(s):  
Fei Deng

This study is a corpus-driven examination of keywords in the news texts related to China’s Belt and Road project reported by China’s English news media and America’s English news media. Keywords retrieved from corpus are often taken to be markers of “aboutness” in specialized corpus. They may be “a guide to the writer’s evaluative position.” Some of them, when explored in more detail, help to reveal evaluative attitudes. In this study, two corpora (China’s news report corpus and America’s news report corpus) are built and the computer corpus tool AntConc3.4.3 is used to generate keywords of these two corpora respectively for detailed concordance analysis in order to reveal different attitudes toward Belt and Road project held by these two countries’ news media. The findings demonstrate that China’s news reports emphasize mutual benefit and reciprocity among the parties involved; while America’s news reports emphasize America’s worry about China’s development because they claim that China poses a threat to America’s national status and interests. This study can help readers understand different news media’ attitudes toward the Belt and Road project and help them think in a critical way while they read news reports of the same topic produced by different news media.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Tom Harper

Abstract The Belt and Road Initiative alongside the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are the latest phase of China’s return to the Eurasian landmass after the collapse of the Soviet Union. China has reshaped Eurasia in several ways, which includes the common definition of this concept, which had largely been perceived as a chiefly Russian entity. This is rooted in Halford Mackinder’s The Geographical Pivot of History, which depicted the Eurasian landmass as a threat to Britain’s maritime hegemony with the advent of rail. While the traditional focus had been on Eurasia as the Russian empire, Mackinder also alluded to a Eurasian empire created by ‘Chinese organised by Japanese’ as a result of the latter’s development during the Meiji Restoration. While this did not come to pass, it has become an imperative to consider the notion of an Asian power in Eurasia due to China’s rise. The purpose of this paper is to argue that China is as much a Eurasian power in the vein of Mackinder’s theories as Russia is, with the BRI providing a potential opportunity to further integrate with Eurasia. In addition, the initiative is also symbolic of China’s bid to create an alternative order both in Eurasia and the wider world as part of its global role to challenge the dominance of the United States, which raises the spectre of Mackinder’s warning over a challenger emerging from the Eurasian Heartland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Garlick ◽  
Radka Havlová

Drawing on the literature on strategic hedging and adapting it to China’s use of economic diplomacy in the service of comprehensive national security goals within the regionalised foreign policy approach of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we examine China’s approach to securing and expanding its interests in the Persian Gulf. To implement the trade and infrastructure connectivity goals of the BRI and to secure the continued flow of diversified energy supplies, China needs to boost relations with both regional powerhouses, Iran and Saudi Arabia, without alienating either of them or the regional hegemon, the United States. The resulting strategy of strategic hedging is based in the Chinese approach to economic diplomacy, which utilises Chinese commercial actors in the service of national strategic objectives. Relations require careful and ongoing management if China is to achieve outcomes which benefit all sides while avoiding becoming entangled in the region’s intractable geopolitical problems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 381-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Young

Responses to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been mixed. Many commentators have welcomed the opportunity for infrastructure development and projects to build economic, political and social connectivity across the region. Others have been openly critical or slow to formulate a clear position. In general, advanced economies have responded less positively than developing economies. This paper employs a constructivist approach to interpret responses to the BRI in advanced economies through analysis of commentary in the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It identifies a diversity of responses within and among these economies and a strong ideational coherence in the frameworks used to assess the BRI. It is concluded that the reception of Chinese-promoted concepts in international affairs, like the BRI, remains challenging due to the dominance of liberal and realist assessments and the accompanying political values. This suggests a need for greater intellectual engagement and more substantial feedback between China and the advanced economies, so as to open the way for a long overdue regional conversation on how development is conceptualized and co-created in a region with diverse approaches to regional economic policy.


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