A Shaky “Wedge”: An Analysis of India’s Strategic Behavior under the US “Indo-Pacific” Strategy

America’s Indo-Pacific strategy is essentially a combination of its Asia-Pacific and Indian strategies: through the consolidation of its strategic alliances, it can deepen its relations with Asia-Pacific allies, and through its “wedging strategy” it can pull India into its orbit to become a strategic “fulcrum” bridging the region. India was both a key member and leader of the non-aligned movement, while also previously forming a “quasi-alliance” with the Soviet Union. At present, it has responded to the US Indo-Pacific strategy with cautious initiative. From the vantage point of a state targeted vis-à-vis a wedging strategy, India’s strategic behavior is shaped by the strategic environment, its primary strategic objectives, and the relations between allies within the context of a unique strategic environment. This paper identifies two types of strategic environments: the general strategic environment and the specialized strategic environment; it further identifies primary strategic objectives as economic development, sovereign integrity and independence, national security and great state status (especially with respect to that of regional or global major powers); meanwhile, the alliance relationship is defined according to the extent to which there are divisions across state interests and the capacity of states to act autonomously vis-à-vis the alliance. Through an analysis of India’s diplomatic experiences, this paper argues that against the backdrop of America’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy and a lose general strategic environment, the primary strategic objective of achieving major state status and a “large divide over interests and a major space for autonomous action” shape India’s cautious initiative with respect to its alliance relationships.

China’s Policy Responses to the Economic Impact of CPTPP and their Effectiveness

The paper uses 2018 data to construct a numerical general equilibrium model containing 26 economies, and adds global value chain and added-value trade into the structure, and systematically simulates the economic effects of China’s response to three scenarios of nine categories of CPTPP policy selection. In line with the simulation results, under the four scenarios in which China takes unilateral measures to deal with the impact of CPTPP, the policy effectiveness from high to low separately includes: the construction of China–Japan–Korea free-trade agreement, the entry into force of RCEP and the further opening-up. In the two scenarios in which China joins the CPTPP, the effect of joining the agreement with the first batch of expansion countries is better, while the effect of joining the CPTPP later is slightly worse. After the United States returned to CPTPP, China chose three scenarios in which the economic effects, from high to low, were to optimize the business environment, take no measures and join CPTPP with the United States. Among the three different options, the economic benefit of China’s active choice to join CPTPP is the best. Second is the effect of China’s unilateral measures on CPTPP. However, once the United States returns to CPTPP, it will bring adverse impact on China. The effective measure to deal with it is to optimize the business environment to reduce the cost of the trade.

From “Asia Pacific” to “Indo Pacific”: The Adjustment of American Asia Pacific Strategy from the Perspective of Critical Geopolitics

After taking office, the Trump administration has shifted the U.S. strategy in the Asia Pacific region from “Asia Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific”. This paper attempts to start with critical geopolitics, compare the “Asia Pacific” strategy of the United States with the “Indo-Pacific” strategy, and investigate the changes and dynamics of the geopolitical imagination of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. Through the investigation, it can be found that the strategic transformation from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” reflects the transformation of the U.S. strategy towards China from “L-shaped defense” to “half-mouth encirclement”, as well as the Trump government’s attempt to rebuild the U.S. hegemony in various fields through all-round competition, reshape its identity and confidence as a great power by changing its self-identity and consolidating and expanding the alliance of Western style liberal democratic countries by looking for strategic fulcrum to reconstruct the strategic demands of the key geopolitical space. After Biden’s administration took office, it has inherited and strengthened the Trump administration’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy, which means that the strategic game between the United States and China in the “Indo-Pacific” region and even the global stage will continue for a long time. In order to safeguard China’s national interests and effectively respond to the “Indo-Pacific” strategy, China should enhance its influence and maintain the mentality as a great power, adopt social creation strategies to seek identity and recognition, and make plans based on the “Belt and Road Initiative”, “Polar Silk Road”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and other initiatives; if pushed forward smoothly, it will effectively crack down on the U.S.’s attempt to contain China through the “Indo-Pacific” strategy.

Eight New Challenges Faced by Global Economy

Due to COVID-19, the world has experienced the most severe economic recession since the Second World War. Some "unconventional" monetary policies have been enforced in order to stimulate the economy, and their effectiveness is positively regarded by the IMF. However, this paper identifies two negative effects of these measures. Firstly, they exacerbate policy instability; secondly, they will be detrimental to the fundamentals of monetary policies in the long term. In addition, the world economy is also confronted with many challenges, including global inflation expectations, the trends of dollar as a currency, restructuring of global supply chain, volatility of asset prices and commodity prices, and global and regional governance.

Geopolitical Thinking behind the US Policy-Making toward China and the Diplomatic Choice of Japan

The roots of US policy toward China are laid in the geopolitical thinking mode of its strategic culture. This mode of thinking first originated in Britain and later evolved into geopolitics. Bearing such thoughts, the United States sees China as a country at the southeastern rim of the Eurasian continent, and the rise of China is a threat to its dominance as a maritime state in the Eurasian continent. No matter the rotation of governing parties in the United States, containing the development of China is not merely an expedient for electoral politics but an inevitable choice for maritime states to contain continental states and an objectively necessary national security strategy aimed at retaining the global hegemony of the United States. As China further develops, such intention will become more and more apparent. In order to achieve the goal of slowing down China’s development pace and maintaining US’s political dominance over Eurasia, it seems that the United States has to build a maritime alliance system. The alliance between Japan and the United States will be further strengthened since Japan is a strategic pivot of this system. However, Japan’s perception of interests and strategic thinking are not fully aligned with those of the United States, and as a result, Japan will choose strategies with a certain degree of autonomy, thus eventually limiting the implementation of US’s geopolitical strategies. From the viewpoints of power transfer, geopolitics and ideology for the confrontation between maritime and continental states, this paper focuses on the limitations of the geopolitical thinking behind US’s policy-making toward China and the relatively autonomous strategy of Japan to analyze the status quo and underlying trends of China–US–Japan relations.

ASEAN’s Cognition of China–US Gaming and Its Role in Regional Cooperation

China–US relations will stagnate in a strategic game for some time to come and even for a long historical period. ASEAN will find itself confronted with a new problem and a new challenge as it has to navigate through this situation and cope with inter-state relations and international affairs under this context. As the largest neighbor of China and a main partner to the US in Asia, ASEAN insists on “not choosing any side” and sticks to the “balance of power”. The intensified China–US game has some potential impact on China-ASEAN relations. Securing the centrality of ASEAN in regional cooperation not only helps maintain lasting peace, stability and prosperity in Southeast Asia, but also is in line with the long-term strategic interests of China and the US in the region. China will continue to support the centrality of ASEAN in regional cooperation, promote deep integration of the “Belt and Road” initiative with different institutional arrangements that ASEAN makes for regional integration, and give positive considerations to building production bases in Southeast Asia to improve its global industrial chain.

High-Quality Development and Institutionalization of the BRI

After the BRI enters a new stage, high-quality development is becoming its main goal, but there is no consensus among Chinese academic circles on how to achieve high-quality development. Based on the assumption that the BRI is a development-oriented regional economic cooperation mechanism, the author proposes that the connotation of its high-quality development lies in sustainability, and the path to achieve sustainability lies in its institutionalization. The development orientation of the BRI determines that it does not set rules as a threshold during its initial stage, thus providing opportunities for developing countries to participate in international economic cooperation. However, this does not mean that the BRI does not need rules and institutionalization. Institutionalization is an endogenous requirement for deepening the BRI cooperation, an inevitable choice for addressing exogenous challenges, and a prerequisite for docking with the existing global governance system. It should be pointed that the institutionalization cannot duplicate the existing institutionalization model of regional integration, but needs to follow the principles of mutual consultation, gradualism and the Viewpoint of Righteousness and Benefit. Therefore, high-quality development of the BRI requires the establishment of a sustainable cooperation system, a benefit distribution system and a support system.

The Recent and Predictable Future: The U.S. Posture Toward China During and After the Presidential Election Campaign

Due to the serious perverse actions of the Trump administration in the fields of strategic rivalry, political/ideological confrontation, diplomatic exchanges and trade war between China and the United States as well as in that of global governance, Biden’s new administration is bound to make revisions somewhat and somehow. However, the current posture of the United States toward China is not only strong and enduring international structural dynamics in many aspects, but also multilateral strong and enduring domestic political and social ones. Therefore, its revision is to be necessarily quite partial and limited, and the confrontation and competition with China in some other areas will probably intensify. To a large extent, the trend of China–US relations after the US election could be influenced or even shaped by China, so China’s strategy and policy and appropriate adjustment are of great importance. China needs to take the initiative to avoid military conflicts with the United States, treating it as the essential highest common interest and the vital “common denominator” and to strive for a sort of pragmatic, focused and concrete dialogue or negotiation with the Biden administration as soon as possible after it took office.

China’s Vision of International Society and its Construction through Incentive Mechanisms: A Community with a Shared Future for Mankind and the Belt and Road Initiative

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), substantive progress has been achieved through the joint efforts made between China and the collaborative parties, attracting great attention from the international community. However, regarding the relationship between BRI and “a community with a shared future for mankind”, a concept proposed by President Xi Jinping later, the explanations are diversified in the academia. The diversity indicates that a common understanding of this relationship is yet to be reached, calling for a further discussion. This paper argues that “a community with a shared future for mankind” is China’s outlook for the future world facing a period of major change never seen in a century. It is China’s vision of international society but transcends the narrative of international society in the international politics studies, because in the former, each party recognizes the deep interdependence relationships (or a form of shared future) among them and between human and nature, thereby willing to negotiate and cooperate to advance the world’s economic development, deal with conflict of interests and contradictions among states/civilizations, and resolve the dissonance between human and nature. Thus, a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and sustainable world can be created and preserved. In regard to BRI, it is the platform where China constructs a community with a shared future for mankind through incentive mechanisms and applies its vision of international society.

Perception of Identity, Perception of Relationship and Strategic Interaction — An Analysis on China–Indian Border Disputes from the Perspective of Game Theories

Based on the continuous observation of the ongoing China–India border conflict in recent years, the author intends to answer why China has not yielded prospective policy returns from the Indian side, even if it has been pursuing a cooperative strategy toward India after the Doklam standoff. Inspired by several doctrines of game theory under the dynamic game scenario and the application of relevant gaming tactics, this essay argues that after the Doklam standoff, China has been consistently pursuing an India policy that is risk-averse in nature, represented by its fundamental goal of persevering stability in the secondary direction of China–India border area. As a supporter of this argumentation, a diachronic investigation in terms of the evolution of China–India Relations between 2017 and 2020 was conducted, in which both countries were presumed as state actors involving in repeated gaming process with observable actions and asymmetric information sources. The investigation covers the respective actions adopted by both China and India since the Doklam standoff in 2017, along with the strategic interactions between the two sides from 2018 to 2019, till the most recent standoff in the Galwan Valley and the standoff along the Panggong Tso in 2020. The major finding of this essay is that there exists a causal-effect relationship between the expected payment structures of both sides in a gaming process and the outcome of the implementation of a certain cooperative strategy. Besides, as opponents in a gaming process, either side’s self-cognition and its evaluation on the bilateral relations will pose critical impact on its policy-making. Therefore, in the specific case of China–India border conflict, it is highly advised that China should make practical efforts to avert cognition risks of all kinds while managing its relation with India; otherwise, negative consequences may occur due to the mismatch of its strategic goals and its policy devices.