Represented by China and India, the economic power of emerging economies in Asia has risen rapidly, so that the vast area from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean presents a clear upward trend in geopolitico-economics (地缘政治经济). This has been accompanied by the emergence of the “Indo-Pacific” concept, and the “Indo-Pacific” region has thus become an emerging geopolitical region that is the subject of intense debates in international politics academic circles. Some countries in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the United States and Europe have launched successive Indo-Pacific strategies, which not only reflects the keen interest of the international community in the Indo-Pacific region, but also shows that the development of the Indo-Pacific region certainly has significant international political, economic, and security implications. In the words of an Australian scholar, “the traditional Asia-Pacific era has come to an end, and the world has entered the Indo-Pacific era.” ¹ However, as “Indo-Pacific” is a relatively new geopolitical construction in international politics, the reason why it was able to quickly enter the strategic agenda of major countries around the world is the fact that, to a large extent, it embodies the geopolitical intentions and practices of the United States and reflects the fierce strategic competition and confrontation of the United States with China. It is precisely the negative impact of this confrontational strategic agenda that initially led to the formation of the “Indo-Pacific” concept and faced the so-called “Indo-Pacific” region with the basic need to establish a peaceful and stable regional order. Without a peaceful and stable regional order, a shadow will inevitably be cast over the development prospects of this region. Therefore, this has given discussions of the issue of security and order in the “Indo-Pacific” region a particular urgency.

I. Theoretical Path of Research on the Regional Security Order

There are different opinions concerning research on the regional security order. These mainly include the ideas of “porous regional orders” proposed by Peter Kazanstein, the “regional security complexes (RSCs)” proposed by Barry Buzan, and the “regional security communities” explained by Amitav Acharya using ASEAN as an example. The “porous regional order” described by Kazanstein refers to the regional order in Europe and Asia established under the influence of the “imperial power” of the United States and led by regional central countries. ² Obviously, from a realist perspective, a regional order is defined as a political and economic process associated with great power relations or hegemony. This sort of power politics path must be strongly rejected in the construction of the security order in the Indo-Pacific region because the current U.S. thinking on strategic competition with China has put the region in a predicament of extreme insecurity. Acharya’s “regional security community” is established based on the most fundamental, consistent, and long-term convergence of interests among actors in order to avoid war. This is what Karl Deutsch calls a “non-war community.” ³ Obviously, this is not in line with the reality of the construction of the Indo-Pacific regional security order. After all, the Indo-Pacific regional security order is far from reaching the point where all countries in the region jointly renounce armed confrontation. Buzan’s theory of RSCs holds up the regional level as the appropriate level for conducting many applied security analyses. It aims to provide a simplified analytical framework for predicting and interpreting developments within a region. An RSC refers to such a regional level—countries or other units are closely linked to each other to the extent that their security cannot be considered separately from each other. Geographical boundaries, anarchic structures, polarities (material structures), and friendly-hostile patterns (social structures) are the four major variables that define the structure of RSCs. ⁴ An RSC is a relatively distinguishable, operable, inclusive, and abstract concept. It provides, in the words of Buzan and Ole Wæver, “a framework that is sufficiently open and abstract that it allows for far-reaching differentiation to develop among regions, while maintaining a general set of categories with which to describe this.” ⁵ This is what makes it a convenient analytical framework that we can use to analyze the security order in the Indo-Pacific region. Interestingly, in a 2003 work in which Buzan and Wæver proposed the RSC theory, they also proposed an “Asian supercomplex” encompassing East Asia, South Asia, and Australia. This was a sort of anticipation of today’s “Indo-Pacific” geopolitical region. ⁶

The RSC theory provides an analytical framework and predicts the emergence of an Asian supercomplex similar to the Indo-Pacific geographic concept. However, how the internal material power relations of such an Asian supercomplex will evolve and how its social relations will develop are our real concerns. The RSC theory provides an open analytical framework and, in a general sense, focuses on the possibility of developing a “regional security continuum” in a general sense. This means that, as the internal structure of a security complex changes, its social structure can evolve from a conflict format to a security community through security mechanisms. ⁷ However, out of a certain Western-centrism, the ideological bias of the so-called “democratic peace theory,” an infatuation with U.S. hegemony, and a suspicion and fear of different civilizations and the rise of China, Buzan and Wæver negatively hold that the potential social structures of the Asian supercomplex can be reduced to an extremely narrow range, saying “The East Asian RSC seems almost certain to end up either towards the milder end of the conflict formation scenario or somewhere near the weak end of the regional security regime.” They see China as a “belligerent” and the United States as a proponent of the balance of power that is reluctant to get involved in Asia. ⁸ In fact, the current geopolitical confrontation in the Indo-Pacific region stems from the realist power politics manipulation by the United States in this region as foreseen or hoped for by Buzan and Wæver. The ideological biases of the authors and their fascination with U.S. hegemony obviously limit the theory’s explanatory power for the current Indo-Pacific regional security order—after all, the United States, a force from outside the region, cannot function as an endogenous driving force for regional security construction. For this reason, the United States cannot provide a benign and rational solution to solve the dilemmas of this RSC.

However, the pursuit of a path out of the security confrontation predicament is the primary concern of scholars of this region in their research on the regional order, and it is also the theoretical and practical aim of this paper. As the Chinese scholar Zheng Xianwu said, if the East Asia region does not want to carry on the growth and spread of hostility and other factors of insecurity that lead to turbulent situations such as crises and conflicts, there is only one choice. This is to create a stable and lasting regional security order by actively developing security regionalism (安全区域主义) on the basis of existing security regionalization (安全区域化). ⁹ In view of the fact that, in the current Indo-Pacific region, it is difficult to say that there is some dominant concept of security regionalism with the objective of a friendly regional security order. Moreover, taking a long view, the Indo-Pacific region has no clear prospect of developing a regional security mechanism, to say nothing of the possibility of forming some kind of Indo-Pacific regional security community. Based on this situation, this paper invokes another more fundamental concept—regionness (地区性), to provide the possibility of theoretical discussion about the construction of a security order in the Indo-Pacific region. The concept of “regionness” was proposed by Swedish scholars Björn Hettne and Fredrik Söderbaum and others, and Chinese scholars Pang Zhongying discussed the issue of regionness construction in East Asia from the three dimensions of politics, economy, and culture. Qin Yaqing, Geng Xiefeng, Zheng Xianwu, and others have also given theoretical explanations of Asian regionness issues such as the East Asian model, Asian concepts, and Asian methods. ¹⁰

Regionness is a concept or idea used to express the degree and level of regionalization development and emphasizes the constructedness of regions. It emphasizes that regions are always in the process of construction, and the enhancement of regionness promotes an increased level of regionalization, which indicates better chances for success in the process of regional construction. The weakening of regionness leads to a decline in the level of regionalization, which means that the process of regional construction has failed or is moving towards failure. Thus, regionness connotes a gradual and dynamic construction process. ¹¹ It can be said that regionness, used at a lower level, can provide a conceptual basis for discussing the construction of a security order in the Indo-Pacific region. Moreover, it is not necessary to cover all the following aspects and follow some kind of gradual historical process and cognitive process: Geographically, regionness embodies a geopolitico-economic space with specific distinguishable geographic boundaries; economically, regionness is the source of common markets, capital (financial), and knowledge (conceptual) for the countries concerned; culturally, regionness embodies the harmonious coexistence of multiple cultures; politically, regionness embodies a certain collective political will and political commitment to jointly build a regional order. ¹²

As a region whose security relations can be discussed distinctly from other regions, because the Indo-Pacific region possesses lower-level regionness such as occupying a certain geographical space and having close regional economic ties, this provides a theoretical basis for discussing the issue of the security order in the Indo-Pacific region. Of course, we must point out that various countries currently have different views as to the geographic scope of the “Indo-Pacific” region. In the broad definition adopted by Japan, it is a broad area extending from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa. In the narrow definition adopted by the U.S. strategic community, it refers to the area of the eastern Indian Ocean extending from the east coast of the Pacific Ocean [太平洋东岸, i.e. the west coast of the Americas] to the west coast of India. These differences in the definition of the geographic scope of the Indo-Pacific conceal differences in the strategic propositions and interests of the Indo-Pacific countries. However, for a scientific discussion of the regional security order, we must proceed from a general consensus on the geographic definition. As mentioned above, from the perspective of the regional security order, the definition of the geographic space of the Indo-Pacific region must be considered from at least the following two aspects: The first is that the region must feature convenient geographical transportation, moderate distances, and close economic ties, with the material reality or potential of regionness; the second is that the region must be closely connected in a certain security relationship, be clearly distinguishable from other surrounding areas, and possess a certain uniqueness as regards regional security. Therefore, an overly broad definition of the geographic scope of the Indo-Pacific region obviously does not meet our expectations for a “region”. A relatively clear and limited geographic framework is the condition for the Indo-Pacific to be a valid “region” in international politics. In fact, if we include the complete patchwork of regions from the Pacific Ocean to the peripheries of the Indian Ocean, with their very different geopolitico-economic and security characteristics, it can never constitute a “region.” Therefore, this paper adopts a relatively narrow perspective to define the Indo-Pacific region. That is to say, in geographic terms, the vast coastal and marine areas from the Western Pacific Ocean through Asia to the Eastern Indian Ocean include several sub-regions, such as the Western Pacific, East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Oceania, and the East Indian Ocean. The southern part of the Asian continent, which consists of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, is the geopolitical center of the Indo-Pacific region. This definition largely coincides geographically with the Asian supercomplex proposed by Buzan.

II. The Evolution of U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and Its Security Order Propositions

The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategic plan originated from the late Bush administration and Obama administration and was established during the Trump administration. Since the Obama administration put forward the “Pivot to Asia” and “Rebalancing Toward Asia-Pacific” strategy, the United States began to substantively discuss how to deal with the rise of China. Its fundamental intention is to ensure U.S. maritime hegemony and its dominance over the Indo-Pacific region, guard against challenges from China, and build a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific region that relies on U.S. power and constrains China’s influence.

(i) The Obama administration conceived an Indo-Pacific strategy to create a regional security order that addresses diverse security challenges

In 2007, the United States released a new global maritime strategy report, which shifted the focus of U.S. Navy deployments from the traditional Atlantic and Pacific regions to the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. After the Obama administration took office, as the United States committed to ending the war on terror in the Middle East, Central and South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan) and other places, the emerging momentum in the Asia-Pacific region increasingly drew the attention of the United States and the world. The United States turned the focus of its strategic energy to Asia, so that Asia-Pacific became the priority direction of the attention of U.S. foreign strategy. However, while giving priority to Asia and the Western Pacific, the United States still had to take into account the security situation in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, and the northern Indian Ocean. Therefore, it was strategically necessary to create a more inclusive geospatial concept and create a power situation that could simultaneously deal with non-traditional security threats such as counter-terrorism and the needs of strategic competition among major powers. As stated in the Obama Administration’s 2010 National Security Strategy Report, “we must balance and integrate all elements of American power and update our national security capacity for the 21st century. We must maintain our military’s conventional superiority, while enhancing its capacity to defeat asymmetric threats.” ¹³ The shaping of the new strategy entails deepening cooperation with 21st-century centers of influence such as China, India, and Russia, as well as diplomatic and economic development cooperation with emerging partners from the Americas to Africa, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. ¹⁴ It can be said that the geopolitical concept of “Indian Ocean–Pacific Ocean” (“Indo-Pacific” for short) originally launched by the Abe administration in Japan is in line with the strategic needs of the United States in terms of the two priorities of the Obama administration: economy and security. On October 28, 2010, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clearly put forward the “Indo-Pacific” concept in her speech in Hawaii, illustrating the changes in the geographical significance of the new U.S. policy in Asia. ¹⁵ In January 2012, in its defense strategy guide, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century, the United States implicitly proposed a new “Indo-Pacific” strategy using the wording “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia.” ¹⁶ However, the Obama administration’s new foreign strategy design contained a massive contradiction, namely, that the United States must economically rely on emerging powers including China, but in terms of security, China is increasingly viewed as a strategic opponent. This irreconcilable contradiction eventually lead the latter view of China to dominate the former. In the process of implementing the strategy, the Obama administration was committed to attempting to turn the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP) into some kind of economic bloc that excluded China. In terms of security, they increasing strengthened alliance updates and deployments of forces aimed at resisting and suppressing China. As a result, this strategic design, which had some inclusive characteristics, increasingly became a strategic practice of comprehensive confrontation.

(ii) The Trump administration vigorously pursued the Indo-Pacific strategy, shaping a polarized regional security order with strong constraints on China

After the Trump administration came to power in 2017, it clearly viewed China as its primary strategic competitor and put forward three priorities in its National Security Strategy, political, economic, and military and security. The administration adopted a set of Indo-Pacific strategic designs with the construction of the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India quadrilateral mechanism (Quad) as the main path and an emphasis on strategic competition with China as the main direction. On January 5, 2021, the U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific declassified by the U.S. National Security Council in advance revealed the basic logic, strategic goals, and specific actions of this U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. Its basic strategic logic was actually a simple “syllogistic” reasoning: the Indo-Pacific region will become the engine of U.S., regional, and even global economic growth; U.S. security and prosperity depend on access to the Indo-Pacific; therefore loss of primacy in the Indo-Pacific will undermine the ability of the United States to achieve its global interests. According to the document, one of the top interests of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region is to “Preserve U.S. economic, diplomatic, and military access to the most populous region of the world and more than one-third of the global economy.” The document then emphasized the so-called “China threat”, claiming that “Strategic competition between the United States and China will persist, owing to the divergent nature and goals of our political and economic systems. China will circumvent international rules and norms to gain an advantage. China aims to dissolve U.S. alliances and partnerships in the region. Chinese economic, diplomatic, and military influence will continue to increase in the near-term and challenge the U.S. ability to achieve its national interests in the Indo-Pacific region.” Therefore, the United States should work to promote the so-called “liberal economic order” in the Indo-Pacific region and prevent China from establishing a “new illiberal” influence. ¹⁷

In terms of concrete practices at the politico-security level, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy seeks to strengthen U.S. security commitments to the Indo-Pacific region, strengthen the capabilities and willingness of its allies in the region, and promote U.S. security leadership in the region. In December 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, which confirmed the implementation of the Indo-Pacific strategy in the form of legislation. On June 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense released the public version of the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, which, in terms of defense, emphasized that the United States should pursue “Preparedness, Partnerships, and Promoting a Networked Region,” to implement its lasting commitments in the Indo-Pacific. Its essence is to build a regional security relationship network with the Quad mechanism of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India as the core support, anti-China as the basic concept, and the fundamental purpose of ensuring the dominant security position of the United States. On November 4, 2019, the U.S. State Department issued another report titled A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision. From the overall level of diplomacy, it emphasizes the need to strengthen and deepen partnerships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, ASEAN, and India, and even instigates the use of Taiwan to contain China. It advances a government-wide strategic approach, attempts to build a politico-security order that strengthens U.S. partnerships and jointly contains China, and creates a regionally polarized order in which China and the United States move towards comprehensive strategic competition.

At the economic level, through the implementation of the Indo-Pacific strategy, the United States wants to ensure the dominance of the free market in Asia. The Trump administration even hopes to completely block the influence of China’s economic development path and cut it off from external markets and technology sources through an anti-globalization approach, so as to ensure that the exclusive economic position of the United States is not challenged. U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy documents emphasize that China’s different political and economic systems and China’s construction of a “new, illiberal sphere of interest” in the Indo-Pacific region challenge the liberal economic order represented by the United States. China is seeking dominance in cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence and biogenetics, and its dominance in such technologies will pose a fundamental challenge to free society in the United States. In terms of specific actions, the Trump administration has formulated the so-called Strategic Framework for Resisting China’s Economic Aggression [not the actual document title, probably refers to “United States Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific”], which seeks to increase technical assistance, development assistance and humanitarian assistance to Indo-Pacific countries and constrain the influence of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative; promote domestic economic reform in India, promote energy cooperation and technical cooperation between the United States and India, diversify India’s energy sources and supplies, strengthen investment in connectivity projects between India and other countries in the region, and accelerate the development of India’s national power; block China’s industrial policies and so-called “unfair trade practices” and strive to build a so-called “consensus that China’s industrial policies and unfair trade practices harm the global trading system;” maintain the innovative superiority of U.S. industries, promote the growth of critical U.S. technologies, work with allies to prevent China from acquiring strategic capabilities, and expand scrutiny of Chinese investments; and so on in the same vein. ¹⁸ Obviously, through its national protectionist perspective, the Trump administration has raised Sino-U.S. economic competition to the level of confrontation between countries and constructed its grand strategy of “economic-political-security” integration.

(iii) The Biden administration fine-tuned the Indo-Pacific strategy, and strategic competition between China and the United States remains the core variable of the regional security order

The Trump administration’s China policy of comprehensive confrontation with China was ultimately not worth the price. The chaos in U.S. domestic and foreign policies, the sharp decline in its international status, and widespread criticism from allies and the international community, in addition to factors such as the out-of-control epidemic, were also largely related to the Trump administration’s increasing focus on pursuing a Cold War-style policy agenda with the central mission of confronting China. After the Biden administration took office in early 2021, it fine-tuned the U.S. view of the Indo-Pacific region’s politico-security order, emphasizing uniting allies and partners, intervening in an ideologically based multilateral manner, and striving to restore the United States’ advantageous position in its power competition with China. Although the methods have changed, the dominant tone of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has not changed. In his phone call with President Xi Jinping on February 10, President Biden continued to use the phrase “maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific,” calling it one of the United States’ policy priorities. ¹⁹ In March 2021, the Biden administration issued the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, which still clearly regards China as the primary strategic competitor of the United States. ²⁰ After the Anchorage strategic dialogue, a new situation emerged in the strategic competition between China and the United States. International cooperation on specific issues such as climate change needs to be promoted, and the strategic competition pattern will become a core variable affecting the regional security order for a long time to come.

Ideological values, regulatory power, and material power (primarily military power) constitute the three major power bases that the U.S. Biden administration relies on in its attempt to deal with China and dominate the regional security order “based on confidence and power status.” The Biden administration has placed great emphasis on addressing Chinese and Russian challenges by strengthening the unity of “democratic” countries and bringing ideological values to bear. Rule shaping includes international economic rules, trade rules, legal rules, and environmental standards. It is an important means for the United States to focus on regulating China. A strong forward military deployment and presence is still the fundamental support of the U.S. government’s foreign policy. The Biden administration will even take a broader geopolitical or global perspective to deal with the Sino-U.S. strategic competition centered on the Indo-Pacific region. By strengthening the multilateralism of broader alliances and pursuing a certain “carrot and stick” negotiating strategy with China, they seek to build a security order in the Indo-Pacific region that is supported by the U.S. military’s powerful position, aimed at regulating and transforming adversaries, and realizes the United States’ own economic gains and politico-security interests.

III. Regional Security Order Disputes Driven by U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy

The structural shift of the global economic center of gravity and geopolitical center to the Indo-Pacific region has become an important geopolitico-economic trend. The United States actively carries out Indo-Pacific geostrategic planning and implements strategic operations with political, economic, and military initiatives. It intends to firmly seize the huge opportunities brought by the economic and political development of the Indo-Pacific region and ensure the regional and world leadership of the United States. However, the quiet change in the balance of power between China and the United States makes it increasingly difficult for the United States to constrain China in services to its own regional influence and status. Due to the constraints of its own resources, the United States increasingly needs to rely on its allies for support and seek the cooperation of allies to advance its Indo-Pacific strategy. The practices of the Indo-Pacific strategy by the past three U.S. presidents are no exception. Mobilizing the enthusiasm of allies may allow the United States to concentrate relatively more resources in the near future. However, as the United States increasingly lacks effective strategic control mechanisms, this will inevitably stimulate the strategic independence and agency of countries in the Indo-Pacific region and will also induce more countries outside the region to increase their strategic attention and investment in the Indo-Pacific region. This will result in more complex changes in the regional power balance structure.

(i) The effect of strategic agency of countries in the region

The strategic agency of countries in the Indo-Pacific region is illustrated in the competition among countries to propose their own Indo-Pacific strategic ideas. Japan took the lead in promoting “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond,” launched the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategic concept, and advocated for the “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.” In its Defence White Paper 2013, Australia officially defined the region where it is located as the “Indo-Pacific”. The Defence White Paper 2017 more clearly defined the geographic scope of “Indo-Pacific” and discussed Australia’s commitment to a secure, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific at length. India emphasizes building a strategic vision “rooted in the Indian Ocean and facing the Indo-Pacific” and is actively enhancing its visibility and voice in Indo-Pacific security affairs. Prime Minister Modi systematically explained India’s “Indo-Pacific Vision” at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2018, emphasizing the inclusiveness and openness of the Indo-Pacific and the central role of ASEAN.

Second, various countries have successively put forward aggressive grand strategies in service of their own ambitions of national prosperity. Under the banner of “Proactive Pacifism,” Japan seeks to normalize “national defense” and strengthen its independent defense capabilities. At the same time, with the parallel situations of “fulcrum construction” and “perimeter layout”, Japan is committed to using the core structure composed of Japan, the United States, India, and Australia (its “Democratic Security Diamond” concept) as the “fulcrum” and using a kind of grand strategic structure that connects key countries along the route from Southeast Asia, Oceania, South Asia, and the Middle East to Africa (its “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity” concept) as the “perimeter”. ²¹ By acting as the global “deputy sheriff” of the United States, Australia is striving to improve its international status and strengthen its own capacity building. Important documents such as the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and 2020 Force Structure Plan declared that Australia must be able to “respond with credible military force, when required.” ²² India emphasizes building a “strong and inclusive new India” to make India a major global political, economic, and military power. It is committed to developing its own defense capabilities, vigorously upgrading its equipment, and further promoting the implementation of its Act East policy. South Korea proposed a new southward-oriented policy to vigorously strengthen relations with ASEAN countries and India. Countries in the region all show a relatively common tendency toward strategic agency. They have invested heavily in building up their respective militaries and actively pursue strategic agendas to enhance their own strength and influence.

Third, various formal and informal politico-security mechanisms have been formed in the region. Countries such as Japan, Australia, and India, in addition to establishing various bilateral mechanisms with the United States, such as “2+2” talks, logistics and material exchange agreements, joint exercises and training, and joint situational awareness, are also actively expanding bilateral mechanisms to trilateral or even quadrilateral and “quadlateral+”, forming various exclusive small multilateral security mechanisms. Small multilateral mechanisms with the U.S.-Japan relationship a the core and adopting the “U.S.-Japan+” model have been widely constructed, and the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India quadrilateral mechanism has been continuously promoted. Japan, Australia, India, and other countries are trying to promote strategies of alliances between middle powers to a certain extent, and they have formed a number of “quasi-alliance” agreements and mechanisms with each other.

Fourth, strategic agency is manifested in high-profile shows of strength by various countries in regional hotspot issues related to China, but their attitudes towards China are not consistent. Australia has intervened in South China Sea disputes in a high-profile manner and has continuously made statements that are not favorable to China. During the pandemic, it also tried to cooperate with some Western to carry out so-called pandemic diplomacy, using this as an opportunity to highlight Australia’s international status. Japan is actively wooing Southeast Asian countries, opportunistically hypes disputes in the South China Sea, and aggravates incidents related to the Diaoyu Islands issue with the support of the United States. Through the Quad mechanism of India, the United States, Japan, and Australia and other mechanisms, India has frequently voiced its opinion and participated in regional hotspot affairs, strengthening its participation and intervention in affairs in Southeast Asia, East Asia, the South China Sea, and Western Pacific. However, the various countries differ in their attitudes towards China. India clearly emphasizes the inclusiveness of its Indo-Pacific Vision and demonstrates its strategic independence, while Australia firmly stands by the United States. Since 2017, Japan improved its relations with China and pursued a line of coordination with China for a time, but in 2020, after the new administration of Yoshihide Suga came to power, it has once again strengthened relations with the United States. The complex autonomous strategies and policies of the above countries obviously add to the complexity of demands for a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific.

(ii) Shows of power and presence by outside countries in the Indo-Pacific

The strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific region has attracted the involvement of many European countries from outside the region. European countries have always been highly sensitive to changes in international political power and they worry that changes in the power structure of the Indo-Pacific region will affect the interests of European countries. They have formed close economic and political ties with the Indo-Pacific region and are deeply afraid of missing out on the opportunities brought by the economic development of the Indo-Pacific region. In particular, France, the U.K., and Germany have proposed and outlined Indo-Pacific strategies, hoping to participate deeply in Indo-Pacific affairs. The European Union (EU) first proposed the concept of the Indo-Pacific as early as in its new security strategy released in June 2016, stating that it would expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the world and actively adopt policy proposals to this end. In September 2018, the EU formulated its “Connectivity Strategy,” proposing a sustainable, comprehensive, and rules-based approach to connectivity and committing to strengthening the connectivity between Europe and Asia by building transport, energy, digital, and people connectivity, building international partnerships for sustainable connectivity based on bilateral, regional, and international cooperation, and making more and better investments in sustainable connectivity. ²³

France is striving to create an Indo-Pacific strategy of “Indo-Pacificization.” With its overseas territories spread across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, France claims to be an Indo-Pacific state and strives to maintain its capabilities and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. In May 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron stated France’s Indo-Pacific strategic ambitions in his speech in Australia, stating the intent to strengthen France’s Indo-Pacific influence to support its economic and political activities. In May 2019, the French Ministry of Defense released the “French Indo-Pacific Defense Strategy”, which analyzed the basic security landscape of Sino-U.S. competition in the Indo-Pacific region, emphasized that France has broad security interests in the Indo-Pacific region, including sovereign territorial security, national security, exclusive economic zone security, and strategic supply security, and proposed to ensure France’s sovereign interests in the region, promote the regional security environment through military and security cooperation, and help maintain strategic stability and balance. ²⁴ In August 2019, the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs released For an Inclusive Indo-Pacific: France’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. From the overall diplomatic level, this paper expounds the strategic thinking that France should use its soft power as a mediating, inclusive, and stable country in the Indo-Pacific region. The document proposes four pillars for France’s Indo-Pacific strategy: First, enhance France’s role in regional crisis resolution; second, strengthen regional partnerships with major middle power such as Australia, India, Indonesia, and Japan, while deepening cooperation with China; third, deepen cooperation with regional organizations; and fourth, firmly promote the improvement of global public goods such as climate, environment, biodiversity, health, education, digital technology, and high-quality infrastructure. ²⁵ In general, although France emphasizes the need to promote the regional security environment through a multilateral approach, its main emphasis is still on maintaining security cooperation with the United States, Japan, Australia, India, and other Western partners which clearly shows France’s Western standpoint.

Germany has formed an Indo-Pacific strategy strongly colored by multilateralism. In August 2020, the German government released the policy guidelines document Germany-Europe-Asia: Shaping the 21st Century Together in the Indo-Pacific region. It proposes the establishment of an alliance based on multilateralism, the formation of a rules-based order, the maintenance of the international order centered on the UN Charter, and opposition to the formation of new confrontational groups that require countries to choose sides. The main priorities of the German government’s Indo-Pacific policy include strengthening the construction of multilateral mechanisms, addressing climate change and protecting the environment, strengthening peace, security, and stability, promoting human rights and the rule of law, emphasizing rules-based, fair, and sustainable free trade, and advancing rules-based networking and digital transformation. German policy guidelines focus on advocating multilateralism, emphasizing the EU’s cooperation with ASEAN, the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN “Defense Ministers Plus” meeting, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Asian Development Bank, the AIIB, and other Indo-Pacific regional mechanisms as well as the Asia-Europe Meeting mechanism. ²⁶ Subsequently, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs said: “In the decades to come, Germany’s prosperity and geopolitical influence will depend on the way Germany cooperates with the countries of the Indo-Pacific region. More than any other region, the Indo-Pacific will shape how the future rules-based international order is shaped. We want to help shape this order so that it is based on rules and international cooperation, not the law of the strongest.” ²⁷

The Indo-Pacific strategies of France and Germany both emphasize inclusiveness and multilateralism, but the two countries have different policy positions with respect to the Indo-Pacific region. France considers itself an Indo-Pacific country, emphasizing that it has overseas territories and residents in the Indo-Pacific region, and its Indo-Pacific strategy focuses on strengthening bilateral and trilateral relations with Australia, India, and Japan. France is attentive to the issue of maritime order based on maritime law and its main aim is to keep its maritime interests in the Indo-Pacific region unchallenged. Germany views the Indo-Pacific region from a broader perspective, emphasizing the diversification of partnerships. It advocates a more balanced multilateralist security order. ²⁸ Based, to a large extent, on a compromise between the positions of France and Germany, the EU launched an Indo-Pacific strategy document in April 2021, focusing on the areas of non-traditional security governance and connectivity areas, highlighting the path of multilateral cooperation, and attempting to promote EU economic interests and strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific region. ²⁹

Post-Brexit, the UK has deliberately adopted a more assertive Indo-Pacific strategy. In January 2017, then-British Prime Minister Theresa May formally proposed the diplomatic concept of “Global Britain.” The Indo-Pacific region became one of the three key areas of future British foreign policy, with increasing attention to Indo-Pacific affairs becoming an important part of the UK’s new diplomacy. To this end, the UK has vigorously strengthened its diplomatic ties with Japan and other Indo-Pacific countries, and regularly holds “2+2” talks with Japan, attended by the foreign minister and defense minister. It holds joint military training and defense and security exchanges with Japan and the United States, and frequently dispatched warships to the Indo-Pacific region, following the lead of the United States in “freedom of navigation” initiatives. In December 2018, then-British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson also claimed to be looking to establish new military bases in Southeast Asia. In January 2019, the British and Japanese heads of government issued a Joint Statement, which detailed the content of cooperation between the two countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including third-party market cooperation, strengthening bilateral maritime security assurance cooperation, and promoting third-party maritime security assurance cooperation between Japan and the UK in Southeast Asia and other regions. ³⁰ From its insistence on the close alliance between the UK and the United States and attempts to intervene in the Hong Kong issue and maintain its traditional geographical influence, the foreign policy of the Johnson government in the UK clearly more closely follows the U.S. in containing China than France and Germany. After the fall of the Trump administration, they even became a sort of successor to the Trump-style line. The UK is also trying to resort to some kind of hard-line policy towards China to maintain what is left of the influence of the “British Empire” in the Indo-Pacific region. It has taken on the role of the “deputy leader” of the hardline forces arrayed against China in an attempt to find some kind of geopolitical compensation outside Europe to make up for the UK’s loss of European influence following Brexit.

(iii) The reduced role of ASEAN has led to the restructuring of leading forces in the regional security order

Traditionally, several security orders have existed in the Asian region. The first is the U.S.-led security order that has evolved from a hub-and-spoke pattern to a network-like system. After the start of the Cold War, the United States led the construction of a “hub-and-spoke” Asia-Pacific security system, with the United States as the hub and Asian allies as the spokes. After the Cold War, this basic form of security relations was consolidated and expanded for a time. At the beginning of the 21st century, after the United States proposed “Rebalancing Toward Asia-Pacific” and then the Indo-Pacific strategy, they made attempts to update this hub-and-spoke security system into a U.S.-led network-like system, with the cooperation between the United States, Japan, and Australia as the backbone and numerous small multilateral mechanisms jointly formed by the United States and its allies as the main forms. The second is the regional security order that gradually formed after the Cold War, with ASEAN as the center and “ASEAN+” as the model. Focusing on the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus, ASEAN established a multilateral security dialogue mechanism that includes the major forces in the region, leading to the gradual development of security mechanisms such as ASEAN and China, ASEAN Plus Three (with China, Japan, and South Korea), and the East Asia Summit. The third is the bilateral and multilateral regional security cooperation mechanisms jointly advocated by China and developing Asian countries and based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), strategic partnerships, the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India–China Border Affairs (WMCC), Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea consultation process, and the creation of a “Community with a Shared Future.” However, it must be noted that, due to natural concerns about the power of major powers, small and medium-sized countries tend to adopt foreign strategies that balance major powers and avoid one-sided participation in a security order dominated by one major power. This international political reality made the ASEAN-led regional security order more popular in the Asia-Pacific region. Major countries in the region such as China, Japan, and South Korea and extra-regional powers such as the United States successively joined this order. Therefore, ASEAN occupied the central role in the construction of the Asia-Pacific security order after the Cold War. As Wei Ling pointed out, from the perspective of the participation of various stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific region in regional processes, the regional consensus formed an “ASEAN-centric” path dependence. ³¹

Looking at the Indo-Pacific strategies recently proposed by various countries, India still emphasizes maintaining the centrality of ASEAN in the construction of the regional security order to a certain extent, and has even pushed the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India Quad mechanism to support ASEAN’s centrality to some extent. However, the Indo-Pacific strategy promoted by the United States is actually not conducive to ASEAN’s leading role in the construction of the regional security order. The specific reasons are that: First, the Trump administration viewed the Quad mechanism of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India as the core, while the Biden administration may view the relationship between the United States and its allies as the core. These positions are, in fact, not conducive to the centrality of ASEAN. Second, the inclusion of the Indian Ocean in the Indo-Pacific strategy of various countries, following the lead of the United States, greatly expands the geographical scope of the Asia-Pacific and gives Australia and India a strategic position and role in the Indo-Pacific security framework. This naturally weakens ASEAN’s status in security affairs and faces ASEAN’s original East Asian-centered framework for the Asian security order framework with a complete restructuring. Third, the Trump administration promoted the construction of a polarized order based on Sino-U.S. strategic competition and even confrontation, which directly constricted the operational space for the construction of the ASEAN security order based on the guiding ideology of the balancing of great powers.

Of course, the increasing complexity of the regional security order also encourages ASEAN countries to use their own experience and agency to promote the establishment of a stable Indo-Pacific security order. As a major country in Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s foreign policy tradition is accustomed to adopt an Indian and Pacific Ocean perspective due to its status as an archipelago spanning the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In May 2013, at a conference on Indonesia held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Indonesia’s then-foreign minister Mardi Natalegawa proposed the idea of signing an Indo-Pacific Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. The proposal involved three major concerns of regional diplomacy: the crisis of confidence, unresolved territorial disputes, and managing regional change. This is consistent with ASEAN’s current regional security construction style, which advocates confidence building, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and security and echoes the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. To a certain extent, this proposal reflected the original intention of major ASEAN countries to shape the Indo-Pacific security order in the ASEAN way in the face of geopolitical changes in the Indo-Pacific region. As ASEAN’s largest economy, Indonesia’s regional political ambitions mean it does not want to see great power competition weaken ASEAN’s status as the “primary driver” in regional security. Its non-aligned policy tradition also makes it reluctant to become overly involved in security cooperation with the United States. After President Joko Widodo took office in 2014, he once again clearly put forward the two-ocean strategy, seeking to make Indonesia a “fulcrum country” in the Indo-Pacific region and thereby shaping the maritime order in the Indo-Pacific region and promoting regional and international cooperation. Led by Indonesia, ASEAN has gradually formed a unified position. ³²

ASEAN does not want to stand to one side in the various proposals for the Indo-Pacific regional order that have successively emerged as this will substantially damage the existing “ASEAN-centric” status in the development of Asian multilateralism mechanisms. At the ASEAN Summit in June 2019, ASEAN adopted the “Indo-Pacific” concept for the first time. ASEAN countries emphasized that the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region are closely integrated and interrelated regions, in which ASEAN plays a central role, and that the Indo-Pacific region is a region of dialogue and cooperation rather than competition and a region where everyone can achieve development and prosperity. The summit formed the ASEAN version of an “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” namely the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, which aims to promote the process of building an ASEAN community featuring the principles of cooperation, inclusiveness, common development, and ASEAN neutrality. ASEAN pointed out that there are four main areas of cooperation between Indo-Pacific countries—maritime cooperation, connectivity, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and cooperation in economic and other areas, such as trade facilitation, digital economy, SMEs, climate change, and disaster prevention and management. ³³ ASEAN’s strategic outlook for the Indo-Pacific proposes an inclusive route that promotes dialogue and cooperation, in stark contrast to the confrontational strategy of the Trump administration. They hope to redefine ASEAN’s role in shaping Indo-Pacific diplomatic, security, and economic arrangements and protect and promote the interests of ASEAN as a whole and individual ASEAN countries.

However, the building of a more influential security order in the Indo-Pacific region has certainly aroused competition from parties both inside and outside the Indo-Pacific region. Perhaps the option to form the greatest consensus of countries inside and outside the region would be to form a new multilateralist consortium by uniting ASEAN with China, Japan, India, South Korea, and other countries so that they can jointly play a leading role in building a security order in the Indo-Pacific region.

IV. Conceptual Logic and Basic Appeals for Building a Regional Security Order in the Indo-Pacific

As a newly-shaped region, an effective regional security order for the Indo-Pacific must be formed through repeated conflicts among major countries in the region. Just as various countries are putting forward successive Indo-Pacific strategies, all parties will try to exert influence on the emerging regional security order and even the political and economic order. However, a truly effective regional security order must be able to promote or maintain regional stability, peace, and security, promote more sustainable development in the region, and promote regional culture, regional values, and regional influence, laying the foundation for the formation of a broader regional order.

(i) Seeking the broadest consensus of regional security demands

Geographical proximity determines mutual interests in regional security. Due to the complexity of the regional security situation and the instability it generates, forming a collective political will to jointly build a regional security order is a priority that needs to be considered in the process of building regionness. The Indo-Pacific region faces increasingly serious regional security issues. First, security tensions between countries are increasing rather than decreasing. Many countries in the region have increased their levels of defense spending, and some have adopted a more outward-looking defense strategy. The substantial increase in arms imports in the Asia-Pacific region, and even a relatively widespread situation of arms competition, is closely related to the return of the United States to the strategy of great power confrontation and the strengthening of its presence and military deployments in the Indo-Pacific. The United States has deployed its superior naval and air forces along with the most advanced combat platforms and weapon systems in the Indo-Pacific region, which has contributed to the military buildup of countries in the region. The U.S. uses the territorial and territorial water disputes between China and neighboring countries to “stir the pot” and play up the threat posed by China, emphasizing the need to enhance the capabilities of allies and partners and increase their coordination and military integration with the United States. All these factors have driven countries in the region, and especially the United States allies and strategic partners, to compete with each other for the purchase of U.S.-style advanced weapons. This upgrade of armaments will inevitably have a transmission effect between neighboring countries in the region, resulting in extensive arms competition in the region. U.S. strategies and policies have also increased the complexity of maritime disputes in the region and made them harder to resolve. The Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu Islands is further complicated by the interventions and statements of the United States. In April 2014, President Obama publicly stated that the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty applies to the Diaoyu Islands. After the Biden administration came to power, it once again explicitly intervened in the Diaoyu Islands issue. In the South China Sea dispute, the United States deliberately exaggerates the “China threat”, frequently launches “freedom of navigation” operations, maintains close strategic ties with relevant countries in Southeast Asia, and increased its strategic containment of China, further aggravating the situation in the South China Sea.

Second, disputes between countries exacerbate non-traditional security issues in regional societies. Small and medium-sized countries and developing countries in the region have invested resources in military and security construction, resulting in a general decline in the resources they can use for economic and social development. Under the influence of the pandemic, the economic situation has become more difficult, which has adversely affected the development of individual countries and the region as a whole and generated more social problems. This, combined with specific social soil (社会土壤, the unique social conditions of countries), provides inducements to various non-traditional security threats such as terrorism, drug problems, and transnational crimes. In fact, the security situation in the peripheral areas of the Indo-Pacific is fragile. There are many hot-button “issues,” such as ethnic and religious conflicts, transnational crime, drug smuggling, hunger and poverty, epidemic diseases, government incompetence, environmental degradation, refugees and their resettlement, and other widespread problems that have long been concerns of the region and the international community. The northern coast of the Indian Ocean is a fringe area in global politics and more likely to induce various factors of instability and spread them to Central and South Asia and Southeast Asia. In South Asia and Southeast Asia, regional conflicts caused by ethnic and religious issues as well as terrorism and extremism still pose challenges to regional security and endanger the regional security order.

In order to promote the formation of collective political will, as a regional public good, the construction of a regional security order should focus on the security demands of countries in the region and try to build a consensus on the security demands of all countries. Generally speaking, countries in the region are more interested in building a peaceful and stable local security environment than countries outside the region. The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific emphasizes that “the rise of material powers, i.e. economic and military, requires avoiding the deepening of mistrust, miscalculation, and patterns of behavior based on a zero-sum game.” “It is in the interest of ASEAN to lead the shaping of their economic and security architecture and ensure that such dynamics will continue to bring about peace, security, stability and prosperity for the peoples in Southeast Asia as well as in the wider Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions or the Indo-Pacific.” ³⁴ Japan’s Indo-Pacific vision likewise emphasizes the importance of regional peace and stability. As an island nation, Japan is very poor in resources and energy and highly dependent on foreign countries. It has a critical need for smooth and safe sea lines of communication. Therefore, it regards measures such as improving maritime law enforcement capabilities as one of the three pillars of its Indo-Pacific strategy and emphasizes international cooperation as one of the basic principles of its Indo-Pacific strategy. ³⁵ India’s Indo-Pacific vision also stems from its changing national security environment and growing national security needs. For countries in the region, because of their basic need to seek a stable security environment, more emphasis is placed on dialogue and cooperation as opposed to conflict and confrontation. In its ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN pointed out that one of the key factors in how it views the Indo-Pacific region is its view of the Indo-Pacific region as a region of dialogue and cooperation rather than confrontation. ³⁶

The construction of a regional security order should properly handle the relationships between large countries and small countries, strong countries and weak countries, and give priority to the security interests of weak and small countries in the region. Strong and large countries naturally have more means and resources to use to achieve national security than weak and small countries. Weak and small countries are naturally more anxious about national security than strong and large ones, and they are also more interested in the construction of a reasonable regional security order. For weak and small countries, it is difficult to have a real regional strategy. They have to seek a balance among powerful countries in order to ensure their own sovereign independence and seek to maximize the attainment of their economic and political interests. Facing an Indo-Pacific regional environment with strategic competition between China and the United States, the weak and small countries in the region do not actually want to see the intensification of competition and confrontation between the great powers of China and the United States as this would gradually diminish their room for maneuverer in pursuing a between the great powers, leaving them no choice can but to reluctantly pursue a hedging strategy. The weak and small countries in the region want to see that economic development and connectivity infrastructure construction in the Indo-Pacific region benefit themselves, but they are not willing to choose sides between China and the United States because they cannot afford the cost of confrontation with any great power. They prefer to de-securitize regional construction and development issues and see cooperation and dialogue between major powers so as to form a multilateral consensus around the path and mechanisms of regional construction and development. In addition, weak and small countries are more attentive to the challenges posed by some non-traditional security affairs to national security. For example, Sri Lanka, ASEAN island nations, and other coastal and island nations pay more attention to counter-terrorism and maritime security issues that threaten national security, such as piracy and armed smuggling at sea, illegal exploitation and utilization of marine resources, climate change and sea level rise, severe weather, and natural disasters, and urgently require the adoption of a collective and cooperative response. ³⁷ In short, small and weak countries in the region are more concerned about the peace, stability, and development facilitation brought about by the regional security order and coping with specific security threats and challenges. A fair and reasonable regional security order must consider the security and development demands of small and weak countries in the region.

It must be noted that, unlike the Trump administration in the United States, which placed too much emphasis on weaving a network of security relations through the presence of military forces and strengthening strategic confrontation with China, most of the propositions on the Indo-Pacific order put forward by other countries around the world, including European countries, are inclusive in nature, and more non-U.S. forces inside and outside the region advocate maintaining or increasing cooperative relations with China. ASEAN places special emphasis on the inclusiveness of the Indo-Pacific order. From early on, Indonesia has explicitly supported the term “inclusive Indo-Pacific”. India has gradually made it clear that the Indo-Pacific region needs to emphasize inclusiveness. Japan’s position has also shifted from a “free and open Indo-Pacific” to a “free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific.”

(ii) A sustainable process for promoting regional development

“Regionness” implies material ties from close economic exchanges within the region as well as the mutual recognition that the various countries are committed to promoting regional development. Looking at the Indo-Pacific strategies of various parties, whether or not they can seize the opportunities presented by the economic rise and significant development of the Indo-Pacific region and achieve or maintain their own economic prosperity, this is indeed one of the most basic goals pursued by all countries and one of the driving forces behind the construction of the Indo-Pacific order. Some scholars have pointed out that, for East Asian countries, security intrinsically has deep-rooted economic attributes. “Development is the essence of security” (安全以发展为要义) is the conception that serves as the backdrop for the practice of East Asian regionalism. An important background for the construction of the Indo-Pacific order is the rapid development and economic integration of East Asia in the past 30 years. In this process, unique models of practice for developing regionalism, represented by the ASEAN Plus Three cooperation mechanism, have been formed. The rise of China’s economy and the promotion of international cooperation in the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” further illustrate that China is playing an increasingly important role in the process of developing regionalism. The construction of the Indo-Pacific region with East Asia as its core region cannot be separated from the practical background of the development of regionalism in East Asia and the influence of China. ³⁸ In fact, Democratic Party governments in the United States have long accepted the proposition that development issues are security issues. The Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance states that global development is the best means to express and embody American values while pursuing U.S. national security interests. ³⁹

In recent years, countries around the world have been hotly discussing the issue of infrastructure construction in the Indo-Pacific region. This shows that one of the key driving factors that has made the Indo-Pacific geospace a region of international attention is its huge demand for connectivity construction and the investment prospects and opportunities for economic profits this brings. Looking only at the growth of Chinese and U.S. foreign direct investment (stock) in 2019, the total annual growth of U.S. investments was U.S. $158.567 billion, of which growth in the Asia-Pacific region accounted for U.S. $67.23 billion, or 42% of total growth. The total annual growth of Chinese investments was U.S. $216.615 billion, of which the growth in the Asia-Pacific region was U.S. $183.589 billion, accounting for 85% of total growth. In the economic cooperation between China and the United States and the Indo-Pacific countries, infrastructure construction such as transportation accounts for a considerable proportion. Judging from the turnover data of China’s foreign contracted projects in 2019, China’s turnover in India, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Australia was 2.54 billion, 8.7 billion, 3.55 billion, 2.87 billion, 3.94 billion, and 3.92 billion USD respectively. Among U.S. investments in the Asia-Pacific region in 2019, investment in manufacturing industries such as computers and electronic products, transportation equipment, and electrical equipment components alone reached U.S. $83.576 billion. ⁴⁰ Infrastructure construction also has a necessary and important significance. The construction of regionness must be based on the establishment of infrastructure that facilitates communication and exchanges within the region. This is also the basic requirement for the region to maintain a sustainable development process. In fact, from the first, the emergence of the concept of “Indo-Pacific” reflected the idea of economic connectivity between the two oceans. Economic connectivity also has important significance for the geopolitico-economic space of the Indo-Pacific. The Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean are important transportation routes for the global transport of commodities and raw materials. About two-thirds of global oil transportation and one-third of cargo transportation pass through trade routes in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The Indo-Pacific region has clearly become a hub connecting East Asian production centers with key energy sources along the Indian Ocean coast. ⁴¹

It is precisely based on the growing contradiction between the current level of connectivity infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region and its massive connectivity status and demand in the world economy that the issue of connectivity infrastructure construction has been quickly put on the agenda of Indo-Pacific countries since the beginning of the 21st century. Transportation infrastructure remains the focus of cooperation among all parties, and transportation infrastructure projects represented by modern railway networks, highway networks, automated ports, and airports are key areas receiving support and attention from all parties. In October 2010, ASEAN announced its Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, which proposed an ASEAN connectivity plan including infrastructure. In September and October 2013, China proposed the “Belt and Road” initiative, a significantly more ambitious interconnected infrastructure project focused on the Indo-Pacific region. China has also proposed the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is committed to promoting infrastructure construction and connectivity in Asia. Around 2012, several senior officials of the U.S. State Department, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also proposed the idea of building an “Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor,” hoping to establish a South Asia-Southeast Asia economic connectivity network with India at the core. In 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama and the Indian government jointly issued the Joint Strategic Vision, emphasizing the importance of political and infrastructure connectivity: “To support regional economic integration, we will promote accelerated infrastructure connectivity and economic development in a manner that links South, Southeast and Central Asia.” ⁴² The U.S. National Security Strategy document released in December 2017 repeatedly emphasized the importance of infrastructure, mentioning infrastructure in 42 places. The document states that, in the Indo-Pacific region, the United States encourages regional cooperation and peaceful settlement of disputes to maintain free and open waterways, transparent infrastructure financing activities, and unhindered trade. It emphasizes cooperation with allies on high-quality infrastructure construction. ⁴³ In 2019, the U.S. State Department published the document A Free and Open Indo-Pacific, which mentions infrastructure in 37 places. ⁴⁴ At the end of July 2018, the United States also established a trilateral partnership framework with Australia and Japan to jointly build an investment framework for infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and jointly mobilize investment in infrastructure. ⁴⁵

Connectivity construction and infrastructure construction in the Indo-Pacific region have also attracted the attention of major international organizations. The 2014 G20 Summit in Brisbane specifically supported public and private investment in global infrastructure through the Global Infrastructure Initiative and established the Global Infrastructure Hub in Sydney. Since then, the issue of infrastructure construction and investment quality has received sustained attention from international organizations such as the G20, G7, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and East Asia Summit. The G7 Ise-Shima Summit held in Japan in May 2016 also proposed five principles for promoting high-quality infrastructure investment, including effective management, promotion of local employment and capacity building, addressing social and environmental consequences, coordinating economic and development strategies, and improving the efficiency of resource use. ⁴⁶ In September of the same year, the communique of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China further emphasized that investment in high-quality infrastructure is based on a combination of lifecycle costs, safety, resilience to natural disasters, job creation, capacity building, and the transfer of knowledge and expertise on mutually agreed terms so as to ensure economic efficiency while addressing the social and environmental impacts of projects and aligning them with economic and development strategies. ⁴⁷ On September 6, 2016, ASEAN adopted a new version of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025 document in Vientiane, Laos, focusing on five strategic areas including sustainable infrastructure construction, digital innovation, logistics, import and export management, and human mobility. The plan states that, for sustainable infrastructure construction, ASEAN needs at least U.S. $110 billion in infrastructure investment annually to support future growth.

(iii) Constantly looking for “regionness” beliefs

The concept of region in international politics constitutes a kind of social existence in international politics. Its formation and establishment depend on the intertwined common beliefs held by international actors. The construction of a regional order is a negotiation process in which a regional community of practice forms shared beliefs, concepts, and norms through practices based on shared background knowledge. This is embodied in a process of constantly seeking and constructing “regionness.” Just as the regional concepts of “Europe,” “the Americas,” “Africa,” “East Asia,” and “Asia-Pacific,” all contain certain characteristic regional beliefs, regional cultures, and regional governance mechanisms, “Indo-Pacific,” as a regional construction, must not be an exception if it is to have long-term prospects. As a new structure, “Indo-Pacific” may not have manifested such things in an obvious way, but the existence of this new structure must have a material basis on which it is built. ⁴⁸Otherwise, it will be difficult for this new structure to stand the test posed by time and space. The emergence of the Indo-Pacific concept reflects the increasingly close and inseparable economic and political ties between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean regions, and the increasingly close economic and political connection between the South Asia-Indian Ocean region and East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific region. Geographically, it connects the two strategic regions of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and constitutes a strategic channel with great geostrategic value. It can be said that it is the deepening economic and political relationships between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean that constitute the cognitive basis and material foundation for the creation of the Indo-Pacific concept.

However, now that the “Indo-Pacific” region has been recognized in international politics, in addition to signifying huge opportunities for economic benefits, more attention should be paid to the regional culture, mechanisms, and order associated with this emerging “region.” The shaping of the “Indo-Pacific region” and the construction of a regional security order must conform to the basic attributes and historical logic connoted by the “regional” order. Taking a long-term view, this includes a set of security mechanisms and security culture dedicated to regional dispute settlement and regional integrity construction, a set of security concepts conducive to regional development and security cooperation, and a set of security governance mechanisms that help resolve regional issues. In fact, the tributary system that China once created in East Asia and its long-term peaceful exchanges with neighboring peoples, the long-standing cultural exchanges between China and South Asia and China and India along with the joint advocacy of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence by China, India, Myanmar, and other countries, and the series of cooperation mechanisms and frameworks among developing countries in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific region all constitute the historical accumulation and practical basis for the construction of the Indo-Pacific order. Major border incidents such as the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the Galwan Valley conflict in June 2020 almost led to conflict between China and India. However, China and India finally relieved the situation through bilateral political negotiations, commander-level talks, and other mechanisms, and the consensus reached by the leaders of the two sides to resolve the border issue peacefully once again withstood a test. To a certain extent, this illustrated the concept of peaceful negotiation and the historical and endogenous nature of the culture of peaceful coexistence among countries in the Indo-Pacific region. It also demonstrates the necessity of constructing a certain Indo-Pacific security order based on this security culture.

(iv) Possessing a sort of universal significance

As “region” is a unit level in international politics, its security order construction must conform to a certain trend in international politics and possess certain “normative” connotations. The most important situation facing the construction of a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific today is the management of the competition between the great powers of China and the United States. In the context of the basic situation of great power competition and even confrontation, how to examine and deal with the relationship between the two major regional propositions, namely, security and development, is a historic problem. Obviously, the question is not whether to give priority to security or development because the mandatory option of countries is to prioritize security. Without security, we cannot talk about development, so the development agenda is built upon the assurance of security. Therefore, the real question is, given the premise of prioritizing security, how should countries balance security and development?

Further complicating the issue, the establishment of a security order in the Indo-Pacific region involves many countries outside the region. There are naturally differences between the concerns of countries in the region and countries outside the region. Generally speaking, the first thing countries outside the region see is the economic and political rise of the Indo-Pacific region and how this presents opportunities or harm to their own interests. Their primary concern is the positive or negative effect on their own interests, and their policy operations are inherently self-interested and quite speculative. For countries in the region, the regional security order is a basic and necessary public good. It is a combination of self-interest and altruism, with more emphasis on cooperation, common advantage, and mutual benefit. However, whether in terms of power structure or interest structure, the construction of a regional security order for the Indo-Pacific cannot completely exclude the views and demands of countries outside the region. The Indo-Pacific region maintains extreme openness in terms of both geopolitical reality and historical characteristics. ⁴⁹ Of course, for the countries in the region, guiding the countries from outside the region to exert influence in a way that conforms to the consensus of the countries in the region is particularly important. This, in turn, depends on the formation of unity and consensus in terms of demands by countries in the region. The establishment of a security order in the Indo-Pacific region is in fact the act of solving the problem of the relationship between regional security and development through an open international approach.

V. China’s Vision for the Indo-Pacific Regional Order

Chinese officials are skeptical of the “Indo-Pacific” concept and do not advocate or even oppose the use of the Indo-Pacific concept. This reflects China’s political prudence in handling foreign and security affairs. However, this does not mean that China does not participate in the construction of the regional security order. China already participates in and influences the political, economic, and security order development of the Indo-Pacific region by actively creating regional security “relationship networks” and promoting the construction of the “Belt and Road” and “Community with a Shared Future.”

(i) Make great efforts to build an inclusive and cooperative regional security “relationship network”

There are two very different security views in the Indo-Pacific region. One emphasizes power politics, such as hegemonic security and alliance security, which is essentially a self-interested and exclusive security order. The other emphasizes cooperative development, such as cooperative security and development security, and pursues an open security order. The regional security view that China upholds obviously belongs to the latter. As a regional economic power, China craves regional security. This determines that China can only pursue the latter’s essential attributes. To a large extent, the two aforementioned security views also reflect the different sociocultural conceptual structures of the international community. Alexander Wendt defined three international social structures with different cultural ideas, namely the Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian cultures of anarchy. ⁵⁰ The Hobbesian culture is a culture that emphasizes struggle and confrontation, the Lockean culture implies the pursuit of a certain cooperative social relationship, and the Kantian culture hopes to achieve a permanent peace, a peaceful alliance that ends all wars. ⁵¹ In fact, because the East Asian region has inherited a cultural tradition of harmony guided by Chinese culture, it has formed a harmonious culture that emphasizes cooperation rather than confrontation. This is a shared cultural structure located between the Lockean and Kantian cultures. “In Chinese culture, the practical activities of farming society are the life foundation of this cultural body. As a result, more emphasis is placed on groups, more emphasis is placed on the relationships between group members, and more emphasis is placed on harmony between people and between people and nature, so that relationships becomes the core concept.” ⁵²The core content of the ASEAN approach is also consensus, emphasis on national comfort, and non-interference in internal affairs. ⁵³ Qin Yaqing pointed out that “‘Comfort’ is a unique norm for cooperation in East Asia. It serves as a key glue throughout the entire process of cooperation, preventing a relationship breakdown between the participating parties. Even in the most difficult times of cooperation, at the minimum, it allows the relationship to be maintained so that the cooperation process can continue into the future.” ⁵⁴

In the regional security order, as represented by China, this sort of sociocultural structure that values harmony naturally leads to a cooperative security view, which opposes hegemony and the willful use of force in confrontation, opposes realist power security, group-based security, and geopolitical confrontation, and even opposes polarization. It supports collaboration and coordination among major powers, emphasizing mutual respect, mutual trust, equal treatment, and mutual benefit among countries. At the practical level, China has always shown an inclusive attitude, and does not oppose but instead welcomes foreign countries to participate in the construction of the regional security order. Moreover, in line with the position of seeking common ground while shelving differences, and enhancing trust, and dispelling doubts, China is committed to resolving confrontational intentions with an inclusive attitude, so as to achieve the goals of harmonious efforts and common development.

Adhering to the basic concept of harmonious cooperation, China is committed to building various “relationship networks” with rich significance with many countries from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has successively proposed friendly neighbor relations with surrounding countries based on “good neighborliness, security, and prosperity”; a “new type of major-country relationship” of “non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation” and “Community of Common Destiny” relationship (Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar); “a comprehensive partnership that keeps pace with the times” (Singapore); “a closer development partnership” (India); “a comprehensive partnership of good-neighborliness, mutual trust, and mutual benefit” (Timor-Leste); a “sincere mutual aid and friendship from generation to generation strategic partnership” (Sri Lanka); “strategic partnership for peace and development and friendship from generation to generation” (Nepal); a partnership for “common development, commitment to regional peace, joint revitalization of Asia, and promotion of world prosperity” (Korea); as well as comprehensive strategic partnerships with Vietnam and Thailand, comprehensive strategic partnerships with Malaysia and Indonesia, and strategic partnerships with Bangladesh and Brunei. China co-founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and actively participated in regional security organizations such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the CICA, the Asian Cooperation Dialogue, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, constructing an operation mode of security relations with bilateral strategic partnerships as the mainstay, supplemented by multilateral mechanisms, and with unique Chinese cultural characteristics. As the central country in East Asia, China maintains peripheral security, promotes regional peace, actively advocates regional security cooperation and peaceful development, and is committed to repairing the nearly broken great power relationship between China and the United States. All of this demonstrates China’s unremitting efforts to build a regional security order.

(ii) Strive to build a community with a shared future that is conducive to sustainable regional development

China believes that common development is the fundamental way to resolve regional security issues. The 2017 Chinese government white paper pointed out that expanding the integration of economic interests is an important foundation for relations between countries, and achieving common development is the fundamental assurance for maintaining peace and stability. It is the “master key” for solving various security issues. ⁵⁵ The current political and security order in the Indo-Pacific region is in the process of repeated confrontations of various political positions and views. The United States’ promotion of strategic competition with China has led to intensified disputes over the regional security order in the Indo-Pacific. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously damaged the economic development of various countries. The methods by which to restore economic growth as soon as possible, relieve difficulties, resolve confrontation, and seek to strengthen multilateral cooperation have become the priorities of governments and people in the region, including China.

Chinese leaders have openly advocated “to create a security pattern that is fair and just, with joint construction and sharing,” “to promote the simultaneous advance of international cooperation in the economic and social fields, coordinate responses to traditional and non-traditional security threats, and prevent the scourge of war before it occurs.” ⁵⁶ An important historical lesson of China’s economic development and rise is to strive to create a stable domestic social and political environment as well as a favorable surrounding and international environment. At the same time, economic and social development feeds back to promote domestic security and peripheral security. China insists on resolving domestic social conflicts through development. In dealing with some peripheral sovereignty disputes, such as the Diaoyu Islands issue and the South China Sea dispute, China also adheres to the policy of shelving disputes and pursuing joint development. The preference for development in China’s domestic and foreign policies has become the basic path and method for China to participate in world affairs and to build and promote peripheral security, regional security, and international security.

China is committed to combining this development security view with regional security governance and jointly exploring a regional order with the goal of good governance. Whether in terms of influence or strength, China, as the primary representative of emerging economies in the Indo-Pacific region, has always been a model for implementing the cooperative development security view. China advocates that, under the framework of comprehensive cooperation and through open cooperation, collaborative development, and comprehensive policy implementation, we should explore the construction of regional or sub-regional mechanisms with unique characteristics and jointly find effective models and methods of good governance. At first, the “Belt and Road” initiated by China, the AIIB, the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, and the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum give the idea of mechanism construction in an economic sense, but their more far-reaching significance lies in their use of investment in infrastructure construction and economic development in developing Asian countries to improve the level of local development, resolve regional economic and security dilemmas, improve the level of regional governance, and promote the formation of a benign political and security order that can ensure long-term stability in the region. For example, under the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework, the six countries of China, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam have carried out a series of project cooperations to vigorously promote the economic and social development of Lancang-Mekong countries and accelerate interconnection. At the same time, they have strengthened cooperation in non-traditional security affairs such as disaster management, infectious disease prevention and control, combating illegal drug trafficking, terrorism, cybercrime, human trafficking, smuggling, and trafficking of firearms and ammunition, and border security management. China is committed to transforming the fruits of economic development into security outcomes shared with neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. ⁵⁷ Driven by China’s “Belt and Road” and other development projects, countries in the region have successively issued their own economic development strategies, such as Pakistan’s New Pakistan, Laos’ Land-locked to Land-linked, and the Philippines’ Build! Build! Build!, promoting the overall development of the region. China is committed to implementing development strategy alignment and complementarity of advantages with countries along the route, transforming advantages such as mutual political trust, geographical proximity, and economic complementarity into practical cooperation and continuously increasing advantages. China emphasizes that the “Belt and Road” will first build a road to peace and then a road to prosperity. ⁵⁸ This fully reflects the desire and path of promoting security cooperation and mutual political trust through development cooperation.

(iii) Gradually promote the construction of a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific

China believes that the construction of a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific is a prudent and step-by-step historical process. Undoubtedly, China’s continued adherence to the basic national policy of reform and opening up and its resulting continuous rise will become one of the decisive factors for the final formation of the Indo-Pacific security order. However, China’s contemporary rise has taken a soft approach in stark contrast to the rise of Western powers. Namely, China has become one of the leaders of the region and the world through the power projection and model influence of economic development. In terms of both psychology and policy, this is unacceptable to Western powers that are used to confrontation with hard power and they will inevitably resist this in their actions. However, in the history of Asia, China once held a dominant position of power for a long time, ⁵⁹ and it possesses a natural psychological advantage and civilized self-confidence for dealing with and counteracting external forces.

The introverted and introspective spirit inherited from China’s thousands of years of civilization is the cultural origin of China’s prudent proposition to build a regional security order in the Indo-Pacific. The Analects of Confucius says: “The man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.” Mencius said: “If a man to rule others, and his government is unsuccessful, let him turn inwards and examine his wisdom. When a man’s person is correct, the whole kingdom will turn to him with recognition and submission.” At present, facing the complex regional security situation, China instinctively tends towards a regional strategy that is restrained, prudent, and not overly eager for success. In terms of development cooperation policies, China advocates doing what it can and doing its best, emphasizing the fulfillment of international obligations commensurate with its national strength. Within the framework of South-South cooperation, China will provide assistance to other developing countries within its capacity, will not do anything beyond the development stage of our partners that is not in line with their actual needs, and will not make “empty promises (空头支票, literally “write bad checks”). ⁶⁰China maintains that the key to the process of building a regional order is to continuously promote the building of mutual trust in regional security through a series of specific measures for mutual learning between civilizations, economic exchanges, and people-to-people exchanges with people-to-people bonds as the core.

China’s prudence in building a regional security order is also due to the fact that its own national reunification has not been completed, and issues of sovereignty and territorial security have not been comprehensively maintained and consolidated. Regional security is built on the security of every country in the region, to say nothing of a major power in the region like China. While Western countries frequently smear and slander China’s political system and launch public opinion attacks and there are frequent incidents and interference in China’s territorial sovereignty and sovereign rights and interests, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Diaoyu Islands, and the islands and reefs in the South China Sea, China’s maintenance of its own national security has also become an important part of regional security. The maintenance and assurance of China’s own national security is obviously the basic significance and unavoidable issue of the regional security order. In this regard, regional security can be fundamentally guaranteed only if all countries inside and outside the region participating in the establishment of the regional security order in the Indo-Pacific recognize that respecting the sovereignty and national security interests of other countries is a necessary precondition.

On the premise of ensuring national security resources, China can also exert its own influence in the construction of the regional security order. That is, through investment in domestic sustainable development, China is committed to creating regional and global “demonstration projects” (示范工程). China’s demonstrative role is reflected in two aspects: (1) the country’s governance capacity and mechanisms, and (2) its sustainable economic and social development. Since 2020, the Chinese government has vigorously promoted the construction of “new infrastructure,” promoted the digital transformation, intelligent upgrade, integration, and innovation of the infrastructure system as well as in-depth integration with 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, and successively implemented “new infrastructure” projects represented by smart transportation and smart cities. It is predictable that infrastructure projects empowered by technology will inject new impetus into the development of the “Belt and Road” countries, and the depth and breadth of infrastructure cooperation between China and the Indo-Pacific region are expected to expand further. ⁶¹ Although China’s own development is not aimed at becoming a regional and world leader, its demonstrative effect will be increasingly strengthened and, unable to be resisted by Western ideological prejudice, its influence will eventually radiate to the region and the world.