Asia's Quest for Balance: China's Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific

Smith, Jeff; Rolfe, Jim

doi:10.1355/cs41-1j

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…289–293, 2011, 2014) note, the SCS is not the core interest of China, unlike Taiwan or Tibet. Their study on China utilising both classified and declassified official documents, as well as interviews with US diplomats, confirms this view and challenges the thesis asserting that the SCS is a core interest of China (Mohan 2012, p. 182; Permal, 2014, p. 66; Smith, 2018, p.18).…”

Section: China’s Activities In the South China Sea And Indonesia’s Strategy Under Jokowimentioning

confidence: 89%

“…China’s ambitions to be a global power is also evident in its development of blue water navy, a maritime force that allows it to operate globally to defend its growing economic and political interests beyond its coastal waters (Li, 2011, p. 123; Malik, 2012, pp. 55–56; Myers, 2018; Ross, 2009; Smith, 2018, p. 23). The presence of Chinese naval capabilities has accelerated over the years, although it still lacks key components of the global projection of naval power which are aircraft carriers and network of overseas military bases compared to the USA (Chan, 2020; The Straits Times, 2017).…”

Section: China’s Activities In the South China Sea And Indonesia’s Strategy Under Jokowimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Continuity in Indonesia’s Strategy in the South China Sea Under Joko Widodo

Sari

2021

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs

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This study seeks to address two interrelated questions: Does Indonesia underbalance against China? Why does President Joko Widodo stick with the strategy of to this day? The study lays out three main arguments. First, there are two types of strategies: the appropriate and inappropriate one (under-balancing). Indonesia, under the first and beginning of the second term of Jokowi presidency, adopts the prudent strategy. Thus, it does not underbalance against the Chinese military threats in the South China Sea. Such prudent strategy consists of several dimensions: facilitating the United States’ security presence in Asia, engaging major powers such as China in bilateral and multilateral economic and political–military ties to socialise China into a peace-loving country. Second, Indonesia’s non-balancing action, which is the second-best strategy after a more traditional direct internal and external military balancing, is considered a prudent choice, for three main reasons: (a) it is predicated on the assessment that China is perceived as a risk-averse limited-aims revisionist power; (b) Indonesia has very limited capacity to directly balance China and (c) the United States is perceived to be willing and able to balance China. Lastly, the continuity of this strategy, which started during the post-Cold War era, is partly related to the positive feedback effects or self-reinforcing process of existing formal institutions.

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Section: China’s Activities In the South China Sea And Indonesia’s Strategy Under Jokowimentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: China’s Activities In the South China Sea And Indonesia’s Strategy Under Jokowimentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuity in Indonesia’s Strategy in the South China Sea Under Joko Widodo

Sari

2021

Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs

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“…Therefore, as US–China relations move toward a new paradigm of struggle between an existing hegemon and a potential hegemon, their security competition has escalated and extended to all corners of the globe, with the Indo‐Pacific region emerging as their principal geopolitical hot spot (see Smith 2018; Hu, 2020). Places such as Taiwan (see Denny 2017; Portada et al 2020), Pacific Islands (see Finin 2021; Morrow 2020), Southeast Asia (see Kraft 2017; Shambaugh 2020), South Asia (see Tehseen 2017), Central Asia (see Gul et al 2021), Africa (see Wang 2020), Latin America (see Pu and Myers 2021), and the Arctic (see Pincus 2020) all have been drawn, to different degrees, into the quagmire of US–China security competition, as offensive realism theory predicts.…”

Section: Hong Kong As a Geopolitical Hot Spot Under Us–china Intense ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Great Power Competition in Non‐sovereign Entities: US–China Tug‐of‐War over Hong Kong, 1950–2020

Fong

2022

Pacific Focus

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The theory of offensive realism postulates that when a potential hegemon and an existing hegemon clash, their intense security competition will span all corners of the globe. This study advances the literature by investigating the impact of great power on non-sovereign entities, using Hong Kong as a case study. Drawing on archival and published data, this study examines the geopolitical status of Hong Kong as a function of the changing US-China great power relations. The findings of this study demonstrate that as a consequence of the changing US-China relations, Hong Kong has been transformed from a geopolitical buffer zone in the 1950s and 1960s (US-China restrained competition) and the 1970s through the 2000s (US-China rapprochement) into a geopolitical hot spot since the 2010s (US-China intense competition). This study contributes to the literature by fostering dialogues between great power studies and the non-sovereignty literature.

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“…Although the incident has been reported as a boundary dispute with origins dating to the 1950s (Raghavan, 2010); others have argued that these recent events cannot be divorced from their regional contexts, where China has become increasingly militaristic in the Asian region (Ford and Gewirtz, 2020). In the past few decades, the Sino-Indian rivalry has grown beyond a territorial dispute to include China's growing ambitions in the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) (Frankel, 2011; Smith, 2018) and India's attempts to retain its advantages in the IOR (Kaya and Kiliç, 2017). In fact, much of India's increased military capacity, including efforts to expand the capabilities of its air force, navy, and outer space technology, has been driven by concerns over China's military infrastructure building projects in the border areas (Gurung, 2019; Gurung, 2020; Mandhana, 2017; Sharma, 2020; Tripathi and Rashid, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interstate Rivalries and Expansions in Military Capacity

Suhas

Israelsen

2021

International Area Studies Review

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This article addresses the scholarly debate on the relationship between interstate rivalry and military capacity. We draw on Tilly's bellicist theory of state formation in early modern Europe and Thies’ modifications to predatory theory, which prioritizes the role of interstate rivalry on state building, to explain variation in military capacity. We unpack the rivalry mechanism into spatial and positional rivalries and test how these two types of rivalry affect military capacity, and how positional rivalries affect military capacity in the long-term. Using time-series cross-sectional data analysis, we find that positional rivalries increase military capacity in the long term. Also, we find that spatial rivalry influences military capacity in the long-term, but its effects are uneven across indicators of military capacity, and it has a smaller effect on military capacity in comparison to positional rivalries. We conclude that not all types of rivalries have a uniform effect on military capacity and that competition over regional dominance, that is, positional rivalries, are the most impactful on military capacity. This study offers a more nuanced test of Tilly's bellicist theory and Thies’ modified predatory theory on state capacity.

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Asia's Quest for Balance: China's Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Continuity in Indonesia’s Strategy in the South China Sea Under Joko Widodo

Continuity in Indonesia’s Strategy in the South China Sea Under Joko Widodo

Great Power Competition in Non‐sovereign Entities: US–China Tug‐of‐War over Hong Kong, 1950–2020

Interstate Rivalries and Expansions in Military Capacity

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