Conference Program

The agreement signed in April 2022 on security cooperation between China (People's Republic of China) and the Solomon Islands serves as a further evidence of Beijing's growing political and military involvement in the South Pacific. China's activity focuses also on Kiribati, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea. Since around 2015, media have reported on officially private Chinese companies interested in investing in ports and airports in the region.

In the Indo-Pacific region, Beijing is carrying out a series of economic, political, and military actions both in the South Pacific and to the west, through the Indian Ocean to Africa and the Middle East. This leads to growing concerns from countries that consider these waters as an exclusive zone of their influence, such as Australia and, above all, the United States. Chinese warships are already patrolling waters near Australia. Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison even went so far as to say that Australia is in its most challenging geopolitical position since the outbreak of World War II.

The paper presents Chinese diplomatic, economic, and military activities in the South Pacific, their impact on the existing security architecture, as well as counter-moves primarily from the United States and Australia. It is argued that a growing military-related rivalry between China and the United States in the Indo-Pacific region will also not bypass the South Pacific, which is undoubtedly less significant than, for example, Southeast Asia, but still has its importance, which Beijing will seek to exploit.

In recent years, India-U.S. ties in Southeast Asia and the Middle East have strengthened. The U.S. views India as a pivotal security partner in the Indo-Pacific Quad, alongside Australia and Japan. India is also crucial in the I2U2 forum in the Middle East, with Israel and the UAE, a U.S. initiative. The Quad aims to counterbalance China’s growing influence, while the I2U2’s objectives, post-Abraham Accords, are less clear, sparking curiosity about India’s interests. This paper argues that India is seeking power and status through ‘relational power,’ by establishing a robust association with the United States, gaining an asymmetric advantage over China. Within the framework of the Quad in Southeast Asia, this partnership allows India unprecedented access to the superior military and intelligence capabilities of the U.S., which China lacks, thereby fortifying India’s position against security threats along the Indo-Chinese border. In the Middle East, India’s I2U2 role aims to deepen its connections with the region’s most dynamic economies, which are also key U.S. allies. Furthermore, India’s engagement in both the Quad and the I2U2 operates as a ‘Trojan horse.’ Despite not being able to counter China’s influence fully in either region, these alliances provide a conduit for India to subtly pursue its geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives. By associating with the U.S., India can asymmetrically further its interests under the protective auspices of American power.

In responding to China's rise in the Indo-Pacific, secondary states such as Indonesia has adopted a mixture of defiance and deference policies. In making sense of these ambivalent policies, existing studies have termed these seemingly contradictory policies as hedging, an alignment strategy located between balancing and bandwagoning. However, this conclusion negatively impacts how Indonesia’s China policy is portrayed. Scholars have claimed that Indonesia’s China policy is suboptimal, indecisive, and ineffective due to the adoption of ambivalent and contradictory policies.

This project proposes an alternative way of interpreting Indonesia’s China policy by exploring the process of risk construction. Through this framework, a different conclusion can be attained, one that does not translate Indonesia’s China policies in the category of being suboptimal and indecisive but a carefully constructed and calculated risk-based strategy vis-à-vis China’s rise. Informed by the risk literature of international relations, security studies, and finance, this research adopts the following conceptual frameworks to better comprehend Indonesia’s responses to China’s rise: Riskification (the process of risk construction), contexts (norms, politics, and history), and de-risking (policy manifestation to risk perceptions).

This qualitative research is a discourse analysis of Indonesia’s risk perception vis-à-vis China’s rise. It employs multiple cases: economic, political, and security risks, and identifies the linguistic repetitions of permanence and long-termism grammar to justify foreign policy decisions.

What are the prospects of war in the Taiwan Strait? How is effective deterrence achieved? Taiwan occupies a pivotal place in the Indo-Pacific regional security architecture. Beijing threatens to use force if Taiwan is not unified with China, while the United States provides military assistance to the island and insists on peaceful resolution of the dispute. As US-China security competition heats up, the strategic value of Taiwan is rising for both sides, setting the stage for potential conflict. As present, Chinese strategy appears to be in the process of shifting from deterring independence to compelling unification. Beijing’s acquisition of Taiwan will greatly enhance Chinese sea power but poses a serious challenge to US security interests in the Indo-Pacific. Tensions are expected to rise after the election of President Lai Ching-te in 2024, whom Beijing has accused of promoting Taiwan independence. In light of China’s growing ambitions and capabilities as well as changes in Taiwan’s domestic politics, this paper will evaluate the prospects of war in the Taiwan Strait and makes a case for effective deterrence. I argue that war in the Taiwan Strait is unlikely in the short run because China does not have the military capability to achieve a quick victory in an amphibious assault on the island. Deterring a Chinese attack in the long run requires an artful mix of credible threats and credible assurances.