Divide and Rule: China’s Responses to the Various Indo-Pacific Initiatives and Its Changing Relations with the ASEAN

This chapter focusses on China’s responses to the various Indo-Pacific initiatives that have been made public since Shinzo Abe, then Japan’s Prime Minister, coined the very idea of Indo-Pacific in 2016 and also looks at how these responses have impacted China-ASEAN relations. It is China’s rise and, since 2013, Xi Jinping’s more assertive foreign policy as well as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that have been the main drivers of all the Indo-Pacific initiatives taken subsequently. Consequently, one can consider Japan’s and the Trump Administration’s Indo-Pacific strategies, as well as the reactivation of the QUAD, the strategic dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States (US), as direct responses to China’s growing international power and influence. Additional Indo-Pacific strategies were adopted later by other actors such as India, Australia, France, the European Union, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and ASEAN. In many respects, the Biden Administration has carried on Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy, concluding in September 2021, the AUKUS Pact, a security agreement between Washington, Canberra, and London that would provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. All aimed at establishing a new and hopefully more stable balance of power in the region, these initiatives have directly contributed to intensifying China’s activism on all fronts with the risk of antagonising more countries, including ASEAN partners. Nonetheless, in this new context, Beijing’s divide-and-rule strategy has remained rather successful, even if today it is facing more pushback among ASEAN capitals.