The ‘Indo-Pacific’ and geopolitical anxieties about China's rise in the Asian regional order

Abstract

The Indo-Pacific seems to have come of age. In a growing body of literature on this subject, the rise of India and China, as well as the ensuing great-power competition and deepening economic links across the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions are often seen as mere (albeit new) geopolitical realities, which the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ can best capture. This article, however, questions the ‘naturalness’ of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ and illustrates how it is largely a product of geopolitical imaginations about the perceived ‘rise of China’—imaginations that are shared among some influential observers and practitioners, particularly in the USA, Australia, Japan and India. Fuelled by their collective anxieties about China's growing influence in Asia, the ‘Indo-Pacific’ is not an innocent or neutral description, but is a manufactured super-region designed to hedge against a perceived Sino-centric regional order. In doing so, it is complicit in the production of great-power rivalries and regional security dilemmas. It is thus important that the ‘Indo-Pacific’ construct be subject to critical re-examination and re-imagination.

“印太”的说法看来已经瓜熟蒂落。关于这个话题的文献日益增多，印度、中国的崛起以及 随之而来的大国竞争、亚太和印度洋地区日益深化的经济联系，这一切常常被看做一个最易 用“印太”来描述的地理现实。不过，本文对这个概念是否“自然”表示怀疑，作者指出它 倒是一个对于“中国崛起”的地缘政治想象的作品。许多有影响力的观察家和实践者——尤 其是美国、澳大利亚、日本和印度的——都有这样的想象。对于中国在亚洲日益增长的影响 力，“印太”绝非一个纯然中性的说法，而是一个建构的超级区域，用以阻击以中国为中心 的区域秩序。可以说，对于营造大国竞争以及区域安全难题，它是有份的。因此要对“印太” 的说法有所反思并做新的构想。

Keywords:

• Asian regionalism
• Australia
• China
• geopolitical anxieties
• India
• Indo-Pacific
• Japan
• USA

Notes

1. I wish to thank Priya Chacko and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.