The United States, China, and The Indo-Pacific Strategy

The United States, China, and the Indo-Pacific Strategy
Author(s): Weixing Hu
Source: China Review , AUGUST 2020, Vol. 20, No. 3, SPECIAL ISSUE: State-Society
Relations in China’s State-Led Digitalization: Progress and Prospects (AUGUST 2020), pp.
127-142
Published by: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26928114
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The China Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (August 2020), 127–142
The United States, China, and the Indo-Pacific

Strategy: The Rise and Return of Strategic
Competition*
Weixing Hu
Abstract
China is and will remain the most important great-power rival for the
United States in the 21st century. The Trump administration has adopted
a whole-of-government approach to compete with China. Washington
is taking tough measures confronting China’s challenges to the US
economic interests, values, and security. The Indo-Pacific region is a key
area where US-China strategic competition takes place. The US Indo-
Pacific Strategy (IPS) is a core competitive instrument for Washington
to contain China’s rising power and influence among those countries
along the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The articles in this special section
examine the changing parameters of the US-China relationship and
how Beijing responds to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy.
The relationship between he United States and China, the world’s largest
and the second largest economy, defines geopolitics of the 21st century.
Bound together by economic, security, and social ties, US-China relations
are complex, consequential, and tortuous. Over last few decades since
Weixing Hu is Distinguished Professor of Politics and Public Policy and Dean of

The Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau. Correspondence should be
sent to rwxhu@um.edu.mo.
* The author would like to acknowledge the support of research grant MYRG
CPG2020-00027 from University of Macau.

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128 Weixing Hu
1972, the relationship has experienced several episodes of twists and

turns, from strategic cooperation to engagement, to engagement plus
hedging, and to strategic competition. With the rising Chinese power and
growing suspicion of each other’s strategic intention, US-China relations
have again turned to be intensive and more competitive from the second
decade of the 21st century. In three years since the beginning of the
Trump presidency, the relationship has encountered fundamental chal-
lenges. The US-China relationship is at a critical juncture. There seems a
steady trend toward worsening over a long term.
The worsening of US-China relations, like the relationship itself, is too
complicated and comprehensive to summarize in a few words. During the
George W. Bush and Obama administrations, Washington pursued an
engagement plus hedging policy toward China. Although the two countries
competed in many areas, they still could cooperate in economic relations
as well as in regional and global governance issues. Yet the Trump admin-
istration has made a breakaway from his predecessors’ China policy, in
terms of basic assumptions, policy goals, and the way the policy is
conducted. This has led to an acceleration of the deterioration of the rela-
tionship, which started from Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy.
The Trump administration is changing basic parameters of the
US-China relationship. Less than one year in office, the Trump adminis-
tration released a new US national security strategy in which Washington
shifts from viewing China as a strategic partner to a strategic competitor.
The US-China relationship is viewed no longer as mutually beneficial but
instead as a zero-sum and more contentious one. According to the 2017
US national security strategy, China is “a strategic rival that challenges
American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American
security and prosperity.” 1 In a recently published strategic policy
document signed by Trump, Washington sees the US-China relationship
predominantly as “one of great power competition.” To respond to
Beijing’s challenge, “the [Trump] Administration has adopted a competi-
tive approach to the PRC, based on a clear-eyed assessment of the CCP’s
intentions and actions, a reappraisal of the United States’ many strategic
advantages and shortfalls, and a tolerance of greater bilateral friction,”
and “to maintaining a constructive, results-oriented relationship with the
PRC.”2 To stage a comprehensive competition against China, Washington
for the first time outlined a “whole-of-government approach” to rival
with the Chinese rising influence and power. Within this new strategy
the Indo-Pacific region is an important part of the national security

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The United States, China, and the Indo-Pacific Strategy 129
strategy that tries to compete and contain China’s rising influence, via
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other means, among those coun-
tries along the Indian and Pacific oceans.
1. The United States and China: A New Framework for

Strategic Competition
From the end of the Cold War, the US policy toward China largely swung
between “engagement” and “containment” up to the first decade of the
21st century. As a nuanced policy, the US China policy is premised on
the expectation that a “peaceful, stable, and prosperous China” is in the
American interest and China’s economic and political opening would
lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible world power.
Thus, while in the short run Washington keeps its dominant military
posture in the Asia-Pacific to hedge against China’s rise and make sure
the United States’ leading position would not be challenged, Washington
pursues a long-term policy of engaging China and getting the Chinese
system peacefully evolved. From Clinton to Obama this “engagement
plus” policy has played out well without any big problems. Deputy Secre-
tary of State Robert Zoellick argued in 2005 that, after a 30-year policy of
integrating China into the world economy, “we now need to encourage
China to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system.”3
When Obama first came to office in 2009, his administration held
high expectations that Beijing could be more cooperative with Wash-
ington in addressing the global financial crisis and other thorny regional
issues. There were even discussions about a possible “G-2” between
Washington and Beijing to manage global governance issues. Deputy
Secretary of State James Steinberg signaled to China that Washington
wanted to build a more stable and cooperative relationship with China
on basis of “engagement and reassurance.” In his words, Washington
would not oppose China’s rise to great power status, but China needs to
cooperate with the United States on an array of issues that the two coun-
tries have in common or have overlapped interests in.4
However, Obama’s “engagement and reassurance” policy did not last
long. It was quickly reversed in 2010–2011 and replaced by a new policy
of “Pivot to Asia” to rebalance against China’s rising power and influence
in the Asia-Pacific. Many American commentators blame China for the
policy reversal. They argue that Chinese leaders did not reciprocate
Obama’s goodwill and spoiled US-China cooperation over issues like

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130 Weixing Hu
climate change, the North Korean crisis, and the Iranian nuclear issue.
Others believe the more fundamental reason is China’s rapid growth of
economic power and military capabilities has made Beijing more confi-
dent and even assertive in foreign policy. With increasing power Beijing
demands more respect from Washington and other Western powers on
issues concerning China’s “core national interests.” In recent years China
has even stepped up efforts to transform various international institutions
and regimes. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, Beijing has become more
confident in conducting an ambitious foreign policy of “major country
diplomacy” (大國外交 daguo waijiao) and BRI to become a world power
by the mid-21st century.5
The US-China relationship, once again, has come to a critical
juncture. The changing balance of power and Washington’s failure to
determine China’s development course have called into question the
fundamental assumptions of the US China policy. History has proved
that American power cannot shape China to its liking.6 American policy-
makers and elites have come to the realization that 40 years of US
engagement policy has failed to produce what they have hoped for and
this policy must change. As two senior officials of the Obama administra-
tion observe, the record has become clear that “Washington once again
put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory. All sides of
the policy debate erred: free traders and financiers who foresaw inevitable
and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that
Beijing’s ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the inter-
national community, and hawks who believed that China’s power would
be abated by perpetual American primacy.”7 In debating what went
wrong, two camps of views seem to emerge on how to manage the great-
power relationship with China. One approach puts a premium on inter-
national order and continue to integrate China into this order. The other
approach emphasizes containing and limiting China’s ability to overturn
the order while defending American interests more firmly and forcefully.
Yet despite their differences, both camps want to transcend “business as
usual” and get tough on China on all fronts.
Against this background, the Trump administration lost no time in
designating China as a “revisionist power” and strategic competitor after
taking office. The administration has issued a series of strategy documents
to turn the corner. These documents include the “2017 US National
Security Strategy,” “2018 US National Defense Strategy,” “2018 Nuclear
Posture Review,” “2019 Department of Defense Indo-Pacific Strategy

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Report,” and “2019 Department of State: A Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”

Designating China as a challenger to the American economy, values, and
security, the Trump administration has returned to what is called “principled
realism” to compete with China and openly acknowledged the two coun-
tries are in strategic competition. The previous US administration recog-
nized the more pernicious aspects of China’s rise but did not make such
an open call for ending engagement and starting power rivalry. Trump’s
new China policy reflects a fundamental reevaluation of how the United
States understands and responds to the rise of China and raises it to the
position of primary geopolitical threat, overtaking Russia and other threats
to US national security. In breaking away from the past and recognizing
China as a long-term strategic competitor, the Trump administration
began to take a “whole-of-government” competitive approach toward
China. Guided by principled realism, Washington sees “no value in
engaging with Beijing for symbolism and pageantry, and instead demand
for tangible results and constructive outcomes.” According to the “US Stra-
tegic Approach to the PRC,” the US competition necessarily includes
engagement with the PRC, but the engagements are selective and results-
oriented, with each advancing US national interests.8 As the US-China
relationship is undergoing fundamental changes, a new framework for
US-China strategic competition is emerging.
Several important points can be made about this emerging frame-
work of strategic competition. First, as Henry Kissinger once said, the
good old days are gone for US-China relations and we will never go back
to what we were; the US-China relationship needs to be reconceptualized
and reoriented.9 The base for the relationship used to be “strategic part-
nership” against the former Soviet Union (before 1992) and against
global terrorism (September 11) and then global governance and
managing regional conflict and nuclear nonproliferation. When the rela-
tionship lost its strategic value, economic relations were said to be the
“ballast stone” to stabilize it. Now as the trade war is under way and the
risk of decoupling is on the rise, what will be the new base? How could
the relationship be reoriented as the balance of power between the two
countries has shifted? Competition, not cooperation, has become the
focus of bilateral exchanges. The risk of confrontation and even conflict is
increasing as we see a “spiral of negative rhetoric” attacking each other.
Even worse, if we say competition is the main theme of the relationship,
what is the focus of competition, and how could the competition be
managed? Will the two sides keep the communication channels open?

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132 Weixing Hu
Will the two economies be decoupled? The bad news is there is little
dialogue between the United States and China as Washington does not
want to “cater to Beijing’s demands to create a proper ‘atmosphere’ or
‘conditions’ for dialogue.”10 The shadow of what Graham Allison calls
“Thucydides’s Trap” lingers.11
Second, the present round of strategic competition has become more
comprehensive as the Trump administration has expanded the competi-
tive space and introduced multiple instruments of power and coercion
into the game. The Trump people have become more hostile in both
words and deeds. Within the American policy community, nobody is
talking about balancing competition with cooperation in other areas. The
broad competition has extended from Taiwan, the South China Sea, and
cyber security to trade war, technology cutoff, military buildup, ideology,
and even the Hong Kong issue. Trump’s “whole-of-government”
approach attempts to maximize pressure on China in various ways and
bring Beijing to its knees. There are five areas in which the Trump
administration is trying to knock China down: control over the Indo-
Pacific rimland, trade and the economy, China’s quest for alternative
technical standards, the pursuit of technological dominance, and Chinese
military advancement.12 However, the contestation is complex due to
close economic ties between the United States and China and the inter-
connectedness of global trade networks. When the US-China trade war
began, political observers warned that a new cold war was emerging, and
sustained power rivalry for decades may lead to hostility and undue
pessimism in international relations and world politics. As US-China
relations hit a new low, both sides were recruiting allies, which made the
world more divided. Washington moved away from strategic ambiguities
to strategic clarity in competition with China, and structural competition
become less manageable.
Third, the new strategic competition has found strong domestic
constituency on both sides. The “internalization” of great power competi-
tion is not good news and reminds people of the Cold War type of
confrontation and power rivalry. As it coincides with the US presidential
election, the China bashing is becoming part of US domestic politics and
electoral campaign. In the United States there is a rising propensity to
blame China for policy failure or almost everything unsatisfactory. This
China bashing has become bipartisan, and, worse even, American public
opinions on China have become more negative. The COVID-19
pandemic has led to a decline of people-to-people contact and become

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the source of resentment. There are diverse resentments toward the

Chinese government that have accumulated across the US political
system, entangled with election and partisan politics. American elites and
the populace alike have become more alienated from China. The new
domestic politics in China also respond to international criticism nega-
tively, especially to Trump’s blame-shift of his mishandling of the
pandemic. The nationalistic sentiment in China, unlike before, is less
about grievance and rather gives way to a rise of new “wolf warrior diplo-
macy” (戰狼外交 zhanlang waijiao). Nationalistic sentiment on the both
sides reinforces the dynamism of hostility toward each other and will
make the competition prolonged and difficult to manage.
2. The New US Competitive Strategy and the Indo-Pacific

For the United States, China is and will remain for a long period the
most important great-power competitor. According to the “US Strategic
Approach to the PRC,” the Trump administration has adopted “a
competitive approach to the PRC, based on a clear-eyed assessment of
the CCP’s intentions and actions, a reappraisal of the United States’ many
strategic advantages and shortfalls, and a tolerance of greater bilateral
friction.”13 This new US competitive strategy is multidimensional. There
are three broad areas in which Washington wants to take tough measures
confronting China’s challenges to US economic interests, values, and
security. Among different initiatives, the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) is
a core competitive strategy aiming at China.
Let us first look at Trump’s competitive strategy in the economic
domain. The goal of the Trump administration’s economic strategy is to
rebalance the US-China economic relationship through waging trade war
and technology controls. By targeting China’s huge trade surplus vis-à-
vis the United States, Trump wasted no time in initiating a trade war on
China to pressure Beijing for changing trade behavior, opening more
markets for US trade and investment, and stopping forced technology
transfer. To prevent the hollowing out of American manufacturing base
and to bring jobs back home, the Trump administration has used heavy-
handed tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods to compel Beijing to reduce
its trade surplus, restructure its domestic economy, eliminate intellectual
property theft, increase market access for US products, and eventually
limit the role of state-owned enterprises in international trade. Trump is
hostile to multilateral trade regimes and skeptical about the benefits of

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134 Weixing Hu
the liberal international order to the United States. His administration

prefers to adopt bilateral policies on economic and trade issues, exerting
unprecedented pressure on almost all trading partners including US
allies. It is in contrast to the Obama administration’s multilateral attitude
toward international trade regimes and world economic issues, which
was reflected in its TPP initiative and attracting China to cooperate with
the United States on climate change and other global governance issues.
After a tough 18-month negotiation, the United States and China
signed Phase One of a trade and economic agreement in January 2020.
But the deal is not the end of the game but the beginning of a new game.
The 96-page Phase One agreement consists of eight chapters on intellec-
tual property rights, technology transfer, food and agricultural products,
financial services, foreign exchange regulation, trade expansion, dispute
resolution, and final provisions. The US side agrees to cancel and reduce
some tariffs imposed on Chinese imports in exchange for China’s
purchasing a minimum of $200 billion of US goods and services, the
commitment on intellectual property, technology transfer, and financial
services. Instead of being what Trump calls a “transformative” deal, the
Phase One agreement arguably is “more an uneasy cease-fire than an end
to trade tensions,” and it leaves many deeply rooted issues unresolved.14
The Trump trade war has been costly for both the United States and
China. Instead of rebalancing the US-China economic relationship and
restructuring the Chinese economic system, the Trump tariffs have
caused considerable damage to US manufacturing, exporting, and
consumers. As a result, consumer prices rose and few jobs were created.
More importantly, as the global economy and production are highly inte-
grated today, the Trump trade war not only hurt China but also was
detrimental to global production and supply chains.
To push the envelope further, Washington has gone further in waging
a technology warfare against China. The purpose is to control and limit
China’s technology advancement and its quest for advantage in key tech-
nology sectors identified by the “Made in China 2025 Plan.” It has long
been recognized that great powers arise as the result of technology break-
throughs and domination of the leading sectors of the global economy.
Concerned with China’s rapid technology development, such as 5G
communication, space, and bioengineering technology, Washington has
expanded the trade war to high technology areas. Washington has taken
harsh measures to cut off China’s access to high-tech products and
instruments, research and development projects, and human talent and

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to limit China’s ability to create alternative technical standards in high-

tech sectors. A technology decoupling from China is taking shape, and
the contestation will spread to other related areas, such as student
exchanges, academic collaboration, exchanges of visits, and information
flow. The US efforts of containing China’s domination of global manufac-
turing and technology development could continue and escalate to a level
of “decoupling” between the two countries. Down the road, this escala-
tion to a broader economic and technology decoupling will have far-
reaching consequences for Sino-US relations and the world economy.
Another dimension of the US competitive strategy focuses on the
Chinese challenges to the American value system and the bedrock of
American soft power in the world. China is considered to engage in an
ideological competition with the West and promote a value proposition
that its governance system functions better than those of the United
States and other developed countries. Washington wants to push back
Beijing’s efforts to promote its political and economic model to the rest
of the world. “The US National Security Strategy” labels the US-China
rivalry as “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions
of world order.” For decades, the American elites have believed that the
United States could transform China into a free and democratic country
through “engagement.” Yet, they have found it is a mission impossible.
The Trump administration began to be more proactive to fight an
ideology war against China, a new front for Sino-US rivalry. China is
viewed constantly using the liberal international institutions to make
itself stronger and appealing to other countries. Trump officials have
become more straightforward in countering Chinese narratives, engaging
in PR competition with China, and limiting Chinese media activities in
the United States. Senior officials like Secretary of State Michael Pompeo
do not believe that the United States can change China’s behavior and its
political system through engagement. Instead, they argue Washington
must take a harsh stance to isolate China internationally. They began to
make extremely unfriendly remarks against Beijing and even tried to
alienate the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the
Chinese people.
Turning to the security dimension of the US competitive strategy, the
US-China security competition is complex and multidimensional. The
future US-China power game is likely to play out within a large region
called the “Indo-Pacific.” Transcending Obama’s “rebalancing to Asia” or
Asia-Pacific strategy, Trump’s IPS has laid out a contour of the US

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136 Weixing Hu
competitive approach toward China in years to come. There are four

important components in this new US competitive strategy vis-à-vis
China: (1) US military capability buildup in the Indo-Pacific region; (2)
providing strategic alternatives under the name of “Free and Open Indo-
Pacific” to undermine China’s growing influence via BRI or other means
in the region; (3) mobilizing US allies and friends to balance against
Chinese influence; and (4) using regional issues like the South China
Sea,Taiwan and Hong Kong to check on China.
The “2018 US National Defense Strategy” directs the modernization
and redesign of the US military in balancing against China’s technolog-
ical advancements, force development, and growing international
presence and assertiveness in the region.15 The “2018 Nuclear Posture
Review” calls for the modernization of the American nuclear triad and
the development of supplementary capabilities to deter China from using
weapons of mass destruction or conducting other strategic attacks.16 The
US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region includes 375,000 service
men and women, which account for 28 percent of its total force, 60
percent of its naval forces, and 55 percent of its army. Great power
competition is not static. Gearing up to compete with China, the
Pentagon focuses its efforts on enhancing the US military’s readiness and
lethality as well as reforming its management structure and forces.17
In the Indo-Pacific region, Washington is strengthening and evolving
the US partnership system into a security architecture that helps uphold
a “free and open” regional order. The concept of “Indo-Pacific” was not
an American invention. The Trump administration quickly took over the
concept and conceptualized it into the main theater of the future
US-China geostrategic competition. The Indo-Pacific idea emerged as
China began to extend its influence under the BRI. As China has
strengthened and expanded its economic and political influences in the
region, the United States, Japan, Australia, and India have become wary
of its breaking the liberal status quo. The main objective of the US IPS is
to provide strategic alternatives to undermine China’s growing influence,
via BRI or other means, among those countries along the Indian and
Pacific Oceans.18 In response to the shared or similar concerns regarding
China by Japan, Australia, and, to some extent, India, the IPS is also
intended to consolidate the American network of allies and partnership
in the region to countervail China’s increasing economic and military
presence in the region. Different from Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the
Trump administration has adopted a tit-for-tat strategy to respond

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China’s BRI challenge. Washington believes that China’s BRI is using

ambitious geoeconomic endeavor to project its strategic influence across
the Eurasian continent, from the Pacific to Indian Ocean, and all the way
up to Africa. If successful, China will host most of the world’s economic
centers and control major trading routes and the access to natural
resources around the globe. For the United States, it still possesses
enormous leverages such as military supremacy, multiple alliances,
powerful Western-led international organizations, and soft power to
balance the China challenge. Different from the US containment strategy
against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the IPS is trying to
contain China in those places where the United States has vital strategic
interest and can work with its allies to build a “chain” that traverses the
Western Pacific and East Indian oceans to encircling China from different
directions.
The Taiwan issue has been an old problem between China and the
United States and has reemerged as a high-profile problem on the agenda
of Sino-US relations.19 The magnitude and scope of Washington’s support
to Taiwan under the Trump administration has surpassed previous US
administrations. Washington continues to assist the Taiwan military, and
the US Congress enacted the Taiwan Travel Act of 2018 and the Taiwan
Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act of 2019. It
is a new political irritant for Beijing. The uncertainty and stakes brought
up by playing the Taiwan card are detrimental to the future relationship.
So is the Hong Kong issue. The US Congress has enacted a new law on
Hong Kong, “The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,”
following the anti–extradition bill protests (反修例運動 fan xiuli yundong)
in 2019. Washington is putting together sanctions on Beijing for putting
in place a new law of safeguarding national security in Hong Kong (港區
維護國家安全法 Gangqu weihu guojia anquan fa). The Trump administra-
tion’s increasing support for Hong Kong protestors and sanctions on
China are ringing the bell on Beijing. It has made the special administra-
tive region under the “One Country, Two Systems” rule a new battle-
ground between the United States and China. On the South China Sea
issue, the Trump administration seems more determined to use all means
to effectively curb the expansion of China’s military power. In 2017, the
US military launched a “freedom of navigation operation” four times in
the South China Sea, five times in 2018, nine times in 2019, and six
times in 2020 by July. On 13 July 2020, the US Secretary of State
announced a new position on maritime claims in the South China Sea, in

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138 Weixing Hu
which he challenges Beijing’s claims to offshore resources are completely

unlawful.20 The US Department of Defense announced that China would
no longer be invited to the annual “Rim of the Pacific” military exercise
as of 2018. The US military has increased the frequency of joint military
exercises with countries that have territorial disputes with China in
recent years. Australia also increased military pressure on China in the
South China Sea during Malcolm Turnbull’s tenure as prime minister.. In
July 2020, Australia and Japan, for the first time, joined the United States
in naval exercises in the South China Sea as a statement of keeping the
Indo-Pacific region “free and open”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an unprecedented opportu-
nity as well as challenges to US-China relations. Instead of taking this
historic opportunity for cooperation to tackle the global public health
threat, politically driven accusations and domestic politics in both coun-
tries have further deteriorated the relationship. The pandemic has shown
there is no immunity to the coronavirus across nations and individuals.
The virus can attack the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak. The
social and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are enormously
high. Due to different political systems China and the United States have
handled the pandemic differently. Although the pandemic has shown no
sign of ending, the United States so far has had a much higher death toll
than China. Trump has been criticized for his handling of the corona-
virus crisis, and the criticism is hurting his chances of reelection. To shift
the blame, Trump and his advisers see China as a target.21 For the
Chinese, they see that Trump wants to use China as a scapegoat for the
American problem. Beijing’s narrative is China’s response to the outbreak
demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese governance system, confer-
ring more legitimacy on the Chinese world leadership. So this narrative
war over the cause of the outbreak and whose system is better has not
only prevented the two countries from engaging in cooperation combat-
ting the coronavirus, but also made US-China economic, ideological, and
security competition further intensified, rather than abated. This is
because cooperation would be seen as self-harming when the two coun-
tries are locked in a zero-sum competition for global leadership.22
3. China’s Response to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy

As the US-China great power rivalry has come to the fore, the Indo-
Pacific region is one of key regions where their tussle for power and

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influence takes place. US-China strategic competition will affect almost

every geographic region and functional area in international relations of
the 21st century. The articles in this special section focus on how China
perceives and responds to the US IPS.
“The US Indo-Pacific Strategy and China’s Response,” authored by
Weixing Hu and Weizhan Meng, analyzes how the Chinese government
and policy community perceive and assess the US IPS. Ten years ago
when the Obama administration rolled out the “pivot to Asia” strategy,
Beijing’s answer was a grand geoeconomic plan that expand the Chinese
economic power along the ancient “Silk Roads” on land and on the sea.
Ten years later, how Beijing responds to the new strategic challenge from
Washington is fascinating to watch. Although the Chinese government
has not provided any strategic document like white papers to officially
respond to the US IPS as well as the “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision,
the authors argue that Beijing does not want to take tit-for-tat action to
respond to the US IPS. Instead, China has responded to the new
American challenge in a more constructive, peaceful, and nonconfronta-
tional manner. Beijing does not want to have a head-on confrontation
with Washington in the region while continuing its regional diplomacy to
mitigate possible national security risks and extend China’s international
influence in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
Bo Ma’s article, “China’s Fragmented Approach toward the Indo-
Pacific Strategy: One Concept, Many Lenses,” examines how the Chinese
government and China’s academic community understand the US IPS in
concept and substance. The author argues that there is division among
Chinese government officials, scholars, and policy analysts when coming
to assessing the nature, purposes, impacts, and policy recommendations
with regard to the US IPS, and the internal debate could hardly reach
consensuses among themselves. This fragmentation phenomenon, as he
observes, has existed over other policy issues as well. He argues that the
larger the scale of the issue, the higher the degree of fragmentation is
likely to be. In his view, concerning the debate over the IPS, there are
parallel and vertical fragmented views that coexist. The scholars from
different academic backgrounds offer different assessments of the IPS,
and the fragmentated approach actually makes the policy debates and
recommendations more sophisticated.
In “Explaining China’s Hedging to the United States’ Indo-Pacific
Strategy,” Xiaodi Ye argues that the existing debate and literature focus too
much on how and why the United States, Japan, Australia, and India have

132.204.9.239 on Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:26:06 +00:00
140 Weixing Hu
promoted the Indo-Pacific concept and how the US IPS has created
pressure on China’s national security. In his view, the Chinese perception
and response to the rise of the Indo-Pacific region is dynamic and sophisti-
cated. From the perspective of a hedging strategy, he argues that Beijing has
wisely applied a hedging strategy in response to the expanding range of the
American containment pressure. This hedging strategy has two interrelated
aspects. On one hand, the Chinese government adheres to the nonalliance
principle and upgrades its China-Russia strategic partnership to resist the
security pressure produced by the IPS. On the other hand, China has
continued its reassurance policy toward countries at its periphery so that
there are cooperative incentives for them to be on the Chinese side, espe-
cially those countries having security ties with Washington.
“The Power of a Niche Strategy and China’s Preemptive and Adaptive
Response to the US Indo-Pacific Strategy” by Chunman Zhang offers a
novel perspective to the understanding of China’s response to the US
IPS. Zhang proposes to make sense of China’s strategic and more impor-
tantly preemptive response to the US IPS. This response is what he coins
as a “niche strategy.” While the niche strategy is widely used in marketing
analysis, he tries to conceptualize it in international relations as a vital
foreign policy strategy and apply it to the understanding of China’s stra-
tegic response to the US IPS. Using the examples of the Asian Infrastruc-
ture Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRI operations, the author argues
that taking a niche strategy would help China better navigate the pressure
from the US IPS.
Notes
1 The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of
America,” December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.
2 The White House, “United States Strategic Approach to the People’s
Republic of China,” 26 May 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2020/05/U.S.-Strategic-Approach-to-The-Peoples-Republic-
of-China-Report-5.20.20.pdf.
3 Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State, Remarks to National
Committee on U.S.-China Relations New York City, “Whither China: From
Membership to Responsibility?,” 21 September 2005, https://2001-2009.
state.gov/s/d/former/zoellick/rem/53682.htm.
4 James B. Steinberg, “Administration’s Vision of the U.S.-China Relation-
ship,” Keynote Address at the Center for a New American Security,

132.204.9.239 on Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:26:06 +00:00
Washington, DC, 24 September 2009, http://www.state.gov/s/d/former/

steinberg/remarks/2009/169332.htm.
5 Weixing Hu, “Xi Jinping’s ‘Major Country Diplomacy’: The Role of Leader-
ship in Foreign Policy Transformation,” Journal of Contemporary China,
Vol. 28, No. 115 (2019), pp. 1–14.
6 Jisi Wang, “Did America Get China Wrong? The Engagement Debate,”
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 97, No. 4 (July/August 2018), pp. 183–195.
7 Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning: How Beijing
Defied American Expectations,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 97, No. 2 (March/April
2018), p. 60.
8 White House, “United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of
China,” p. 9.
9 For a good discussion, see Leah Bitounis and Jonathon Price, eds., The
Struggle for Power: U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century (Aspen Strategy
Group Report, Aspen Institute, 24 January 2020), https://www.aspeninsti-
tute.org/publications/the-struggle-for-power-u-s-china-relations-in-the-21st
-century/.
China,” p. 8.
11 Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape
Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2017).
12 Ashley Tellis, “The Return of U.S.-China Strategic Competition,” in Strategic
Asia 2020: U.S.-China Competition for Global Influence, edited by Ashley J.
Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills (Seattle: National Bureau of
Asian Research, 2019).
China,” p. 1.
14 “The U.S. and China Finally Signed a Trade Agreement. Who Won?,” Wash-
ington Post, 21 Januar y 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/2020/01/21/us-china-finally-signed-trade-agreement-who-won/.
15 US Department of Defense, “2018 National Defense Strategy of the United
States of America,” https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/
pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
16 US Department of Defense, “2018 Nuclear Posture Review,” https://media.
defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-
REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF.
17 US Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request,” 13 May
2020, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/
fy2021/fy2021_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf.
18 Andrew Scobell, “Constructing a U.S.-China Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific and
Beyond,” Journal of Contemporary China (15 May 2020), https://www.tand-
fonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10670564.2020.1766910.

132.204.9.239 on Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:26:06 +00:00
142 Weixing Hu
19 For more discussion, see, for example, Weixing Hu, “Trump’s China Policy
and its Implications for the ‘Cold Peace’ across the Taiwan Strait”, China
Review, Vol. 18, No. 3 (August 2018), pp. 61-88.
20 US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, “U.S. Position on Maritime
Claims in the South China Sea,” Press Statement, the US Department of
State, 13 July 2020, https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-
in-the-south-china-sea/
21 Alex Isenstadt, “GOP Memo Urges Anti-China Assault over Coronavirus,”
Politico, 24 April 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/24/
gop-memo-anti-china-coronavirus-207244; Stephen Kinzer, “The Dangerous
New Consensus: Blame China,” Boston Globe, 29 April 2020, https://www.
bostonglobe.com/2020/04/29/opinion/dangerous-new-consensus-blame-
china/.
22 Henry Kissinger, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World
Order,” Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/
the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-forever-alter-the-world-order-11585953005.

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