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Names: Khoo, Nicholas, editor. | Nicklin, Germana, editor. | Tan, Alexander C., editor.
Title: Indo-Pacific security : US–China rivalry and regional states’ responses / edited by
Nicholas Khoo, University of Otago, New Zealand; Germana Nicklin, Massey University,
New Zealand; Alexander C. Tan, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Other titles: US–China rivalry and regional states’ responses
Description: New Jersey : World Scientific, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023028653 | ISBN 9781800614840 (hardcover) |
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Subjects: LCSH: Indo-Pacific Region--Foreign relations--United States. |
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https://doi.org/10.1142/9781800614857_fmatter
About the Editors
Nicholas Khoo is an associate professor in the poli-

tics programme at the University of Otago. His
research focuses on Chinese foreign policy, Asian
security, great power politics, and international
relations theory, with a focus on alliances and coer-
cive diplomacy. Nicholas has been a visiting fellow
at the School of International Studies at Peking
University and a visiting professor at the Foreign
Affairs College, both in Beijing, China. In addition,
he has held positions at the Institute of Defence and
Strategic Studies in Singapore, the Council of Foreign Relations in
Washington, DC, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington, DC. Nicholas’s single-authored publications include
Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-
Vietnamese Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)
and Return to Power: China and East Asia Since 1978 (Edward Elgar,
2020). His co-authored publications include Asian Security and the Rise
of China: International Relations in an Age of Volatility (Edward Elgar,
2013), Security at a Price: The International Politics of U.S. Missile
Defense (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and Chinese Foreign Policy
Since 1949: The Emergence of a Great Power (Routledge, 2022).
vii
viii About the Editors
Germana Nicklin is an honorary research associate

for the School of People, Environment and Planning,
Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. From
2016 to 2023, she was a senior lecturer at the Centre
for Defence and Security Studies at Massey
University, teaching border security and resource
security. She researches and has published on
Trans-Tasman borders, Antarctic borders, supply
chain disruptions, maritime security, and public
policy. She is the only researcher in New Zealand
focusing on border security. She has presented her work at various New
Zealand and international conferences and seminars, including to the
Royal Geographical Society as part of an Antarctic panel and to the inau-
gural Maldives border agency conference. She has a PhD in public policy
from Victoria University of Wellington, for which she was granted an EU
Erasmus grant and a Deans Award. Prior to joining Massey University,
Germana worked in the New Zealand and Australian public services for
over 30 years, 17 of which were with the New Zealand Customs Service.
Alexander C. Tan is a professor of political science

and international relations at the University of
Canterbury, a university chair professor of political
science at the National Chengchi University in
Taiwan, and an honorary professor of the New
Zealand Defence Force Command and Staff
College. He is also a fellow of the John Goodwin
Tower Center for Political Studies in Dallas, US,
and the founder and principal research fellow at the
Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs. He was a visiting
scholar at universities in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan and
represented New Zealand in Track II security/economic dialogues. Alex
writes extensively in the areas of parties and elections, political economy,
Taiwan and Asian politics, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific,
and his recent publications include Asia Pacific Small States: The Political
Economies of Resilience (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2023). Alex is an
editor of Frontiers in Political Economy and an editorial board member of
several international academic journals, such as Political Behavior, Asian
Survey, Political Science, Politics and Governance, Issues and Studies,
Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs, Politicka Misao:
Croatian Political Science Review, and the Journal of Electoral Studies.
List of Contributors
Prashanth Parameswaran is a fellow at the Asia Program, Wilson

Center, Washington, DC, USA.
Kanghee Park is a research fellow at the National Bureau of Asian
Research, Washington, DC, USA.
Bhubhindar Singh is an associate professor at the Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Rebecca Strating is the director of La Trobe Asia and an associate profes-
sor of politics and international relations at La Trobe University,
Melbourne, Australia.
John Tai is a professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International
Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
Neel Vanvari is a research fellow at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs,
Christchurch, New Zealand.
T. Y. Wang is a university professor at the Department of Politics and
Government, Illinois State University, USA.
Nutthathirataa Withitwinyuchon is the associate dean at the Institute of
Diplomacy and International Studies, Rangsit University, Thailand.
ix
Acknowledgements
This book is the outgrowth of a regional security workshop held

in Wellington on October 2021 with the generous support of a
New Zealand–Taiwan lecture series grant awarded to Alexander Tan and
the Research Initiative on Taiwan Studies at the University of Canterbury
by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New Zealand. The
one-day workshop was sponsored by the University of Canterbury and
co-hosted by the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey
University in Wellington. The editors thank Representative Bill K. M.
Chen and Ms. Claire Chin of TECO-NZ for their support of this work-
shop, Dr. Natalie Watson at World Scientific Publishing for her support of
this book project, and Massey University for hosting the workshop.
xi
Contents
About the Editors vii

List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Nicholas Khoo, Germana Nicklin, and
Alexander C. Tan
Chapter 2 The Trump Administration and the Unravelling

of the United States’ China Engagement Policy 9
Nicholas Khoo
Chapter 3 How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition 27

Bhubhindar Singh
Chapter 4 Negotiating the Challenges of Asymmetry:

South Korea and US−China Rivalry 45
John W. Tai and Kanghee Park
Chapter 5 Thailand’s Alignment Policy in US–China Competition:

From Cold War to Present 61
Nutthathirataa Withitwinyuchon
xiii
xiv Contents
Chapter 6 Taiwan’s Strategic Choices in the Era of a Rising

China75
T. Y. Wang and Alexander C. Tan
Chapter 7 Reliable, Reticent, or Reluctant? India and US–China

Rivalry99
Neel Vanvari
Chapter 8 Southeast Asia and US–China Competition:

Realities, Responses, and Regional Futures 115
Prashanth Parameswaran
Chapter 9 Spatialities of Power in the Antarctic Ross Sea

Region: New Zealand, the United States, and China 131
Germana Nicklin
Chapter 10 Maritime Insecurity and the Changing Regional

Order: Australia as an ‘Indo-Pacific Power’ 149
Rebecca Strating
Chapter 11 Conclusions: Lessons Learned 167

Alexander C. Tan, Nicholas Khoo, and
Germana Nicklin
Index171

https://doi.org/10.1142/9781800614857_0001
Chapter 1
Introduction
Nicholas Khoo, Germana Nicklin, and Alexander C. Tan
The Origins of This Book

This book has its origins in a tour of Hawaii sponsored by the
United States Department of State for New Zealand-based academics in
December 2019. Unsurprisingly, the well-selected on-site locations,
weather, and overall environment in Hawaii made for an enjoyable experi-
ence. But as academics, what really gave the trip an invaluable quality
were the insights that we were able to garner from the well-honed brief-
ings at the various institutions we visited and, it must be added, the
equally compelling informal discussions with staff whom we interacted
with.
Towards the end of the trip, we reached a consensus to formalize our
excellent discussion in a special issue of a journal. Given its status as one
of the leading international security journals in New Zealand, the National
Security Journal struck us as a natural venue for this endeavour. Follow
ing a workshop on regional security co-hosted by Canterbury University
and Massey University in Wellington in 2021, the editors of this volume
decided to increase the number of countries by expanding the project into
book format. While many of the authors of the chapters in this volume
presented at the workshop, a number of additional chapter contributors
have been invited to capture the perspectives of a range of states in the
Indo-Pacific.
1
2 N. Khoo et al.
Indo-Pacific Security: US–China Rivalry and

Regional States’ Responses
A qualitative change in China’s foreign policy towards a more assertive
stance emerged soon after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Global
Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008–2009. But it is during the tenure of
China’s leader Xi Jinping (2012–present) that this policy change has
effected a systematic deterioration in US–China relations. The Trump
administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) openly acknowl-
edged a fundamental change in the US’ China policy from that of ‘engage-
ment’ to ‘strategic competition.’ The US policy of strategic competition
has been affirmed by the Biden administration.
This structural change in US–China relations has had important
regional effects. States in the Indo-Pacific region have had to adjust to the
reality of increasing great power rivalry. This book explores these devel-
opments. In the process, it fills a gap in the literature on regional studies,
international relations, and security studies, seeking to provide a compel-
ling account of the trajectory of US–China relations, even while illuminat-
ing the varied responses of states in the Indo-Pacific on or close to the
Asian continent, including Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South
Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and the states in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Island region. The choice of states is significant and merits comment.
While the authors recognize that the ongoing strategic competition
between the US and China is a major structural development in world
politics, a full understanding of that development necessarily requires an
investigation into its varying effects on regional states. Accordingly, this
book examines Indo-Pacific security principally from the perspective of
the regional states, from India in the west to the US in the east, China in
the north, and Antarctica in the south.
Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific

When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched the reform era in late
1978, few would have doubted China’s potential. But most observers
would have had some reservations about the country’s ability to deliver
economic growth as quickly as has occurred, with simultaneous and com-
plex effects across a myriad of areas stretching from the environment to
health, wealth, political development, and the regional and global military
balance. After more than four decades of rising Chinese economic power,
Introduction 3
we now have a Chinese challenge to the US’ strategic position in the Indo-
Pacific region. The chapters that follow seek to provide insight into the
international effects of China’s rise and, more precisely, the varying
responses of actors in the region to the structural change in US–China
rivalry. More specifically, this development has simultaneously increased
regional actors’ appreciation of the need to balance Chinese power, cata-
lyzing a degree of ambivalence towards Beijing and Washington, even
while increasing their value in this new era of strategic competition.
About the Chapters in the Book

Chapter 2: The Trump Administration and the Unravelling
of the United States’ China Engagement Policy
Nicholas Khoo sets the scene with his discussion of how power politics
drives US–China relations. Khoo contends that the era characterized by a
broad-based US engagement policy (1972–2016) has passed. He begins
with the observation that, while US–China relations from 1972 to 2011
were never completely smooth, they nevertheless contributed to an era of
heightened regional stability, even while meeting basic US and Chinese
economic and military interests. That said, during the tenure of Chinese
leader Xi Jinping (2012–present), the consensus in the US supporting
engagement with China was seriously eroded by increasing dissatisfaction
with developments in China’s domestic and foreign policies. As a conse-
quence, a policy of near-full-spectrum US engagement has been replaced
with one of strategic competition, in which conflict increasingly out-
weighs cooperation. More specifically, the chapter describes the relation-
ship’s breakdown during the Trump administration. Two major competing
explanations for the deterioration are evaluated, emphasizing either the
role of identity or aspects of power politics, specifically state interests and
the distribution of capabilities.
Chapter 3: How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition

Bhubhindar Singh begins with the observation that intensifying US–
China strategic competition presents Japan with a strategic dilemma. On
the one hand, Tokyo supports the maintenance of the status quo order
defined by US hegemony and liberal internationalism. This has brought
peace, stability, and prosperity to Japan, even while deterring China. On
4 N. Khoo et al.
the other hand, with China’s emergence as a peer competitor to the US,
Japan simultaneously recognizes and is concerned by the relative weaken-
ing of US influence and power in the Indo-Pacific. This potentially
weakens the stability provided by the US–Japan alliance and raises the
likelihood of the emergence of a Chinese-led order in East Asia and
the uncertainties associated with it. For Tokyo, it is critical that it manages
its strategic dilemma effectively. In practice, this translates into a Japanese
policy of actively seeking to preserve the US-led regional order while
preparing for a relative weakening of US power and influence in the Indo-
Pacific. Bhubhindar’s chapter poses two questions. First, how is Japan
managing the intensification of US–China competition? Second, what
type of foreign policy is Japan pursuing? The chapter explores Japan’s
pursuit of a ‘smart power-based’ foreign policy, reflected in the use of
hard and soft power tools. The argument is illustrated by reference to three
areas of Japanese policy: preserving the regional balance of power, rein-
forcing multilateralism in the Indo-Pacific, and stabilizing Japan–China
relations.
Chapter 4: Negotiating the Challenges of Asymmetry:

South Korea and US–China Rivalry
John Tai and Kanghee Park take as their point of departure the idea that
asymmetry is a structural factor in South Korean foreign policy. Seoul’s
management of asymmetry takes on an added layer of complexity as its
longstanding alliance partner, the US, and its top trade partner, China, are
in competition with each other. As the power balance between Beijing and
Washington has shifted in the former’s favour, these structural constraints
have been magnified. This has compelled South Korea to expend increas-
ing efforts to seek balance in its relationship with the US and China.
Events over the past decade have accentuated these asymmetrical dynam-
ics. The persistent threat from North Korea and China’s use of economics
as a tool in an overall policy of coercive diplomacy have compelled Seoul
to strengthen its security and political ties with the US. Tai and Park note
that, despite the challenges posed to it by US–China rivalry, South Korea
can leverage its economic strength and the shared security interests of the
two great powers on the Korean Peninsula. By doing so, it can mitigate
the negative effects of this rivalry in service of its foreign policy objec-
tives and national interests.
Introduction 5
Chapter 5: Thailand’s Alignment Policy in US–China

Competition: From Cold War to Present
Nutthathirataa Withitwinyuchon traces Thailand’s security relationships
with the US and China from the Cold War to the present. The chapter
highlights an important dynamic in Thailand’s foreign policy. When com-
petition between great powers is low or moderate, secondary states, such
as Thailand, have more space to manoeuvre. Accordingly, Bangkok has
adopted a policy stance of hedging. However, when great power competi-
tion is high, smaller states experience more constrained alignment options
and are compelled to balance against the imminent threat. The case of
Thailand’s foreign policy, set against the backdrop of US–China competi-
tion from the Cold War until the present, is used to illustrate this
argument.
Chapter 6: Taiwan’s Strategic Choices in the Era of a

Rising China
T. Y. Wang and Alexander C. Tan emphasize the central role of domestic
politics in Taiwan’s strategic responses to a rising China. Their data dem-
onstrate a clear association between public opinion and Taipei’s cross-
Strait policy. Wang and Tan show that Taiwanese citizens’ risk-averse
attitude supports a hedging strategy. That said, high-profile developments
in Beijing’s Hong Kong policy and the Trump administration’s policies
have contributed to a shift in citizens’ policy preferences, which is mir-
rored in Taipei’s approach towards China. As Beijing is expected to con-
tinue its assertive stand and the Biden administration has adopted a more
competitive approach towards China, the chapter concludes that, in
accordance with their argument highlighting the centrality of domestic
politics in Taipei’s cross-Strait policy, there is a prediction of a stronger
balancing component.
Chapter 7: Reliable, Reticent, or Reluctant? India and

US–China Rivalry
Neel Vanvari explains how India’s post–Cold War era foreign policy has
been shaped by two imperatives. The first is a shared concern with the US
over aspects of China’s foreign policy, reflected in India’s increasingly
6 N. Khoo et al.
close cooperation with the US during the Trump and Biden presidencies.
At the same time, a second and often overlooked imperative sets limits on
its relationship with Washington. Specifically, New Delhi’s longstanding
preference for strategic autonomy reflects India’s own interests and ambi-
tions of becoming a great power. This accounts for New Delhi’s strategy
of multi-alignment and its preference for multipolarity in an age of
increased US–China strategic competition.
Chapter 8: Southeast Asia and US–China Competition:

Realities, Responses, and Regional Futures
Prashanth Parameswaran investigates the Southeast Asian perspective on
US–China rivalry. Three arguments are advanced. First, the current phase
of this rivalry and Southeast Asia’s responses must be understood with
reference to the multiple uncertainties faced by Southeast Asian states,
which include, but are not limited to, the US–China competition and pre-
vious phases of adjustment to the dynamics between the two countries.
Second, the responses of Southeast Asian states can be profitably viewed
through the prism of the following major components that extend beyond
their ties with Beijing or Washington: the management of bilateral equi-
ties with the US and China, the domestic environment, regional processes,
and the wider alignment mixes in foreign policy. Third, looking ahead,
assessing Southeast Asian regional responses to evolving US–China
dynamics will involve a focus on the shifting ties between the two and a
variety of other factors. These include the respective Southeast Asian
states’ independent assessments of the US and China; wider domestic,
regional, and international factors that affect Southeast Asia; the range of
tools available to these states to manage intensifying geopolitical compe-
tition; and the ability of these states to subtly and flexibly adjust their
approaches amid increasingly granular engagement by Washington and
Beijing, and growing public scrutiny of their positions.
Chapter 9: Spatialities of Power in the Antarctic Ross Sea

Region: New Zealand, the United States, and China
Germana Nicklin’s chapter is the first of two covering Oceanic states. Her
chapter proceeds from the vantage point that Antarctica is a space where
smaller states have more influence than in other regions and where the
Introduction 7
influence of the collective interests of the Antarctic Treaty System is the

distinguishing feature. Accordingly, the chapter re-examines the interac-
tions among the US, China, and New Zealand in the Ross Sea region
using a political geography lens to explore the dynamics of intersecting
maritime and other activities. The alternate reality of collective Antarctic
governance, plus the actual activities of these states in the Ross Sea
region, tells stories of state interrelations in time-space that are connected
with relations elsewhere. This examination shows how actions in the Ross
Sea are affected by the mutual mistrust of the great powers in the
Indo-Pacific.
Chapter 10: Maritime Insecurity and the Changing Regional

Order: Australia as an ‘Indo-Pacific Power’
Rebecca Strating’s chapter examines Australia’s redeveloped role concep-
tion as an ‘Indo-Pacific’ regional power. While historically taking a
pragmatic approach to its relations with the US and China, it has now
effectively ‘chosen’ Washington. Australia’s reinforced commitment to
the US alliance as the backbone of its security policy has been apparent in
its approach to maritime security, including in its shift to minilateralism
through membership in the Quad and AUKUS and its ambitious defence
procurement plans. As a corollary, a high-level freeze on diplomatic rela-
tions between Australia and China lasted over two years, even though —
unlike some other US allies — they have no territorial or maritime
disputes. The shift from conceptualizing an Asia-Pacific region to an
Indo-Pacific region has been driven by two key concerns: first, China’s
rise and implications for regional order; and second, the credibility and
endurance of the US’ commitment to Asia. The chapter seeks to answer
the question of how governments and elites have viewed ‘seapower’ as
best serving and securing Australia’s interests in this shifting geopolitical
landscape. Ultimately, this chapter argues that Australia’s approach to its
vast range of maritime security issues remains fragmented and incoherent.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9781800614857_0002
Chapter 2
The Trump Administration and

the Unravelling of the United States’
China Engagement Policy
Nicholas Khoo*
Introduction
US–China relations have faced many challenges since Richard Nixon and
Mao Zedong brokered a dramatic diplomatic rapprochement in 1972, but
none as serious as the present. Contention is now the dominant character-
istic in issue areas ranging from trade and military affairs to human rights
and democracy. Indeed, even before the Trump administration came
to power, a consensus had developed among US–China specialists that US
engagement policy with China had failed, even as debate existed on what
policy to replace it with. Thus, in 2015, Harry Harding, a leading China
expert, lamented the poor state of the US–China relations. According to
Harding, the US’ ‘present [China] policy is widely believed to have failed’
(Harding, 2015: p. 95). Looking to the future, his concern was that the
US–China relations would become ‘essentially competitive or even
degenerate into open rivalry’ (Harding, 2015: p. 119). That time has come.
*Nicholas Khoo acknowledges the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey
University (and specifically, Managing Editor John Battersby) for granting permission to
reuse his article from the 2021 issue ‘The Trump administration and the United States’
China engagement policy,’ National Security Journal 3(2): 1–19.
9
10 N. Khoo
Since 2017, there has been open acknowledgement in the US of ‘geopo-

litical competition’ and ‘strategic competition’ with China and serious dis-
cussion of how to ‘decouple’ the relationship (OPUS, 2017: p. 45).
Meanwhile, the Chinese perspective is that policies pursued by the US,
particularly during the Trump presidency, are responsible for the present
state of the relationship (State Council, 2019). This chapter describes and
analyses the Trump administration’s abrogation of a near-full-spectrum US
policy of engagement with China and its replacement with a more condi-
tional posture that reflects a greater US tolerance for conflict, reflected in
the concept of ‘strategic competition’ (OPUS, 2020: p. 16). It then proceeds
to evaluate two major competing explanations for this policy change. These
emphasize either the role of the concept of identity, or aspects of power
politics — specifically, state interests and the distribution of capabilities.
A Policy Unravelled
The unravelling of the US policy of engagement with China occurred over
a sustained period in the post–Cold War era, culminating in the Trump
administration’s adoption of a policy designed to actively seek changes in
Chinese behaviour in multiple spheres, both domestic and international. The
first major document outlining this change was the administration’s
December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS). In an interview to intro-
duce the NSS, National Security Adviser Herbert McMaster commented
that China was a ‘revisionist power’ that ‘was undermining the international
order’ (Donnan and Sevastopulo, 2017). In a significant departure, the NSS
questioned the fundamental premise of engagement that had underpinned
US’ China policy since 1972 (OPUS, 2017: pp. 2–3). The NSS opined that
‘China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region,’ a
region where Beijing is ‘using economic inducements and penalties, influ-
ence operations, and implied military threats to persuade other states to heed
its political and security agenda’ (OPUS, 2017: pp. 25, 46). While critical of
aspects of Chinese policy, the three previous NSS documents (in 2002,
2010, and 2015) had not adopted such stark language. These reports refer-
enced ‘managing competition from a position of strength’ (OPUS, 2015:
p. 24), underlined that ‘a pragmatic and effective relationship between the
United States and China is essential to address the major challenges of
the 21st century’ (OPUS, 2010: p. 43), and emphasized cooperation even
while acknowledging differences (OPUS, 2022: pp. 27–28).
The administration’s January 2018 National Defense Strategy reas-
serted the new line, noting that ‘the central challenge to US prosperity and
The Trump Administration and the United States’ China Engagement Policy 11
security is the re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition by […]

revisionist powers,’ a category which it identified as including, among
others, China and Russia (DOD, 2018: p. 2). The document reverted to
describing China as a ‘strategic competitor’ of the US (DOD, 2018:
p. 2) — a description previously used in 2000 by then presidential candi-
date George W. Bush (Lippman, 1999). The 2019 Department of Defense
Indo-Pacific Strategy report buttressed this perspective, cataloguing
China’s revisionist policy practices even while highlighting the erosion of
the US’ regional deterrence posture (DOD, 2019: pp. 7–10, 16). This was
followed by the February 2020 United States’ Strategic Approach to the
People’s Republic of China report, which called for a ‘clear-eyed assess-
ment of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) intentions and actions, a
reappraisal of the United States’ many strategic advantages and shortfalls,
and a tolerance of greater bilateral friction’ (OPUS, 2020: p. 1).
Given that China’s post-1978 economic growth model has been predi-
cated on a robust relationship with the US, the unravelling of US engage-
ment policy is a disastrous outcome.1 Nonetheless, at the same time, this
development is also a confirmation of a longstanding Chinese worldview.
To be specific, there has been a persistent assertion by both official and
non-official Chinese sources of the US’ alleged malign view of China’s
rise. As early as the 1990s, references were being made by Chinese ana-
lysts to a US intent to ‘contain’ China’s rise (State Council, 1998;
Pillsbury, 2000). This feature of Chinese commentary has strengthened
over time. In a not-so-veiled reference to the US, a Chinese government
Defence White Paper declared in October 2000 that: ‘No fundamental
change has been made in the old, unfair and irrational international
political and economic order. Certain big powers are pursuing “neo-
interventionism,” “neo-gunboat diplomacy,” and “neo-economic colonial-
ism,” which are seriously damaging the sovereignty, independence, and
developmental interests of many countries, and threatening world peace
and security’ (cited in Pomfret, 2000). Undoubtedly, this stance reflected the
incoming George W. Bush administration’s more robust stance towards
1This is reflected in the reality that the US has been China’s top export trading partner
on a country basis for much of the post-1978 reform era. See US Census Bureau foreign
trade figures from 2004–2019. Available at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/
highlights/top/index.html. See also the entry for China in the World Bank’s database. World
Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), China Trade Statistics, 18 February 2021. Available at
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/CHN https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/
en/Country/CHN/Year/2018/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/USA/Product/All-Groups.
12 N. Khoo
China during that year’s presidential campaign. Despite a contentious

start that was marked by the EP-3 crisis of April 2001, the imperative of
prosecuting the Global War on Terror after 9/11 focused US attention on
maintaining a stable relationship with China throughout Bush’s two-term
tenure, even as his administration kept its eye on balancing China’s rising
power (Silove, 2016). Frictions intensified as the Obama administration
responded to China’s growing post-2008 Global Financial Crisis power
position by articulating a ‘rebalancing’ of Indo-Pacific policy over the
course of the 2010–2011 period. And it was not uncommon to hear repeated
claims from Chinese academics that the US was adopting a policy ‘posture
[that is] seemingly intent to contain China’ (Jiang, 2013: p. 159).
Chinese grievances escalated with the Trump administration’s adop-
tion of a more robust China policy, exemplified by US trade policy since
early 2018 (Khoo, 2020: pp. 82–85, 135–137). This watershed develop-
ment was underpinned by longstanding and specific complaints from the
US Trade Representative’s Office (USTR, 2019). In the face of these
developments, an authoritative 2019 Chinese government White Paper on
China’s role in the world counselled that ‘cooperation is the only correct
choice for the two countries’ (SCIO, 2019: p. 44) before advising that ‘the
US should abandon the Cold War mentality’ (SCIO, 2019: p. 45) and dis-
associate itself from a ‘surging’ trend in world politics of ‘hegemonism
and power politics’ (SCIO, 2019: p. 32). It quickly became clear to the
Chinese leadership that the US was not going to back down on its demand
for a renegotiation of the economic relationship. Accordingly, a Phase
One agreement was reached in late 2019, taking effect on 15 January 2020
(Swanson, 2019). In an ironic twist, Trump’s signature achievement on
China was torpedoed by a combination of idiosyncrasies. Specifically, the
CCP leadership’s historically well-established proclivity to place the party’s
image and interests before their citizens’ health interacted with President
Trump’s bizarre decision-making on the COVID-19 pandemic with cata-
strophic consequences. Despite having been directly and repeatedly noti-
fied of the pandemic in January 2020, Trump took what is manifestly
insufficient action. And, to compound matters, rather than cooperate to
solve the most pressing international health crisis in a century, Beijing2 and
Washington have politicized the issue.3
2 China’s embassies and diplomats have encouraged countries and international organiza-
tions to make positive statements about China’s response, and regardless of whether such
a positive response has been received, they have portrayed the response as positive.
3 President Trump repeatedly focused on the World Health Organization’s failure to more
aggressively confront China over its handling of the outbreak in Wuhan.

In the meantime, the Trump administration hardened its stance on

China, laying out its critique of China in a systematic quartet of public
speeches over the June–July 2020 period. These involved the national
security advisor, the FBI director, the attorney general, and the secretary
of state (Barr, 2020; O’Brian, 2020; Pompeo, 2020a; Wray, 2020). Indeed,
it is difficult to think of a sphere in the relationship that has not been tar-
geted by the administration. US sanctions on China have ranged from
adding Chinese entities4 to two separate blacklists, the first list overseen
by the Commerce Department, and the second managed by the Department
of Defense; requiring Chinese news agencies operating in the US to regis-
ter as foreign government operatives, thus subjecting them to the same
rules governing Chinese diplomats (Khoo, 2020: pp. 84–85); barring spe-
cific Chinese officials responsible for implementing its widely criticized
national security law on Hong Kong from entry into the US (Jacobs and
Wadhams, 2020); enacting legislation against US investments in compa-
nies owned or operated by the Chinese military (Ali et al., 2020); finding
that China is pursuing a policy of genocide towards its Uighur minority
in Xinjiang (Buckley and Wong, 2021); tightening visa rules for visiting
CCP members (Mozur and Zhong, 2020); launching a vast investigation of
Chinese efforts to acquire research by scientists employed by US universi-
ties and research institutes (Kolata, 2019), even as the administration pub-
licly warned of China’s efforts to exploit US universities in various ways
(Pompeo, 2020a); and targeting Beijing’s strategic neuralgia by deepening
US relations with Taiwan (Kuo and Shih, 2021).
These actions prompted a furious Chinese response. On 25 May 2020,
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared that American politicians ‘are
taking China–US relations hostage and pushing us to the brink of a new
Cold War’ (Fifield, 2020). On 9 July, Wang opined that the China–US
relationship ‘is faced with the most severe challenge since the establish-
ment of diplomatic ties’ (Shepherd, 2020). In his view, the US’ China
policy has reached a ‘point of paranoia,’ where ‘it seems as if every
Chinese investment is politically driven, every Chinese student is a spy,
and every cooperation initiative is a scheme with hidden agenda’ (Myers
and Mozur, 2020). Tensions culminated on 24 July, with the Trump
administration’s decision to order the closure of China’s consulate in
Houston, the charge being that it was serving as a hub for espionage
activities (Fifield et al., 2020).
Defined as including businesses, companies, research institutes, individuals, govern-

4
ments, private organizations, and other types of legal persons.

14 N. Khoo
Explaining the Unravelling

How can we explain the unravelling of the US engagement policy with
China and the accompanying tolerance for a relationship where aspects of
conflict prevail over cooperation? Space considerations limit our review
to what are arguably the two most influential explanations: identity theory
and neorealist theory.
There is a burgeoning research programme on the concept of identity
in great power politics, in which the China–US relationship is promi-
nently featured (Allan et al., 2018; Brands, 2018; Friedberg, 2019; Haas,
2012; Kagan, 2019). In addition, identity-related dynamics serving as a
source of intense conflict in US–China relations comport with the rhetoric
of some of the major participants in the relationship (Pompeo, 2020b; Xi,
2017). On the US side, various official reports since 2017 have juxtaposed
ideological regime differences with standard inter-state power struggles
to explain the deterioration in relations.5 Thus, the 2017 NSS report
described the China–US relations as one of the ‘power contests’ facing the
US in world politics, which it characterized as ‘fundamentally political
contests between those who favour repressive systems and those who
favour free societies’ (OPUS, 2017: p. 25). In his introductory statement
for the 2019 Department of Defense Indo-Pacific Strategy report, Defense
Secretary Patrick Shanahan singled out the CCP-led China as typifying
the phenomenon of ‘inter-state strategic competition,’ where ‘geopolitical
rivalry between free and oppressive world order visions’ is ‘the primary
concern for US national security’ (DOD, 2019, Foreword). The February
2020 United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China
report added specificity to this, acknowledging ‘long-term strategic com-
petition between our two systems’ (OPUS, 2020: p. 16), ‘a system rooted
in Beijing’s interpretation of Marxism–Leninism ideology’ (OPUS, 2020:
p. 5), and calling for ‘a competitive approach to the People’s Republic
of China’ (OPUS, 2020: p. 1). Finally, the State Department Policy
Planning Staff’s November 2020 report on China noted that ‘the Chinese
Communist Party has triggered a new era of great power competition’
(DOS, 2020: p. 1), stating that ‘in the face of the China challenge, the
United States must secure freedom’ (DOS, 2020: p. 1).
5In theoretical terms, such an explanation is consistent with either liberal democratic peace
theory or the identity strand of constructivist theory.
The emphasis by the US on regime-based identity differences has

been mirrored by China. That this has occurred is also not surprising.
China’s state identity manifestly reflects its Marxist–Leninist ideology,
with the CCP at the vanguard. The leadership of the Peoples’ Republic of
China views itself as an exemplar of a state that practises ‘Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics,’ which, according to Xi Jinping, the President
and General Secretary of the CCP, offers ‘a new option for other countries
and nations that want to speed up their development while retaining their
identity’ (Xi, 2017: p. 9). Central to this identity are the Four Cardinal
Principles,6 first articulated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and advanced as
the ‘basic prerequisite for achieving modernization’ (Joseph, 2010:
p. 156). These principles are enshrined in the Constitution of the People’s
Republic of China, establishing the Party’s dominance over China’s
politics and society on a Marxist–Leninist basis (Constitution of the
Communist Party of China, 2017: p. 4). And consistent with the founda-
tional Marxist–Leninist texts, the Chinese leadership believes in ‘building
a socialism that is superior to capitalism, laying the foundation for a future
where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position’ (Xi, 2013).
The differences in the two states’ identity-based self-perceptions are
stark and so are the differences in the significance of these diverging iden-
tities. In the Chinese self-conception, a Marxist–Leninist China pursues
an ‘independent foreign policy of peace’ and ‘will never seek hegemony
or engage in expansion’ (Xi, 2017: p. 53). Accordingly, China ‘absolutely
reject[s] the Cold War mentality and power politics’ (Xi, 2017: p. 53). In
contrast, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has highlighted the CCP’s
identity as a source of conflict in bilateral relations, declaring in early
2020 that the CCP is ‘the central threat of our times’ (Santora, 2020). In
Pompeo’s view, ‘today, China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and
more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else. […] If the
free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will
change us. (Pompeo, 2020b). Accordingly, ‘the old paradigm of blind
engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue
it. We must not return to it’ (Pompeo, 2020b).
The China–US dyad manifestly involves states with deeply contrast-
ing identities, but what is the specific causal role and impact of identity in
6The principles are the Socialist Road, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Leadership
of the Communist Party, and adherence to Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
16 N. Khoo
the bilateral relations? Are identity dynamics the reason for the unravel-
ling of the US engagement policy and, with it, the wider China–US rela-
tions? Closer inspection suggests important empirical and methodological
reasons for caution.
First, while recognizing that some level of identity-based friction is
inevitable in relations between states organized on such different govern-
ing principles, substantial empirical evidence suggests that the US is able
to confidently coexist with a Chinese communist state that does not share
its liberal democratic capitalist identity. Indeed, the 2020 President’s
Office report states that the US’ China policy is ‘not premised on an
attempt to change the PRC’s domestic governance model’ (OPUS, 2020:
p. 8). A similar generalization can be made for China in that respect since
sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states are
two of China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Odgaard, 2012).
Despite significant identity-based differences, the US has had a very
robust engagement policy with China since 1972. In broad terms, the
Chinese economic miracle is ‘Made in the USA.’ The US has been the top
export market for China for much of the post-1972 era. Not to put too fine
a point on it, without the ability to export to the US market, the China
economic miracle would not have been possible. And China has been a
major export market for the US (US Census Bureau, various years).
Since 1972, the goal of US engagement policy has been to substan-
tially affect Chinese foreign and domestic policy and to incentivize China
to operate in ways that are consistent with US interests. Indeed, it is pre-
cisely the US’s rejection of a preemptive containment policy in favour of
a near full-spectrum post–Cold War era US engagement policy that is at
the core of the offensive realist critique of US China engagement policy
(Mearsheimer, 2001: p. 57). To this end, US’ engagement policy has sur-
vived a number of specific and serious challenges in the post–Cold War
era, including the CCP’s Tiananmen era crackdown during 1989–1992;
the Clinton administration’s MFN-Human Rights linkage policy during
1993–1994; the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1995–1996; and Taiwanese leader
Chen Shuibian’s disruptive role in the China–US relations during 2001–
2008. Until very recently, the US successfully balanced the imperative to
provide for its own security as well as that of its alliance partners in the
strategically significant East Asian region, even while integrating China
into the international system. The near-full-spectrum version of this policy
was a strategic choice which yielded substantial benefits to the US and its
regional allies and partners but has clearly run its course. To the extent
that serious conflict has erupted, as discussed in the following section on

neorealist theory, it is principally because China has acquired the capabili-
ties and the resolve to challenge US policy in East Asia in the post-2008
era that Washington has had to engage in sustained pushback against
Chinese policy.
Second, it is unclear if the identity concept provides us with sufficient
conceptual leverage to cogently analyse US–China relations. In this
respect, analysts who have posited identity as the principal determinant in
Chinese foreign policy are now either unable to explain China’s turn
towards a more contentious stance and/or are implausibly citing changes in
the identity concept as reasons for pessimism. For example, in focusing on
identity as a core explanatory variable (Kang, 2007, pp. 4, 9, 20–21), Kang
has contended that fears over China’s rise are ‘empirically unfounded’
(Kang, 2007: p. 10) and that there exists a strong shared regional under-
standing about ‘China’s preferences and limited aims’ (Kang, 2005: p. 552).
In this view, rather than viewing China as a threat, present-day East Asian
states are mimicking their predecessors in previous eras, who identified
Chinese regional hegemony with stability (Kang, 2007: p. 4). Kang’s per-
spective simply fails to provide a convincing explanation for China’s more
robust post-2009 foreign policy. Alternatively, David Shambaugh argued
in 2005 that China was gradually shedding its ‘identity of historical victim’
(Shambaugh, 2004/2005: p. 64). However, just a few years later, identity
was cited as the key reason for an increasingly assertive Chinese Asia
policy (Shambaugh, 2011). Could China’s state identity have changed so
quickly? This seems highly unlikely. Indeed, if identity is so malleable, it
draws our attention to the fact that the claims on behalf of the concept are
a case of spurious causation, masking the operation of more fundamental
variables outlined as follows.
Neorealist Theory and the United States’ China

Engagement Policy
How then can we explain the trajectory of the US’ China engagement
policy? Two reasons — the timing of contemporary China–US conflict
escalation and the historical record of US relations with non-liberal
democratic states — strongly suggest that the course of the relation-
ship is more convincingly understood with reference to concepts in
neorealist theory: the distribution of capabilities and state interests.
18 N. Khoo
Here, neorealism is used as a theory of foreign policy (Elman, 1996).

Moreover, moving forward, in practical policy terms an interest-based
US policy towards China is much more likely to sustain a workable
relationship than one based on identity convergence.
First, consider the timing of conflict escalation in the China–US
relations. Bilateral relations during 1991–2008 were far from smooth
(Khoo, 2020, pp. 57–101). But it was only at the tail end of the Hu Jintao
era, and particularly after Xi Jinping assumed the mantle of CCP General
Secretary in November 2012 and sought to systematically project China’s
rapidly expanding post-2008 Global Financial Crisis power onto the inter-
national sphere, that the US responded with the adoption of a more robust
China policy. In other words, bilateral relations sharply deteriorated after
China acquired sufficient material capabilities and demonstrated a revi-
sionist state posture towards US regional interests. This point is recog-
nized even in what is arguably the US government’s most identity-focused
report on China in recent years, the State Department’s 2020 Elements of
the China Challenge. Notwithstanding that report’s heavy focus on
aspects of China’s ideological identity, including China’s ‘Marxist–
Leninist beliefs,’ its ‘authoritarian government,’ and ‘intellectual sources
of China’s conduct’ (DOS, 2020: pp. 1, 8, 27), it nevertheless states that,
ultimately, ‘China is a challenge because of its conduct’ (OSS, 2020:
pp. 1, 8). This essential neorealist understanding of Chinese foreign policy
makes eminent sense. Why? Because China’s identity as a Marxist–
Leninist state has remained broadly constant throughout the post-1978
reform era. Accordingly, Beijing’s conduct has changed principally
because of rising capabilities and revisionist state interests.
Second, a review of the historical record of US relations with non-
liberal democratic states suggests that a state’s values, a synonym for
identity, are a significant problem in bilateral relations only when there is
already an underlying strategic competition based on the balance of power
and conflicting state interests. The most prominent example in this respect
is the US–Soviet relationship, in which cooperation with the Soviet Union
during World War Two was replaced by intense Cold War rivalry (Gaddis,
2005). As in the case of contemporary China noted above, Soviet identity
remained broadly constant throughout this period. What changed was
Moscow’s capability to challenge US foreign policy. For states that are
not in strategic competition with the US, a state’s identity and values
present no barrier to cooperation. The US has a well-established record
of cooperating with states with vastly different ideological identities
(Resnick, 2010/2011). Indeed, the Sino-American containment of Soviet

power in the second half of the Cold War is one of the most prominent
examples of this phenomenon (Ross, 1995). This historical pattern in US
foreign policy continues to this day. Thus, the US NSS 2017 report
highlighted China’s authoritarian ideology (OPUS, 2017: p. 25) as a major
problem in China–US bilateral relations, even while stressing that in its
relations with allies and partners, many of whom are not liberal
democratic, ‘we are not going to impose our values on others’ (OPUS,
2017: p. 37).
Third, an interest-based rather than identity-based relationship has a
much greater likelihood of being sustained by Beijing and Washington. It
is important to note that, notwithstanding copious discussion highlighting
ideological differences, key Trump administration documents on China
are careful to specify a US willingness to cooperate with China when
interests overlap. The 2017 NSS report notes that Chinese ‘intentions are
not fixed’ (OPUS, 2017: p. 25) and that the US ‘stands ready to cooperate
across areas of mutual interest [emphasis added]’ (OPUS, 2017: p. 25).
Similarly, the 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy report states that ‘the United
States is prepared to support China’s choices to the extent that China
promotes long-term peace and prosperity for all in the Indo-Pacific, and
we remain open to cooperate where our interests align [emphasis added]’
(DOD, 2019: p. 10). Also, the 2020 President’s Office report states that
‘we welcome cooperation when our interests align [emphasis added]’
(OPUS, 2020: p. 2). On this score, it is encouraging that President Biden
has repeated that the US ‘is ready to work with Beijing when it is in our
interest to do so,’ even as he has described China as the US’s ‘most seri-
ous competitor’ (OPUS, 2021). And it bears noting that, given Biden’s
less divisive international posture than Trump’s, some Chinese academics
expect him to be more effective than his predecessor in exerting US pres-
sure on China.7
7Accordingly, Fudan University Professor Shen Dengli expects greater conflict under a
Biden presidency. According to Shen, ‘Biden will try to do what Trump couldn’t —
suppress China — because the distance between China and the U.S. is drawing closer
every year, and no leader, Democratic or Republican, will ever accept China overtaking
America. Pressure will be higher still come 2024.’ Eva Dou and Gary Shih, A U.S. China
Détente Under Biden? Beijing Isn’t Betting on it, The Washington Post, 8 November 2020.
Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/biden-election-china-
trump/2020/11/08/0932036a-1f5a-11eb-ad53-4c1fda49907d_story.html.
20 N. Khoo
Conclusion
China–US relations were in deep trouble well before the Trump adminis-
tration, which dealt the coup de grace to a US policy of near-full-spectrum
engagement with China. What has replaced that policy is best described
as a competitive, interest-based relationship deeply rooted in great power
politics. In such a world, great power competition is the organizing prin-
ciple that drives day-to-day interactions in China–US relations, occasion-
ally breaking out into the open, as seen in the Chinese surveillance
balloon incident of February 2023 (Khoo, 2023). Furthermore, given the
structural origins of this rivalry, there is little reason to expect substantial
improvements during President Biden’s tenure. The central argument of
this chapter — that power politics rather than state identities is the basic
driver of the US–China relations — illuminates a matter of the highest
national interest for regional states, including New Zealand. Moving for-
ward, some of the more important questions facing New Zealand’s foreign
policymakers are a corollary of the faltering China–US relations. These
include the following: how might New Zealand respond to a weakening
and/or a strengthening of the cornerstone of the Asian security complex
since 1945, namely the US-alliance network? What is New Zealand’s
backup plan if, after the inevitable post-vaccine economic growth,
regional growth stalls for whatever reason? How exactly should New
Zealand diversify its sources of economic growth? How should Wellington
respond to the use of asymmetrical economic and/or military power by the
major powers in the international system? What is New Zealand’s strategy
for heightened great power politics in our immediate regions, the South
Pacific and the Antarctic? Admittedly, these are challenging questions to
grasp and easier to pose than to answer. We may also be fortunate enough
to never have to put our answers to these questions into practice. But not
to confront them is as ill-advised as indulging in nostalgia for a continua-
tion of a liberal order that has already receded, as reflected in the unravel-
ling of the post-1972 US’ China engagement policy.
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https://doi.org/10.1142/9781800614857_0003
Chapter 3
How Japan Is Managing US–China

Competition
Bhubhindar Singh
Introduction
The post-2017 US policy shift from engagement to strategic competition
with China presents Japanese leaders with a critical strategic dilemma. On
the one hand, it can be argued that Tokyo was ahead of Washington in its
appreciation of the revisionist thrust of China’s foreign policy. Since
2010, Tokyo has been contending with a more assertive Chinese stance
towards territorial disputes with Japan in the East China Sea, even
while keeping a close watch on China’s rapid military modernization.
Tokyo has called clearly and early for US leadership in maintaining the
status quo US-led order. Focusing on the values associated with this order,
Japan’s 2013 National Security Strategy (NSS) stated ‘the maintenance
and protection of international order based on rules and universal values,
such as freedom, democracy, respect for fundamental human rights, and
the rule of law, are […] in Japan’s national interests’ (Prime Minister of
Japan and His Cabinet, 2013b: p. 4). At the same time, Japanese leaders
are concerned about the relative weakening of the US influence and power
in East Asia as China has emerged as a US peer competitor. Japan’s 2013
National Defense Programme Guidelines (NDPG) noted that ‘the multi-
polarization of the world continues as a result of shifts in the balance of
power due to the further development of countries such as China and India
27
28 B. Singh
and the relative change of influence of the United States’ (Prime Minister
of Japan and His Cabinet, 2013a: p. 1). The Japanese concern is that this
power transition has increased the prospects for the emergence of a
Chinese-led order in East Asia.
It is not an exaggeration to say that managing this dilemma is
Japan’s most important strategic concern. This chapter analyses the
strategies pursued by the Japanese government to optimally manage
the dilemma posed by intensifying US–China competition. It argues that
the Japanese government is pursuing a diversified strategy to achieve two
strategic objectives: to preserve the status quo defined by the US-led
order, even while preparing for the relative weakening of the US’ power
and influence in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific as China rises. To
preserve the status quo US-led order, Japan utilizes a combination of
material and normative tools. These include Japan’s internal balancing
through military modernization, external balancing through the strength-
ening of the US–Japan alliance and diversification of its security part-
nerships beyond the US, and reinforcing the multilateral order through
economic, political, and security measures to counter China’s multilat-
eral initiatives. In addition, to prepare for the relative weakening of
America’s power and influence, Tokyo has adopted measures to ensure
stable political and economic relations with China, despite its growing
concerns about aspects of Beijing’s foreign policy and domestic politics.
This diversified strategy has allowed Japan to navigate the challenges
presented by China’s rise and manage US–China competition (see
Sahashi, 2020; Satake and Sahashi, 2021; Suzuki and Wallace, 2018).
The chapter begins with an overview of US–China competition and
Japan’s concerns. This is followed by a detailed discussion of Japan’s
strategy to manage this competition, illustrated in three sections:
Japanese internal and external balancing, Japan’s multilateral policy
towards the Indo-Pacific region, and Japan–China relations.
US–China Competition and Japan’s Concerns

The intensifying structural competition between the US and China is
caused by two factors. The first is China’s economic, political, and
military rise and resurgence as a potential regional hegemon. The revised
2022 Japanese NSS stated that China ‘[…] presents an unprecedented
and the greatest strategic challenge’ (Cabinet Secretariat, 2022: p. 9).
How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition 29
Supported by vast investments in defence, China has achieved rapid mili-

tary modernization to produce an agile and high-tech military with the
capability to project military power beyond its shores and challenge US
air and sea dominance. China has grown more assertive in military,
political, and economic terms, as illustrated by its coercive policies
towards Australia, India, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well
as its behaviour related to its maritime territorial claims in the South and
East China Seas. China has also introduced bold economic initiatives to
shape regional and global governance, as evinced by the launching of the
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 (Suzuki, 2021: p. 2). Described
as the ‘project of the century,’ the BRI has disseminated enormous infra-
structure financing through the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB) to promote trade and economic development in Asia,
Africa, and Europe. China also made significant headway in technologi-
cal development, especially in artificial intelligence, green technology,
e-commerce, semi-conductor chips, quantum computing, biotechnology,
and robotics — eroding America’s technological advantage (Darby and
Sewall, 2021).
These significant developments have unravelled any optimistic read-
ing of China’s rise prevalent before 2010 (see Kang, 2003). Having aban-
doned Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of ‘hide your strength, bide your time,’
China, under the forceful leadership of President Xi Jinping, has adopted
a more assertive and confident national strategy. As announced at the 19th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2017 and
repeated with enhanced confidence by Xi in his speech at the 100th anni-
versary of the CCP’s founding, the goal is to make China into a ‘great
modern socialist country’ and ‘a global leader in terms of composite
national strength and international influence’ by 2050 (Xinhua News
Agency, 2017, 2021). This bold national strategy is intended to set the
stage for China to achieve its ‘rightful’ place in regional and global affairs
and challenge the US-led regional order (see Doshi, 2021).
The other determinant of the structural competition is the relative
weakening of the American global and regional hegemony or primacy and
its related liberal internationalist order (Layne, 2018). This is a consequence
of a range of internal factors, as highlighted by the 2008 Global Financial
Crisis, the wars on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failure to pursue an
effective policy in Syria and Libya, the mishandling of the COVID-19 pan-
demic, and the mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan (Ikenberry,
2018; Matthews, 2021; Pape, 2005). The discussion of America’s relative
30 B. Singh
weakening in global discourse reached its peak during the Trump

administration (2017–2020), which was characterized by an inward-looking
foreign policy and declining support for the liberal elements of the global
order, namely multilateralism, free trade, and globalization. The Trump
administration identified China as the main threat to US hegemony and
made China central to its foreign policy strategy. The 2017 US NSS stated
that China (along with Russia) was working to ‘shape a world antithetical
to US values and interests. China seeks to displace the US in the Indo-
Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and
reorder the region in its favour’ (The White House, 2017: p. 25). This read-
ing of China by the Trump administration resulted in a shift in its foreign
policy towards China from engagement to a more adversarial approach that
contained strong containment elements against it. The Biden administration
has continued the approach by pressing Beijing hard on tariffs, trade com-
mitments, and other economic issues, referring to China as the ‘most serious
competitor’ to the US. Even though the Biden administration has restored
support for elements of the liberal internationalist order, doubts continue to
linger about American leadership and its adversarial policy towards China
(The White House, 2021; Zhao, 2021).
The Japanese government is highly concerned about the negative
consequences of US–China competition, both for its national interests and
the region’s stability. On the one hand, Japan has relied on the US-led
hegemony and liberal order for prosperity, development, and security
since 1945. The extensive US military presence in East Asia guaranteed
Japan’s national interests, ensured safe and open sea lines of communica-
tion, and protected regional stability. On the other hand, more recently, the
Trump administration has also shown signs of a relative weakening in
terms of interest, power, influence, credibility, and leadership in East Asia.
The inward-looking tendencies shaped by domestic politics, as expressed
in the America-first approach and withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), exacerbated these concerns. While Tokyo is accus-
tomed to America’s fluctuating regional leadership, it is concerned over
the growing support within American domestic politics for an inward-
looking approach to foreign affairs. Even though Japan has stepped in to
proactively support the preservation of the US-led order, as seen in
its leadership in the signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive
Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the inward-looking
inclination in the US polity has the potential to be a long-term problem
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“They were a bad lot, the pair of them,” cried Jean, who was
evidently highly delighted by the disappearance of father and
daughter; “only for some reason or other there was no saying a word
against them to old M. Bayre. Why, we could all have told him how
Nini Portelet came over here one day when Marie had left
monsieur’s child alone in the cottage, and how she took it over to St
Luke’s with her. It was when you and your friends were over here,
monsieur, that it happened. And Marie didn’t put herself out about it,
but just borrowed the child of a St Luke’s fisherman, and got her
money from old Monsieur Bayre as usual. Ah, they were a pair of
beauties! She gave the child back to its mother yesterday, and I
guessed somehow that they might be missing to-day. As a matter of
fact, I know they crossed over to St Luke’s before it was light.”
Bayre entered the deserted cottage, where the disordered state of
the living-room spoke of a sudden departure. Among the displaced
articles of furniture, not good enough to be worth any attempt to take
away, there were certain signs, cynically left without disguise, of the
robbery committed at the château on the previous night.
There was a tablecloth, heavily and handsomely fringed, in which,
without doubt, some of the booty had been hastily wrapped up by
Marie. There were a few plated articles which had been inadvertently
carried away with the silver. And there was the iron box about which
so much fuss had been made.
Yes, lying bent and broken among the ashes on the hearth, after
having evidently been forced open with a bent poker which lay near,
was the very box which Marie had dropped out of the window to her
father; and lying on the uneven tiles of the floor, at a little distance
from it, was a heap of papers which Bayre at once judged to have
been its contents.
He picked these up and began to examine them. To his
astonishment and perplexity, the very first of these to attract his
attention was one in which the words “my nephew and namesake
Bartlett Bayre,” were the first to catch his eye.
Further inspection proved this to be a will made and signed by his
uncle only nine months previously, and in it he found that he himself
was not only left a legacy of ten thousand pounds, but was
appointed guardian of the testator’s infant son and heir.
Bayre started to his feet, so much amazed at what he had read
that for the moment he seemed scarcely able to think or even to see.
His uncle, only nine short months ago, had been so kindly
disposed towards him that he had made him a handsome legacy!
How then had it happened, unless indeed the old man’s mind had
become unhinged, that he had shown his nephew, from the first sight
of him, nothing but aversion of the strongest kind?
The thing was so strange that Bayre could not trust himself to
consider it thoroughly at that time. Hastily gathering up all the rest of
the papers which he could find, he decided, after a moment’s
hesitation, not to take them back to the château, but to carry them
with him to London, and to communicate with Olwen from there,
telling her of his find, and asking her advice as to whether he should
send them to her or to his uncle’s solicitors.
They would, he thought, be better judges of his uncle’s real state
of mind than he could be; and in any case the will could not be of
much value, as his uncle had undoubtedly altered his dispositions
long since.
So utterly absorbed was he in the strange events which had
happened, and in this last, perhaps the strangest discovery of all,
that the journey to London seemed only half the length of the journey
away from it.
He had sent no word as to the day he was returning, so that when
he entered the sitting-room at the Diggings at ten o’clock at night he
found Southerley and Repton smoking together by the fire, in a state
of gloom and abstraction, and with the supper-table laid for only two.
“Hallo!” said Repton, sulkily. “You, is it?”
But Southerley only scowled and said nothing.
“Yes, it’s me,” replied Bayre, with ungrammatical cheeriness. “How
are you, eh? Have you got any bottled stout? And how’s the—”
But Repton sprang up with a yell and a tragic uplifting of the arm.
“Don’t dare to pronounce that evil brat’s name here,” cried he,
sepulchrally. “Unless you want to be chucked out of window.”
“But why not?” persisted Bayre, who felt a redoubled interest in the
child whose guardian it had certainly once been his uncle’s intention
that he should be.
Repton pointed to Southerley with a tragic forefinger.
“Ask him!” said he in a hollow voice.
Southerley growled a little, and then moved sulkily in his chair.
“Oh, the child’s right enough, as children go, I suppose,” said he.
“The trouble of it is that Miss Merriman has grown so much attached
to the wretched little animal that there’s no talking to her, no getting
her attention, no interesting her in anything but its miserable little
mewlings and pukings.”
“That’s the worst of the domestic women you’re so fond of, Bayre,”
went on Repton; “when there’s a child about they won’t pay the least
attention to anything or anybody else. Whenever we go, as, of
course, being two out of its three fathers, we’re bound to go, to
inspect the child, and see that it’s properly fed and clothed and
educated—” Bayre interrupted with a mocking laugh, but Repton
went steadily and stodgily on: “Whenever we seek to do our duty, as
I say, Miss Merriman makes fun of us, and says, ‘Did its nice ickle
papas tum to see if its bockle was too warm-warm?’ And such stuff
as that. Now you’re come back I hope you’ll try to bring this young
woman to reason, and—”
“I hope you won’t try to do anything of the sort,” growled
Southerley in a saturnine manner from his chair. “That would be just
the last straw, for you to interfere. For we know you like domestic
women, and so no doubt you’d worm yourself into her confidence,
and—”
“And we should be nowhere!” added Repton. “That’s true.”
“Certainly we’re nowhere already,” went on Southerley,
meditatively. “I’m only hoping you’ll be nowhere too!”
“You needn’t trouble your heads about me,” said Bayre, airily. “I’ve
not the least wish to enter the lists, I assure you.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when there was a soft
knock at the door, and to the rage and consternation of two out of the
three young men, beautiful Miss Merriman, who had not been once
to the Diggings since Bayre went away, peeped into the room and
smiled a gracious “How do you do?” to that fortunate young man.
“Oh, Mr Bayre,” cried she, sweetly, “could you come downstairs a
moment? I have something to ask you about the little boy, and
whether you’ve heard anything of his parents.”
Bayre having, of course, expressed his ready assent, she
retreated with a smile evenly distributed among them all, and left the
three young men together. Repton made as if to stab the too lucky
Bayre with the bread-knife.
“Villain,” he said, “you deserve to die. But first you shall interview
the lady, and we’ll listen outside to see that you don’t take a mean
advantage of your visit to the baby’s native haunts.”
Southerley, who was more uneasy than Repton, looked up
sullenly.
“Oh, let him go,” said he, in a sort of despair. “May as well be put
out of one’s misery at once. Go and ask her to marry you, and, for
goodness’ sake, get it quickly over.”
From which Bayre, as he went downstairs, with a brand-new
suspicion concerning Miss Merriman in his mind, opined that poor
Southerley was as false to his ideal of a woman of genius as the only
possible lady-love as he, Bayre, was false to his.
CHAPTER XXI.
PARENTS AND GUARDIANS
Bayre found Miss Merriman in the dining-room, which, with a

woman’s taste, she had managed to make very pretty. The shabby
leather sofa was covered by a piece of handsome tapestry of
subdued tints, and the cottage piano stood out from the wall in the
modern manner, adorned with a handsome embroidered back, and
with a vase of flowers on one corner.
There was a work-basket, too, in the room, and there was a most
dainty cot, in which the baby boy lay asleep.
The gas was not alight, but a little table lamp, with a pretty shade,
was standing on a small table which had a woman’s work upon it,
too far from the cot for the light to fall upon the sleeping infant.
“I thought you’d like to see him,” said Miss Merriman, as she bent
over the cot, looking a very Juno in her plain dress of navy serge, cut
just low enough at the neck to show the full beauties of a superb
white throat.
But it was not so much her physical beauty which attracted Bayre
as a certain tender look in her eyes which he thought amounted to
self-betrayal.
With a certain air of unaccustomed responsibility the young man
said, watching her the while,—
“Yes, indeed. I have very strong reasons for wishing to see the
little chap. I’ve found out something about him.”
She looked up quickly, anxiously.
“Ah!”
“I’ve found out, I think beyond a doubt, that he’s not only my first
cousin, but that I’m his guardian.”
The answer which this announcement drew from the lady would
have been surprising enough but for Bayre’s own suspicions.
“His guardian! He can’t have a guardian till his father’s dead?”
Bayre took her quickly upon her words.
“Who is his father, then?” he asked.
She bit her lip, feeling that she had betrayed herself.
“How should I know?” said she. “I meant only that neither you nor
anyone else can be guardian to the child until you can prove that
he’s an orphan. Is he an orphan?”
“I think not,” said Bayre, rather drily. And then he added, after a
pause: “Would you like me to say what I think?”
A look of fear came into her great ox eyes. She grasped the rail of
the cot firmly for a few moments, and then said, in a very dignified
and touching manner, “I think, if you want to do your best for the
child—and I’m sure that you do—you had better say as little as
possible till you know more than you do.”
“Very well,” said he, gently.
There was a pause, and then she said, in a very low voice, “I’m
glad you’ve come back. It was getting rather difficult for me. Those
two friends of yours, good fellows, dear fellows, but—”
“Well?”
“They don’t know, and they don’t guess, and it makes things
difficult.”
“Do you want them to guess?” asked Bayre.
“No, no,” cried Miss Merriman, quickly. “I don’t want anyone to
guess anything, not even you. And you must remember that I’ve
made no admissions, none whatever. I’ve taken care of this child,
who has three fathers and no mother, purely out of good-nature. You
understand?”
“I do.”
“But you’ll tell your friends, won’t you?—and especially Mr
Southerley, who has been very kind”—and Miss Merriman looked
down with a heightened colour—“that while I’m most grateful to them
I feel that they are doing more than they ought. I don’t want their
flowers; I don’t want their sweets. They’re spending a fortune in
things of that sort just because they look upon me as a disinterested
philanthropist, which I’m not, who has taken charge of this child from
abstract motives of kindness—which I’ve not.”
Bayre looked at the sideboard indicated by the lady, and there he
saw such a fine show of flowers, and of bon-bons in elegant
wrappers, as would have set up a florist or confectioner in business
in a small way.
He looked at her and smiled.
“They’ve been so very lavish,” he said, “that one wonders whether
it was all gratitude, or something else, which prompted such
profusion.”
Miss Merriman’s beautiful face puckered into lines of distress.
“That’s just what I’m afraid of,” admitted she, sadly. “I don’t mind
with Mr Repton; he’s very nice, but he takes things lightly, doesn’t
he? But Mr Southerley—”
Her voice faltered, and Bayre began to look rather grave.
“Shall I hint to him that there’s—an obstacle?” asked he, in a low
voice.
But she refused emphatically.
“Certainly not. How can you say there’s an obstacle when you
know nothing whatever about me except that I’ve good-naturedly
relieved you all of a burden?” she said firmly. “No. What I want you to
do is to tell them that—that—”
“I’ll tell them that you’re engaged to be married,” said Bayre, with a
happy thought. “That will put an end to any aspirations either of them
might have without letting them into any secrets.”
“You don’t know any of my secrets,” retorted Miss Merriman,
sharply.
Bayre gave her one look and then bowed without speaking.
She had to be content with that; for although she began to
interrogate him quickly as to what he knew, or guessed, she
changed her mind before he could make any reply, and telling him
haughtily that he could invent what he pleased about her, she let him
go.
Bayre felt himself to be in a difficulty. Certainly he did not know
very much of absolute knowledge, but he could guess a good deal;
and if his suspicions were correct there was an end to Southerley’s
hopes. Between a chivalrous wish to respect the secret of a lady, a
secret, too, which he could not be said to have more than guessed
at, and his wish to spare his friend the pain of useless longing, Bayre
found himself placed in a dilemma.
The consequence was that when he re-entered the common
sitting-room there was just enough uneasiness discernible in his look
and manner to fill both his friends with anxiety.
Of course this anxiety took an insulting form.
“Well, have you cut us out?” asked Repton, mockingly, looking at
him askance from his armchair.
“Not that I know of,” said Bayre, quietly.
“What did she want you for?” growled Southerley in a dictatorial
tone.
“Oh, to ask if I had found out anything about the child, of course.”
“And have you?”
“I think so. It’s my uncle’s child, and my first cousin, I have every
reason to believe.”
“Then,” cried Repton, springing up in the delight of an interesting
discovery, “we’ve only got to wring its neck for you and you’ll be heir
to all the old gentleman’s property!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Bayre, laughing. “At the
same time I’m awfully grateful to you for the suggestion that you’re
so ready to oblige me.”
“Oh, well,” said Repton, “it cuts two ways, you know. Of course
you’d have to keep Southerley and me out of the proceeds, and
handsomely too. I’d let you off with a yacht and a cottage at Deal.
But I don’t know what Southerley might want; a house in Park Lane,
perhaps, to live in when he’d married Miss Merriman.”
“Hold your tongue, you fool!” said Southerley, in a deep bass
voice.
“Well,” said Repton, “I know you won’t be satisfied unless you do
marry her. I never saw any fellow so gone on any woman as you are
on her. The way the conversation finds its way round to Miss
Merriman every ten minutes, even if it starts at the differential
calculus—(it never does, by-the-bye, and I haven’t the remotest idea
what the differential calculus is)—is perfectly sickening.”
“What rot!” growled Southerley, with a restless turn in his chair.
Bayre looked at him out of the corners of his eyes.
“I hope that’s not true,” said he, “for I happen to know that she’s
engaged.”
Southerley started to his feet.
“How do you know?” he asked angrily. “How should you know
more than we do about it? unless—”
Repton took up his speech when he dropped it.
“By Jove!” cried he, “unless you’re engaged to her yourself?”
Although Bayre excused himself with vehemence, showed them
the absurdity of the suggestion seeing that he had met the lady less
often than they had, yet he did not feel sure that he succeeded in
convincing them. And there remained a certain shadow over the
intercourse of the three during the next few days. One reason for this
was his extreme reticence about his visit to the islands. He did not
say enough about anything or anybody to satisfy their minds. He was
not engaged to Miss Eden, so he said; he was not reconciled to his
uncle. On the whole, Repton and Southerley were of opinion that he
was either a liar or that he had wasted his time. So that he had more
time to himself than usual during the next few days, and he made
use of it to devour at his leisure the manuscript novel Olwen had
entrusted to his care.
As he read sympathetically, of course, two things became manifest
to him. The one was that the olive-skinned hero with the brown eyes
and the wavy black hair had been inspired by the girl’s conception of
himself; and the other was that, amid all the traces of girlish
inexperience and inexpertness with which the tale abounded, there
was yet a saving grace, a charm of vivacity and of freshness which,
as he was old enough to know, are the commonest marks of real
ability in a beginner.
The first discovery touched him the most. But the second had a
pathetic interest also; for he recognised the fact that, with all her
disadvantages as compared with himself in the way of actual
experience of life, there was something in the girl’s manuscript which
his own more solid productions lacked, a something which made it
not improbable that he would be more successful in disposing of her
work than he was in disposing of his own.
Full of his impressions of her tale, he sat down to write to her on
the third day after his return to town. He treated the matter of the
novel very guardedly indeed; spoke well of it, warned her not to be
too hopeful, remarked that her hero, while not unheroic, was very
unlike a real man. Thus Bayre thought he would put her off the scent
of his own intuition that the hero was meant for his own portrait. He
added that he did not despair of selling the work, and that he would
set about it at once. But she must not expect to set up a carriage out
of the proceeds.
And then he turned to graver matters. Suspecting her complicity in
the abduction of his infant cousin, and resenting her want of
confidence in him over the matter, he said nothing about the child
and nothing about Miss Merriman. But he told of his discovery of the
broken iron box and its contents, and of the will which his uncle had
made eight months previously. He asked her advice as to whether
he should send these papers to her for his uncle, or to Mr Bayre’s
solicitors. Perhaps she, he said, was in a better position than he to
decide whether old Mr Bayre was in a fit state to be troubled with
matters of business. For he reminded her that the old gentleman was
evidently suffering from weakness of memory, as he had professed
to have no remembrance whatever of the iron box.
He did not deny that he had read enough of the will to learn, to his
surprise, how differently his uncle had thought of him a few months
before, but he admitted that the document could have none but a
sentimental interest now.
“If only,” went on poor Bayre, “he had continued in the same
mind towards me, perhaps some day I might have been able
to offer you something better than love in a villa one-brick-
thick. However, I don’t mean to give up hope. Heaven keep
you out of the way of another Monsieur Blaise! Remember,
you have promised to write. So keep your promise unless you
want me to throw up my berth here and come over again to
find out why you don’t.—Yours,
“Bartlett Bayre.”
He was finishing this letter in his own room, by the light of a couple
of inferior candles, when there came a thump at the door, and
without waiting for permission Southerley put his head in.
“Hallo, what’s up?” asked Bayre, perceiving that the usually
somewhat phlegmatic red face of the stalwart pressman was the
colour of whitey-brown paper, and that his eyes had an unusual look.
“May I come in?” asked Southerley, hoarsely, when he was well
inside and had shut the door carefully behind him. “I want to ask you
something.” Then his eyes fell on the letter, which Bayre was
elaborately trying to hide with a transparent assumption of
carelessness. “You’re writing letters, I see?”
Bayre tried to look as if he had forgotten the fact.
“Miss Eden?” went on Southerley in a mysterious voice.
“H’m,” nodded Bayre, shamefacedly.
It is a humiliating thing to have it found out that you are over head
and ears in love with a woman! But Southerley took it very nicely.
“That’s all right!” he said with a sigh of relief in proportion to his
size.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, look here. I haven’t been quite sure that you were not sweet
upon the girl downstairs. But you wouldn’t be carrying on with both of
them at once, now, would you?”
“Good heavens, no, man! And how do you know that either of
them would so much as look at me?”
Southerley sighed again and wiped his face.
“Oh, well, well, women are odd creatures!” he observed frankly.
“Anyhow, since you’ve given me your word it’s all right I—I want you
to do something for me.”
“Well, what?”
Southerley began to pant heavily as he sat with his hands on his
knees on one of Bayre’s boxes.
“I want you to propose for me to Miss Merriman.”
“Good heavens, man, are you mad?”
“Something very like it sometimes since I’ve seen so much of that
girl,” said the giant, slowly. “I can’t tell you the effect she has upon
me.”
“Effect! Rubbish! Haven’t you often said your ideal of woman is a
gen—”
“Oh, woman of genius be blowed!” cried Southerley, impatiently.
“One says those things before one’s hit, just because one must
always be talking of women, even if it’s only talking balderdash. But I
tell you it’s serious with me now. I must know how she feels, I must, I
must.”
“But haven’t I told you—” began Bayre.
“Told me fiddlesticks! You’ve said she’s engaged. Well, somehow I
don’t believe she is. She wears no ring. Besides, how should you
know? She didn’t tell you in so many words she was engaged, did
she?”
“N-n-no,” admitted his friend.
“Has she ever said she cared about anybody?”
“N-n-no.”
“Then you just go and ask her this minute if she can care for me!”
And Southerley plunged across the room, hauled his friend out of
his chair and flung him at the door. There Bayre, however, planted
himself, and protested,—
“If you must be such a confounded fool as to want to propose to
her after what I’ve told you,” said he, surlily, “why don’t you do it
yourself?”
“Because I can’t,” gasped the timid little lad of six feet three in a
deep bass voice. “Look here, do you think I haven’t tried? I’ve been
down those blessed stairs four times this evening! Four times, mind
you, and I’ve got as far as the door, and I’ve heard her singing to that
brat. And I tell you the sound of her voice made me feel so queer
that I couldn’t go in, because I knew the words would stick in my
throat and I should make a fool of myself.”
“You are bad!” remarked Bayre, critically, as he contemplated the
giant’s moist face.
“Well, get on, if you don’t want to be kicked downstairs,” retorted
Southerley, beginning to get irritated by his friend’s unaccountable
perverseness.
Bayre raised his eyebrows and turned slowly.
“It won’t be of any use,” said he, as he opened the door and went
downstairs.
CHAPTER XXII.
A RUNAWAY
Bayre felt very nervous over his errand, and when Miss Merriman
cried “Come in,” in answer to his knock, he was almost as awkward
as Southerley himself would have been, and she gave him a
searching look as he crossed the room like a sly schoolboy.
She was sitting near the fire, and the baby, in a state of great glee,
was turning out the contents of her work-basket on the rug at her
feet. Bayre felt that he was called upon to explain his appearance
with promptitude.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said, “but I’ve been sent here by
—by somebody else—by Southerley, in fact, with a message which I
hardly dare to give.”
Before he was half-way through the speech the lady had looked
away; and from the expression of her face he could guess that she
had an uneasy suspicion as to the nature of his errand.
“Then why give it,” said she, quickly, in a slightly tremulous voice,
“if it’s of no use, and if it’s painful to you?”
“Because I must; because I’ve promised. Forgive me if I’m clumsy
over it. The fact is the fellow’s lost his head; I think perhaps he
knows there’s not much hope for him; I myself have told him there’s
not. But he persists in hoping, hoping, or rather he’s got into such a
state that he can’t rest till he’s got a definite answer, even if it’s the
wrong one. He’s in love with you, head over ears in love, and he
wants to know if you could ever care for him.”
Although he knew that she must have guessed what was coming,
Miss Merriman pretended to feel surprised. But it was a poor, worried
sort of pretence, without either nature or sincerity.
“Why, it’s absurd,” she said quickly. “What does he know of me? I
never heard anything so ridiculous.”
And then there was a short pause, during which she sat very still.
“You’re not offended?” said Bayre, gently.
“Offended!” She just got out the word and then broke down into a
flood of tears.
Bayre was appalled. To see a woman cry was a dreadful thing at
any time; but to feel that he had opened the floodgates himself, and
when he ought to have known better, was a thought of unspeakable
horror.
“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. “And don’t, oh, don’t! You make
me feel a brute, and yet I couldn’t help myself. I’ll tell him—I’ll go and
tell him—” He was flying to the door, impelled thereto not only by the
woman’s tears but by the yells of the small child, who was on his feet
by Miss Merriman’s knee, screaming in sympathy after the manner
of his kind.
Miss Merriman recovered herself sufficiently to speak.
“No,” she cried imperiously. “Don’t tell him anything. You’re not to
tell him anything. Let him think what he likes until—”
“Until what?”
“Never mind.”
She waved her hand in farewell without looking at him, and Bayre
made his way reluctantly enough upstairs, where he found
Southerley in waiting on the half-landing.
“No good, of course?” said the big man, trembling like a leaf.
Bayre shook his head.
“Any reason?”
“No. Sorry. I did my best.”
Southerley took it very quietly; he just nodded and went upstairs
softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Then he went out at
once, without seeing either of the others again, and he did not come
back until long after they were both in bed.
And he alone of the three made no remark whatever when Susan
informed them on the following evening that Miss Merriman had
gone away and had taken the child with her.
Repton gave a long whistle.
“Well, I’m blest!” he exclaimed tersely.
Bayre was indignant. Surely he had a right to know where she was
taking the child, he who claimed not only to be the infant’s cousin but
to have more than a fanciful claim to be its guardian! Miss Merriman
was surely carrying a woman’s privileges too far.
“Cousin or no cousin, it’s abominable,” said Repton, indignantly.
“We’ve had all the trouble of the journey from Guernsey, all the
expense of milk and biscuits, sausage rolls and bananas for the brat,
and flowers and sweets for her. And now we’re left in the lurch like
this! It’s infamous. I’m hurt in my very tenderest feelings. I shall
advertise.”
“What! For the price of the flowers and the bon-bons?” laughed
Bayre.
“Of course not. But I have a third share in the proprietorship of that
infant. And it may be worth money some day. Besides, I ought to
have been consulted.”
All this time Southerley never moved a muscle. But that he was
hard hit it was impossible not to see. His eyes looked glassy and his
ruddy skin livid.
“Cheer up, old man!” cried Repton, giving him a ferocious thump
on the back. “She wasn’t worth troubling about, a woman who could
go without a word after that last box from Fuller’s—the one with the
gold ribbon and the picture of the two cupids in a basket. Thank
goodness, she’ll never be able to look at those two pink cupids
without a self-reproachful thought of you and me!”
But even this thought did not appear to have a consoling effect
upon Southerley, who shook him off impatiently and went out again
without a word.
“Fool!” cried Repton, contemptuously, “to care so much for a
woman who didn’t care two pins about him.”
But Bayre, who remembered Miss Merriman’s tears, was less
harsh in his judgment.
“I have an idea,” said he, slowly, “that she didn’t dare to care!”
But he would not proffer any solution of this enigmatic remark.
And before the day was out he had something to divert his
attention in the shape of a letter from Miss Eden.
A surprising letter it was, and tantalising, too, for it was evidently
written in a sort of breathless way, while the writer was at a white
heat of emotion, and it told him just enough to make him want to
know more.
It was as follows:—
“Dear Mr Bayre,—I got your letter. I have said nothing
about it. I think you had better keep the papers yourself for a
little while—those, I mean, that you found in the iron box. I will
write to you again in a day or two, perhaps. I am afraid this
letter is disjointed, but I have had a sort of shock, and I have
not got over it yet. Do not be alarmed: we are all well here, or
as well as you could expect, remembering the state in which
you left us all. The Vazons have not come back and we have
heard nothing more of them. We think they must be still in the
islands, but they are not at Creux. Nini has come to stay here;
she is a trustworthy girl, and I am very glad to have her, for I
should not like to be here quite alone.
“Now I am going to tell you something which will surprise
you. I have found out who the woman is shut up here. I
cannot tell you more now, except this—that she is not here
against her will.—Yours sincerely,
“Olwen Eden.”
Bayre was on thorns to know more, and he could not understand

why, having told him so much, she could not have trusted him with
the whole of the secret. Was it something she did not like to trust to
paper? Was it his young wife whom old Mr Bayre was keeping
concealed at the château? And if so, was she in her right mind?
He wrote at once, begging Olwen to let him know more, but yet
expressing himself guardedly, for fear the letter should fall into other
hands than hers.
He could not rest for thinking about this, wondering whether his
uncle knew of the discovery made by Olwen, and whether, in that
case, he would make any difference in his treatment of her.
His anxiety grew as day after day passed and no answer came to
his second letter. He could not get another holiday or he would have
gone back to Creux without delay. In his distress he thought of
writing to Madame Nicolas, his landlady at St Luke’s, to ask whether
she had heard anything of old Mr Bayre and his household.
The good woman answered almost by return of post, but the
information she had to give was exceedingly vague, and was rather
in the nature of gossip than of anything definite.
She had not seen old Monsieur Bayre lately, neither had anyone
she knew. But she had heard that he was ill, that there had been
changes in his household, and that the young lady had gone away to
London and was singing somewhere under the name of Señora Pia,
or some such title. As Madame Nicolas did not even mention the
Vazons by name, it seemed probable that they had kept quiet and
had not made any attempt to turn the tables upon their late master.
This letter, vague as it was, filled Bayre with anxiety and distress.
He knew there must be some foundation for this story about Olwen,
and it tallied too well with her silence for him to neglect the clue.
“Singing in London under the name of Señora Pia!” This was
vague indeed. He seized the newspapers and studied their columns
with eager scrutiny. But it was not until the third day after the receipt
of this letter that, after having read on the first page of the Daily
Telegraph all the names of all the ladies and gentlemen who were
advertised in the music publishers’ announcements as singing songs
in different parts of England, the name “Signora Beata” attracted his
attention and made him decide to set off that very evening on what
might be a wild-goose chase after all.
“Signora Beata” was to sing “Those Sweet, Sweet Eyes of Thine”
and another ballad with an equally vapid title at the Bromley Institute.
And as it was not very far away, Bayre thought it worth while to take
the journey on this very slender clue.
The hall was crowded. Bayre got a programme and found that
Signora Beata did not appear before the fourth number in the
programme. He had to sit through a new loyal song, rendered lustily
by the baritone but conspicuous for its loving adhesion to one note.
He had to hear a glee, and he had to endure a recitation.
Then came the turn of number four, and it was as much as he
could do not to start out of his seat with surprise when Signora Beata
appeared and proved to be, not indeed Olwen Eden, but another old
friend in the person of Miss Merriman.
She looked magnificent in a dress of cream satin, which showed
off her beautiful neck and the exquisite poise of her head to great
advantage. She wore no jewels, but half-a-dozen roses of different
colours were arranged on the front of her dress, and another was
placed upright on one side of her head and worn as an aigrette.
Long white suède gloves completed the costume, and Bayre thought
that he had never seen so beautiful a woman, and was glad
Southerley was not there to have his chains further riveted.
He became quite anxious to hear her sing, and was not in the
least surprised at the burst of applause which greeted her as soon
as she came to the front of the platform. It seemed to him that if her
voice proved to be as superb as her appearance she was wasting
herself at Bromley.
But with the first bars of the song came not exactly
disenchantment, but a decidedly modified appreciation of the
beauty’s art. She had a good voice, not in the first rank, but pleasant
to listen to; the weakness of her performance lay in the fact that her
voice had not been sufficiently cultivated, and that she was
possessed by an overpowering nervousness which, while it rather
added to her charm as a woman, decidedly marred her efforts as a
singer.
In brief she had, though singing as a “professional,” scarcely got
beyond the stage of “gifted amateur.”
But her beauty, her modesty, her statuesque grace, carried all
before them, and the audience applauded her as if she had been
Patti herself.
Bayre began now to understand that Madame Nicolas had mixed
up in her mind what she had heard about one woman with what she
had heard about another, and he resolved, now that he was in for it,
to run Signora Beata to earth.
He found the rest of the concert tedious, except when the beauty
was on the platform, and as soon as her last appearance on the
programme was made he slipped out of his seat and went outside to
wait for her.
She fled out of the building so quickly and so quietly, however, that
he was not able to speak to her, and he got into the same train, but
not into the same carriage, and then when he had seen her enter an
omnibus he got on the top of the vehicle, determined to track her
down.
She alighted finally at that part of London which used to be known
as Brompton, but which has since, by the profuse use of the name
“Egerton” instead of the older and homelier ones, purged away the
Brompton taint and become something far higher in the social scale.
Here Bayre followed the lady into a side street where little cards
over the door announced “Apartments,” and at one of these she
stopped and proceeded to open it with a latch-key.
Bayre stopped too at the foot of the steps and looked up.
She heard the footsteps stop and looked round quickly. An
exclamation broke from her lips.
“You’ve followed me!” she cried.
“Yes—Signora.”
She started, hesitated, then shut the door again and came down
the steps.
“Why have you done this?” she said passionately.
“Why have you run away, without a word, with my cousin, my
ward, Miss Merriman?”
“Your ward!” She laughed derisively. “Don’t talk nonsense. You
know that that is a mere farce. You know well enough that I’m his
mother.”
“Yes, and you’re something else,” replied Bayre, coolly. “You’re my
aunt, Mrs Bartlett Bayre.”
She met his eyes, and then looked down; but she made no
attempt to contradict him.
“Come inside,” she said suddenly, “and we can talk better. You
must know everything now.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
A PHOTOGRAPH
Bayre followed Miss Merriman into the house, and into the little
ground-floor sitting-room, where she turned up the gas and showed
the folding doors open into the adjoining room, where a maid sat
reading a novelette by the light of a candle beside the baby’s cot.
“Wait here a moment, I always go and kiss my baby the moment I
come in; nothing can interfere with that ceremony,” she said, with a
pretty defiance which Bayre liked.
And as she disappeared through the folding-doors, which she shut
after her, her attitude seemed to say that now she had once owned
that that baby was hers she would brandish him in the eyes of the
world and snap her fingers at destiny.
Bayre heard the soft whisperings of the two women, the
mysterious cooings and cawings they made over the sleeping child.
And when Miss Merriman swept majestically back into the room
again, dressed in a plain grey tea-gown, with one of her roses
pinned in it, he remembered his old ideal of the simple, domestic-
minded woman, and he sympathised with Southerley’s adoration of
this beautiful creature.
“Now,” she said defiantly, “perhaps you’ll explain why you have
followed me, why you have come.”
Bayre was rather amused, and rather resentful.
“You must remember,” said he, “that whatever suspicions I may
have had concerning your relationship to the child, all that I
absolutely knew was that he was my uncle’s son, and that therefore
it was a personal duty of mine to know what became of him. My
friends too, Repton and Southerley—” She interrupted him with a
quick gesture.
“Surely,” she said, panting a little, “you can’t pretend they have a
right to know anything whatever about me!”
She was standing on one side of the table and Bayre was on the
other. He leaned upon it to look earnestly into her face.

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Indo-Pacific Security: Us-China Rivalry

and Regional States' Responses

China and the Indo-Pacific: Maneuvers and

The Rise and Return of the Indo-Pacific Doyle

The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle

Regional Water Security Robert C. Brears

Africa-Europe Research and Innovation Cooperation:

Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Regional and Global

Strategic Currents: China and Us Competition for

The Regional Order in the Gulf Region and the Middle

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Copyright © 2024 by World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd.

For any available supplementary material, please visit

Desk Editors: Logeshwaran Arumugam/Rosie Williamson/Shi Ying Koe

Typeset by Stallion Press

For Denise, Chris, Rouben, Wil and Nicola

For Jessie, Josh, Yvette, Ethan, Toby, Elle

About the Editors

Nicholas Khoo is an associate professor in the poli-

Germana Nicklin is an honorary research associate

Alexander C. Tan is a professor of political science

Prashanth Parameswaran is a fellow at the Asia Program, Wilson

This book is the outgrowth of a regional security workshop held

About the Editors vii

Chapter 2 The Trump Administration and the Unravelling

Chapter 3 How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition 27

Chapter 4 Negotiating the Challenges of Asymmetry:

Chapter 5 Thailand’s Alignment Policy in US–China Competition:

Chapter 6 Taiwan’s Strategic Choices in the Era of a Rising

Chapter 7 Reliable, Reticent, or Reluctant? India and US–China

Chapter 8 Southeast Asia and US–China Competition:

Chapter 9 Spatialities of Power in the Antarctic Ross Sea

Chapter 10 Maritime Insecurity and the Changing Regional

Chapter 11 Conclusions: Lessons Learned 167

The Origins of This Book

Indo-Pacific Security: US–China Rivalry and

Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific

About the Chapters in the Book

Chapter 3: How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition

Chapter 4: Negotiating the Challenges of Asymmetry:

Chapter 5: Thailand’s Alignment Policy in US–China

Chapter 6: Taiwan’s Strategic Choices in the Era of a

Chapter 7: Reliable, Reticent, or Reluctant? India and

Chapter 8: Southeast Asia and US–China Competition:

Chapter 9: Spatialities of Power in the Antarctic Ross Sea

influence of the collective interests of the Antarctic Treaty System is the

Chapter 10: Maritime Insecurity and the Changing Regional

The Trump Administration and

Since 2017, there has been open acknowledgement in the US of ‘geopo-

security is the re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition by […]

China during that year’s presidential campaign. Despite a contentious

aggressively confront China over its handling of the outbreak in Wuhan.

In the meantime, the Trump administration hardened its stance on

Defined as including businesses, companies, research institutes, individuals, govern-

ments, private organizations, and other types of legal persons.

Explaining the Unravelling

The emphasis by the US on regime-based identity differences has

that serious conflict has erupted, as discussed in the following section on

About the Editors vii

Chapter 3 How Japan Is Managing US–China Competition 27

Chapter 11 Conclusions: Lessons Learned 167