A new term with geopolitical implications, the “Indo-Pacific” has in recent years attracted the attention of Chinese strategic analysts as well as those outside of China. Australia is the first country officially employing the term in its newly released Defense White Paper 2013, describing the “Indo-Pacific” as a strategic arc “connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia”.[①] This is indeed a significant change in Australia’s policy to Asia Pacific as well as the terminology in its official discourse. Geographically, China is not a country of the Indian Ocean but in Asia Pacific (East Asia and Western Pacific). The Asia Pacific particularly the Western Pacific features China’s neighboring maritime areas. Therefore, China should stress its maritime defense and naval deployment along the Chinese coast as China’s long coastal lines facing the Ocean implies a weak and unsecure potential for its national sovereignty. Meanwhile the Chinese must be pondering over the new phenomenon that the term and concept of the “Indo-Pacific” repeated outside should be of something connecting with China rather than a simple change in a geographical terminology. This paper is to deal with questions like these: what are the geopolitical implications for China with the Indo-Pacific, the new region of Australia, a part of U.S.-led alliance in Asia Pacific? How should China’s diplomatic and maritime strategy deal with the new phenomenon with the Indo-Pacific term emerging but the word “Asia” omitted in the terminology? Can we suggest Indo-Asia Pacific to stand for Indo-Pacific if a new term is to be created?

I. An Undefined Indo-Pacific Concept

Like many other countries in Asia Pacific, China has strong historical roots in Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean Region, but the term “Indo-Pacific” has not been read in China until recent time and China started paying some attention to the Indian Ocean and the newly generated “Indo-Pacific”. The term “Indo-Pacific” becomes so new and urgent that even a standard translation into Chinese language has not been generalized in China. Perhaps it is responsible for some geographical reasons. One point is that China is historically a land country in Asia and the term Asia historically and geographical has their landscape to the coast of China but the continental extension to the seascape maybe covers the Western Pacific should China have had a maritime view. The other point is: even if China had some capacity and capabilities to use naval fleets in ancient time passing through thousands miles of turbulent waters like the Ming Dynasty’s admiral Zhen He (鄭和) who plied the seas between China and the coast of the East Africa through Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, the Indian Ocean region’s countries like Sri Lanka and India, the Arabian Sea, and the Horn of Africa, Chinese Emperors in early decades of the fifteenth century did not have a sense of deploying troops to occupy or annex a place in such a far away distance from East Asia coast. The term “Indo-Pacific” must be unfamiliar to China historically and geographically.

Where is the geographical Indo-Pacific? There are at least three different definitions based on debating views outside of China since the last century. One point refers to Southeast Asia-centered belt waters connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Natalegawa describes it as “an important triangular region spanning two oceans, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, bounded by Japan in the north, Australia in the southeast and India in the southwest, notably with Indonesia at its center”.[②]  An Australian official stand positions this new Indo-Pacific region as an arc linking the partial Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia. The Indo-Pacific is a “wider Asia-Pacific region”, sounding that Australia had a new region. Although it does not place Indonesia as a center, Southeast Asia stays at the center. It seems neither Indonesia nor Australia want to include China in a geographical concept of the Indo-Pacific or at least that remarks air an equivocal definition that makes observers confused. The second is that the Indo-Pacific is covering a limited maritime space with the partial Indian Ocean and the partial Pacific Ocean. Khurana put it as the maritime space stretching from the littorals of East Africa and West Asia, across the Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean, to the littorals of East Asia.[③] What is sure here is that the coast of China belongs to the mentioned littorals of East Asia, that is, China is geographically included in the concept of the Indo-Pacific. The third seems like a comprehensive one covering Asian land and the Indian and Pacific waters. Auslin refers to it as “the entire continental and maritime region” stretching from the eastern edges of Siberia southward in a vast arc, encompassing Japan, the Korean peninsula, mainland China, mainland and archipelagic Southeast Asia and Oceania, and India.[④] This definition covers most of the continental parts of Asia and the Pacific and India Oceans. Maybe we can have more geographical definitions from academia and government officials but their explanations and concepts at least demonstrate different horizontal seascapes and probably their appeals and claims for some special interests through policy explanations. The special-interest claims obviously expose different purposes to reshape a geographical pattern. Some only have their research demands for a special subject map, for instance, a bio-geographical map and even different geographical maps to be drawn up. The others have their geopolitical intentions. That is why that the term Indo-Pacific could have various patterns of maps but not a generally accepted definition.

II. It Carries Geopolitical Implications

A country that anchors in a specific place on earth is hardly reshaped in a geographical map in spite of the fact that geographical analysis can generate and reshape a certain pattern of a geographical region from a school subject or another one. Geopolitics and geopolitical analysis, however, can have some approach for a certain purpose to reshape a political geographical map. Traditionally, Asia Pacific mainly refers to East Asia and the Western Pacific and the “shorthand for the wider region of the Asia-Pacific area plus South Asia and the Indian Ocean region”.[⑤] For a long time the definition Asia Pacific has not been questioned and maybe this is what the 2013 Australian Defence White Paper refers to the Indo-Pacific “a logical extension of Asia Pacific”. But why not keep it as usually called?

It implies kind of geopolitical thinking. As the Asia Pacific is the shorthand for Asia Pacific , the term Indo-Pacific has been very much unfamiliar to the world for several decades but familiar to the “Geopolitik study”, particularly those who supported the nationalist socialist regime in Germany, among whom was General Karl Haushofer, one of the most influential theorists on the leaders of the Third Reich. After General Haushofer returned from his Far East mission to Germany, he wrote books and articles in his monthly column of “Zeitschrift fur Geopolitik” on the Indo- Pacific region as well as Europe and possibly he was one of those earliest men using the term Indo-Pacific in the sense of Geopolitik. He supported Japanese expansion in the Pacific realm, promoted a Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis to control strategic points from the Pacific to the reach to West Africa.[⑥] In the 1930s, the Geopolitik was regarded as having applied political geography to establishing political objectives and pointing out a way by which to reach them.

Since the WWII, the term Indo-Pacific has been mentioned almost by nobody but few Australians before the 1970s, that is, only two seminars held by Australian Institute of International Affairs and the ANU. It seems that Michael Richardson is among the earliest scholars this century mentioning ‘Indo-Pacific’ region.[⑦] Then the term seems popular and has been frequently used.

The term “Indo-Pacific” spreads out quickly these days for it carries geopolitical implications. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her remark in 2010 might be the first time as a top ranking official from the U.S. to touch on the term Indo-Pacific.

“We have created new parameters for military cooperation with New Zealand and we continue to modernize our defense ties with Australia to respond to a more complex maritime environment. And we are expanding our work with the Indian navy in the Pacific, because we understand how important the Indo-Pacific basin is to global trade and commerce.”[⑧]

One year later Secretary Clinton stressed the term to enhance the American alliance relations with Australia. She put it this way “We are also expanding our alliance with Australia from a Pacific partnership to an Indo-Pacific one.”[⑨] Australia has then regarded the Indo-Pacific as strategic arc and the geopolitical and geo-security and strategy thinking is clear in their 2013 released Defence White Paper.

The American attitude alerts us. Particularly the term was deliberately selected and used by former secretary because Hillary Clinton-led State Department was the architect designing the policy “Back to Asia” and “Rebalance Strategy”, and their “pivot to Asia” must target at China. Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III made a speech to Australia that the American pivot to Asia should be interpreted as pivot to Indo-Pacific. He emphasized that although there is not an effective security mechanism through the region, the U.S-led “‘patchwork quilt’ of interwoven security relations in the Indo-Pacific have already existed and now this historical but actually cold war produced security network is only used to meet China’s rise despite of his speech without referring to China. Locklear said the U.S. rebalance toward the Indo-Pacific will help chart the way toward that goal.[⑩]

The American rhetoric must have been awakening China. Actually the structural posture in Asia Pacific remains unchanged even with China’s fast rise. But the American new plan to rebalance and shift its military force to Asia and even to the Indian Ocean with a newly produced term Indo-Pacific expands its cold-war period emphasis on the Asian landscape to a new geopolitical seascape. China’s economic growth and its further development to be a power is now depending and will continuously rely heavily on seaborne commerce. Like all other East Asian countries, China needs to have a secure sea line or lines to transport raw materials and oil through the Indian Ocean to East Asia. A normal commercial activity has now been interpreted as “pearl string” built for a military purpose. This may not only reminds but awakens China to cautiously prepare its future because the US-led alliance has regarded china as a military devil. China wants to maintain the commercial line stable but “pearl string” has been deliberately created to describe China as new threat in the Indian Ocean region. With that, the term Indo-Pacific has definitely had its geopolitical and security implications.

III. Why not Take Indo-Asia Pacific to Stand for Indo-Pacific?

The geopolitical Indo-Pacific has its special goal. The U.S. tries to incorporate India into the alliance of the United States and Australia to encircle China through the maritime domain. For a long time, particularly since the end of the Cold War, Asia Pacific has been a focus of global economy and a possible center of global politics and world history. Asia time is emerging on the horizon and Asian peoples are proud of the new century. Asia is naturally including India but a specious argument is that India and the Indian Ocean Region have been a less attention. With that plausible argument, a new term Indo-Pacific emerges but the word “Asia” in between is deliberately trimmed off.

Why can this be realized? One hypothesis seems to marginalize China. With Asia Pacific being central and particularly an “Asian century” coming up, China has been a new star in the new century but the established power must have been uncomfortable and some Asia Pacific countries feel nervous. Probably like Mearsheimer argues, the United States as the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere would mobilize any effort it can to prevent the rising power China from becoming the hegemon of the Eastern Hemisphere. Please also remember the fact that the U.S. has always had an intention to put pressure on a second power since the WWII. The U.S. took full efforts and implemented various schemes to cope with the former Soviet Union and the confrontation ended with the American won but the Soviet failed. Approaching the end of the Cold War, Japan was next to the U.S. as an economic giant and some Japanese elites even mustered up their courage to expressing “No” to the U.S. in the 1980s. Japan, however, finally has to face the consequence of their actions and the Japanese have to listen to the Americans without independence. Now in the twenty-first century China, a second economy has been marked as an adversary by the Pentagon. Even if the U.S. cannot be accurately predicted its decline in the decades ahead, the United States seems shrinking but still wants to be in the position to lead the world. The U.S. needs to rally its allies and new partners to encircle China but the first step is to marginalize China. A new term like the Indo-Pacific perhaps might unite some same-value countries to exclude and at least to marginalize an emerging power of China although it is not effective along this geographical belt with diverse ideological thinkings and values. Fortunately, India as a major power in Asia and the Indian Ocean does not go and follow the U.S.-led track although sometimes it hesitates. The U.S. is still trying to draw India into a trilateral alliance composed of the U.S., Australia and India and Japan as Hagel remarked at Shangri-la Dialogue last June that “the United States is working to build trilateral cooperation with Japan and India”.[11] As a matter of fact, Beijing does not want to challenge India’s historical status and current leading role in the Indian Ocean Region. Marginalizing China and inciting India against China does not serve the interests of India and China but only let the United States “to serve as a stabilizing power” (Kaplan). Actually this is “a divide and conquer strategy” as Kishore Mahbubani referred to.

We need to have an inclusive way and consider changing the term Indo-Pacific into Indo-Asia Pacific. If we leave the sense of geopolitical thinking to target at China, changing a term or stressing a geographical term can be accepted. What is unaccepted is that changing a term actually implies a new intention to mobilize India against China, particularly in the time China and India both are implementing their national development programs for their aspirations. Indeed, both countries are seeking resources and probably some kind of competition over energy will be stronger but peaceful competition based on rules can resolve conflicts and the Indian Ocean will be unnecessary to be a “centre stage for the challenges of the twenty-first century” as Kaplan assumed.

A hypothetical viewpoint, however, is a war between China and the U.S. would occur because of power transition should they be unable to find a way for collaboration in the Indian Ocean as well as in the Pacific Ocean. For a long time the Middle East has been the American strategic focus but now with the American troops withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan the U.S. is pivoting to East Asia. This new but rebalancing strategy has been regarded in China as a new strategy targeting against China. It is unnecessary for China and the United States to repeat the history of conflict between major powers but the narrative about the “inevitability” of such conflict has become popular, especially among “realists” inside both China and the United States and also influencing Asia Pacific. If the term Indo-Pacific becomes an additional conflict region, China must have been a strategic adversary in the sea belt along the line in the Indian Ocean to the Middle East. As a matter of fact, the U.S. has its own geographic circumstances, it is logical for the U.S. to continue to concentrate on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Mentioning “less attention to the Indian Ocean” will have only one consequence that the U.S. should enhance their naval presence and encourage the U.S. to integrate separate commands in the Indian Ocean.

In light of Chinese new development program to sustain the economic growth and double incomes in seven years and developing China to be a developed country, China’s naval force should be parallel in development to be a maritime power. The presenter does not have the capacity to supply a theoretical or a policy guide to the question how to correct or improve the China’s and others’ perceptions on the term Indo-Pacific, its concept and real intention behind the term. The presenter does have a sense that the more the term is emphasized, the more complicating the situation is, the more critical the challenges in the region might be. But the vision may be in a reversal process that the success of the June 2013 Sunnylands summit between China and U.S. presidents seems to be a new prospect. The two countries are now working on a new model of major country relations to avoid the conflict, the “self-fulfilling prophecy”. To keep the momentum stably going on, the term Asia Pacific is the best and the Indo-Asia Pacific is a compromised term.

IV. Thinking about China’s Maritime Strategy

Hillary Clinton’s observation on the pivot of history to Asia Pacific can be traced back to the Mackinder’s argument “The Geographical Pivot of History”. She worried about the sustainability and survival of the American leading role in Asia Pacific as well as in other regions. A global hegemon should not have concerned its regional leading role but she tried to use a regional approach to solve issue about the American historic status in Asia Pacific and made an emphasis on the geographical pivot of history to the U.S. in the Pacific Region. This should have been regretful for the U.S. and its allies because the U.S. has had sufficient capability and capacity to be a global hegemon. The major stimulating factor for Hillary Clinton is that China has been rising in a global scene and standing at the hub of geopolitics at least in Asia Pacific. Between 1990 and 2010, China’s rapid rising with its GDP routine growth rates of more than ten percent annually has changed its status on the global political stage. “Chinese dream” has a target in 2049 when the country will be a prosperous, democratic, and advanced country. To make the dream come true, China needs to work hard by the whole country and have a stable and peaceful environment including the Indian Ocean region strategically stable. Asian history should belong to Asian countries and we remember Deng Xiaoping’s observation that the Asia Pacific Century cannot belong to the region should China and India still be in a backward state, and not a developed country.

China’s further development heavily depends on a secure and stable sea lane in the Indian Ocean Region to transport oil and raw materials into China and export China’s goods to other countries. China now is a second largest oil importer in the world. Since 1993 when China for the first time became an oil importer, China’s oil imports have increased to about 5.1million bbl/d of crude oil record on average in 2011.[12] The volume of imports is almost 20% of China's total oil consumption per year but about 40% of the imports need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, along the Indian Ocean. Chinese policy makers understand the consequence of a sudden disruption of the Indian Ocean sea lanes as well as blocking chokepoints like the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. The commercial sea lines are vital for China.

China and other countries in the region, however, will meet a challenge to restructuring a regional order through the Asia Pacific region to the Indian Ocean region. China’s future and Chinese dream will be linked to how the architecture is organized and how the China’s position can be accepted in the new regional system. As this new international system will include maritime order, all countries in the region need to face how to resolve a trend issue in this newly-created so called Indo-Pacific region to marginalize and militarily encircle China. To China, the coming decade will be a key period to map out and implement a maritime strategy that both serves its national interests and benefits peace, development and win-win cooperation in Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean as well as other regions. As part of its efforts to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity, protection of maritime rights and interests is a basic bottom line in China’s maritime strategy and improvement of maritime resource development ability and growth into a maritime power will be one of China’s main strategic tasks for the coming decade and even years beyond. China’s maritime strategy will be so designed as to protest its basic rights vested by international law over exclusive economic zones and continental shelves such as the sovereign right over exploration and development of oil, gas and other maritime resources and the right over maritime space jurisdiction. China’s maritime strategy aims at effective safeguard of these rights. The commercial sea lines in the Indian Ocean are vital for China now and future in its development program.

China’s maritime strategy will encourage pooling of efforts with pertinent countries to maintain maritime security and peace and drive at the following near and mid-term goals: promotion of maritime governance through cooperation with the international community and in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and other international laws and rules; meeting of the new maritime challenges coming from the U.S. strategic rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region; appropriate settlement of sovereign disputes and sea border delimitation in the South China Sea under the guidance of pertinent laws and maritime codes and in line with the principles in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) worked out by China and the ASEAN countries and the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) in making; appropriate handling of the disputes over maritime rights and interests in the East China Sea in line with international laws, internationally recognized norms and under the guidance of China-Japan Mutually Beneficial and Strategic Relations and China-South Korea Strategic and Cooperative Partnership. In the meanwhile, China will also continue performing its part of international duties and obligations in fields including maintenance of sea lane safety, crackdown on pirates and promotion of marine cooperation in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

With that strategic thinking, a trend no one can deny is about the increasing stresses on the maritime commons through the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. With population, aging people and urbanization increasing in the littoral areas, food and natural resources including water consuming fast, human security has been an increasing issue along the East Asia to the South East water belt. These non-traditional security issues should be managed and controlled well and otherwise they could have an adverse impact on the regional countries and the regional order.

A new challenge could come out of technological development although high-tech products have improved our living standard. Cyber security and safety could have the potential to be highly disruptive to the sea lanes in East Asia waters and also in the Indian Ocean Region. No country can be excluded and any action to encircle any nation in the region will surely affect the regional environment for national security now and years ahead.

Any argument or policy should have a sense of diverse nature of values and cultures throughout the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean Region. A simple attention on a value cannot be a help for the problem solving or for a result-oriented policy making. The U.S. is to use its predominant naval power to generate new regimes and the approach could not be an effective one. It is therefore that the near future of China and the United States is uncertain. China is surely meeting some internal challenges but what the U.S. tries to put pressure from outside, in particular, using a new term to constrain China to walk only inside the first chain, will not be successful.

Territorial disputes could have regional impact and inter-governmental relations. In East Asia, an unavoidable issue is the territorial disputes in waters including China and Japan, Korea and Japan in East China Sea and China’s disputes with individual ASEAN countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. These disputes have drawn in outside powers and the Asia Pacific region seems not pacific. What is urgent is now to find a way out to resolve the disputes or the regional stability will be ill-influenced.

Source of documents：Global Review