Elliot S. Ji
The geopolitical significance of the Pacific and Indian Oceans has been a prominent issue in the Chinese political and diplomatic discourse. In 2013, Xi Jinping called on leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting to “firmly move toward the goal of constructing a common destiny of the Asia-Pacific,” a vision he has since advocated for repeatedly during diplomatic engagements with APEC state leaders.1 With the concept of the “Indo-Pacific,” the geopolitical chessboard of Asia is expanded to highlight the connection between the two oceans, fusing the region into a single geopolitical framework that encompasses multilateral security partnerships, economic and trade integration, and a structure of strategic competition for regional players to balance each other’s influence.
China’s strategic community of policy experts, including those closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) foreign policy organs and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have extensively analyzed the significance of the Indo-Pacific. Many leading Chinese experts at the time suspected that this concept of Indo-Pacific, which shifted from “Asia-Pacific” to highlight the geostrategic value of the Indian Ocean, would quickly gain traction in the foreign policy of its geopolitical rivals and their close allies, creating new security challenges for China. Over the past decade, the Chinese strategic community has perceived this concept as a geostrategic response to China’s rise—a foreign policy instrument through which the United States, its allies, and partners can shape the security environment around China in their favor. Given the security and economic importance of the region, examining how Chinese strategists understand the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitically competitive space lends essential insight into how China perceives its strategic priorities in the context of security competition with regional countries.
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