ABSTRACT
Geopolitically, the most significant development of the twentieth-first century has been the rapid shift in global wealth, and accompanying power, from the Atlantic region eastwards to an area increasingly termed the Indo-Pacific region. In good part, China’s meteoric economic rise accounts for the Indo-Pacific’s emergence as the world’s geopolitical center of gravity. Beijing swelling influence and involvement in the region, most clearly manifested in its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is challenging the interests of the established powers in the Indo-Pacific and poses tough choices for resident middle powers and smaller polities alike. This chapter sketches the chief factors that are redefining geopolitical realities in the Indo-Pacific, and in doing so sets the scene for the succeeding chapters.
