ABSTRACT

This book analyses the ways in which foreign policy actors in Asia have responded to the emerging great power conflict between the US and the People's Republic of China focusing on medium and small states across the Indo-Pacific.

The book offers a much-needed counterpoint to existing analyses on the Indo-Pacific and China’s BRI and presents a new perspective by examining how great power politics are locally reinterpreted, conditioned, or at times even contested. It illustrates the policy-level challenges which the US-China rivalry poses for established political and economic practices and outlines how these challenges can be best addressed by smaller states and their societies.

A timely assessment of the power play in the Indo-Pacific with the angle of Sino-American rivalry, this book makes an important contribution to the study of Political Science, International Relations, Asian Studies and Security Studies.

Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. 

chapter 1|16 pages

Dancing with elephants

Asia and the Sino-American rivalry

chapter 2|15 pages

From globalisation to fragmentation?

The erosion of confidence in the Asia-Pacific

chapter 3|15 pages

Many players, many layers

The Indo-Pacific long game

chapter 4|18 pages

"Making Multilateralism Matter"

Middle powers in the era of the US-China competition

chapter 5|16 pages

Security order and state transformation in Asia

Beyond geopolitics and grand strategy

chapter 8|15 pages

Major power competition and Southeast Asia

Institutional strategies and resources

chapter 9|17 pages

From appeasement to soft balancing

The Duterte administration's shifting policy on the South China Sea imbroglio

chapter 10|18 pages

Beyond strategic hedging

Mahathir's China policy and the changing political economy of Malaysia, 2018—2020

chapter 11|16 pages

Midfield or margin?

Myanmar and neighbours in the game