ABSTRACT
This chapter locates China in the evolving discourses on the Indo-Pacific geopolitical framework of our times. The imagination of an 'arc' of Indo-Pacific has, however, become a non-starter with the Chinese. To begin with, Communist China had been intrinsically sceptical of multilateralism, especially of post-1945-west-sponsored multilateralism. The trigger for Indo-Pacific debates is that following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the United States' 'hub-and-spokes' strategy no longer ensures stability, besides the unprecedented rise of China and relative decline of the United States and Japan. Beijing claims build of the South China Sea in the name of territorial sovereignty and contends that United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has no jurisdiction in settling these disputes. Finally, it is also important to note the timing of this tectonic shift of the US from three oceans–Atlantic, Pacific and Indian–of twentieth-century geopolitics to creating a new reality of Indo-Pacific as one water body in its twenty-first-century geopolitical framework.
