Indo-pacific

India holds the prospect of driving the biggest change in the global economy in the next quarter century just as China did in the previous one, says economic professor Arvind Panagariya. India has several factors in its favour, but it must also push ahead with its reform agenda and open its economy wider to friendly countries through free trade agreements to make the best of its time in the sun.

The recent elections in Fiji resulted in the first democratic transition since 2014 after three opposition parties narrowly voted for a pro–Western coalition government with Sitiveni Rabuka as the new prime minister. The election outcome also has geopolitical implications considering the growing US-China confrontation in the Pacific and the renewed US re-engagement in the South Pacific with a focus on Fiji.

Taiwanese academic Hung-Jeng Tsai analyses decades of Taiwan’s Southbound Policy, now embodied in the latest iteration of the New Southbound Policy under President Tsai Ing-wen. He finds that despite the fanfare, few benefits have been won for Taiwan.

Japanese academic Shin Kawashima assesses the joint statement and joint declaration issued by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently, observing a strengthening of relations amid common interests.

Washington’s new National Security Strategy has been carefully crafted, but the document hosts a number of inherent tensions. Foremost among them is the fact that putting democracy at the center of a strategy that is increasingly Asia-focused is ill-advised.

The UK has launched a robust “tilt” towards the Indo-Pacific. To its credit, it has executed a series of high-profile diplomatic engagements and military deployments to the region. The question, however, is not about London’s desire to engage with the dynamic region but whether this tilt can be sustained.

Philippine academic Renato Cruz De Castro asserts that the Philippines will have to fall back on the strength of the Philippines-US alliance in the face of a possible US-China armed stand-off in the Taiwan Strait.

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait have intensified after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s military exercises encircling Taiwan. Taiwanese commentator Chen Kuohsiang assesses that a war in the Taiwan Strait would have implications for the Asia-Pacific region that go beyond geopolitics.

Beijing’s recent moves to establish security cooperation with Pacific island states have riled the US and Australia. Among the places that China has made moves is the Solomon Islands, where Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US security advisor Kurt Campbell have each visited within the past three months. ASEAN needs to closely watch the ongoing great power competition there to draw lessons for its own security.