Originally published 20 September 2018.

The relationship between the Australian and Chinese governments would benefit from a clearer declaration from Australia about what is and is not in our national interest in engaging with the Chinese state and economy.

This is a particularly timely requirement given that President Xi Jinping’s re-energised Communist Party has clarified the Chinese state’s intent and behaviour in ways that show that the time of its peaceful rise is over.

A declaratory policy is just a way of saying what you do and don’t want, and what you will and won’t do, so that others know what to expect and can shape their own policies and actions accordingly.

Such a clear policy can be implied from government decisions and statements and from laws passed by the Australian parliament. Rather than leaving it to be understood from the pattern of individual decisions, a statement setting it out simply would provide a framework to help manage future issues.

Without such a framework, each Australian decision can be characterised as a new ‘test’ of the bilateral relationship—whether on foreign investment, security or defence relations, or on whether to prosecute foreign interference or implement, say, the laws regulating research partnerships.

Each decision can look like a chance to send a message, or to give a little back if the previous one was maybe perceived as harsh. That creates the risk of an ad hoc transactional approach. Commentators and critics then read the tea leaves of each decision for symbolism about overall policy directions and the ‘state of the relationship’.

It makes everything a more febrile, exciting and open adventure than a more sober analysis would suggest. Great for the commentariat, but bad for government to government relations.

Let’s look at overall policy settings and big decisions on China and what declaratory policy flows from them. First on foreign investment and trade.

Australia is open for business. Our two-way trade with China focuses on resources, agriculture and services (notably tourism and education). This is mutually beneficial, as Australian businesses earn strong revenue and our Chinese customers receive world-class resources, goods and services at competitive prices.

But economists and strategists learned from the global financial crisis that it’s a mistake to carry too much risk in any asset area.

So, Australia will seek to diversify its economic and trade relationships to reduce its reliance on China as the single customer.

Trade diversification is an old strategy for Australia that’s becoming newly relevant. It was a major theme when the UK joined the European Economic Community—another example of our reliance on a large single customer being bad economics and bad strategy.

Peter Varghese’s India strategy sets out the contribution that a growing relationship with India can make to such diversification. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s visit to Indonesia around the free trade agreement is another element of that strategy.

On investment, most foreign investment into Australia, whether from China or elsewhere, is approved by the Foreign Investment Review Board process. According to FIRB annual reports, in the 10 years to the end of 2016–17, four business proposals were rejected (two on Ausgrid, one on Graincorp and one on the ASX) and 169,178 were approved.

The small number of foreign investment decisions rejected (and others given a ‘preliminary view that they were contrary to the national interest’) from Chinese entities are important, however, in establishing a policy. Key examples are the Ausgrid decisions and the Kidman Holdings decisions. In the Ausgrid case, Chinese bids were rejected as contrary to the national interest.

In the case of Kidman Holdings, in April 2016 the then treasurer, Scott Morrison, gave his ‘preliminary view’ that the original bid from Dakang Holdings, a Chinese-owned entity, was contrary to the national interest. That meant that if it proceeded, it was very likely to be rejected. A new bid involving Gina Rheinhart and a Shanghai firm was accepted, with property straddling the sensitive Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia excised from the transaction.

There’s little doubt that if the leasing of Darwin port was being decided in 2018, the Chinese entity Landbridge would not have got its 99-year lease.

On telecommunications infrastructure, the government has advised Australian telcos that suppliers subject to extrajudicial control by governments won’t be able to supply 5G systems within Australia. That has excluded Chinese telcos Huawei and ZTE.

Public statements on our approach to foreign investment review and critical infrastructure are reassuring about openness to investment and explain in detail that any rejections are decided case by case, subject to the nature of the asset and transaction, with no one-size-fits-all approach. That repeats the longstanding approach of testing all foreign investors’ proposals against Australia’s national interest.

But these public statements provide scant explanation of the few important rejections.

The sense I make of it—and which I’m sure the leadership in Beijing gets too—is that we’ve reached a point in Chinese investment in Australia’s critical infrastructure, energy and communications sectors where further aggregation and large market penetration by Chinese-owned entities is not seen as being in our national interest.

As with trade, this is probably as much about cumulative business risk from reliance on a single source of investment as it is about strategic interests. The net effect, though, looks pretty firm from a policy perspective. Let’s say so.

Second is the new foreign interference legislation. As Malcolm Turnbull said when he introduced it last December: ‘[Q]uestions of foreign interference are not all about China—far, far from it. Globally, Russia has been wreaking havoc across the democratic world.’

But it’s equally clear that events like the controversy over former senator Sam Dastyari, combined with testimony on the threat from foreign interference and covert influence by the head of ASIO, created the foundation for this legislation to be passed by both sides of politics.

The policy here is in the law itself. Quoting Malcolm Turnbull again: ‘Media reports have suggested that the Chinese Communist Party has been working to covertly interfere with our media, our universities and even the decisions of elected representatives right here in this building. We take these reports very seriously.’ He also said: ‘[W]e will not tolerate foreign influence activities that are in any way covert, coercive or corrupt. That is the line that separates legitimate influence from unacceptable interference.’

The only further clarity we could provide is to prosecute a Chinese national for covert interference or espionage. That may come, noting that both Russia and the US do often prosecute Chinese nationals for such things.

Lastly, there’s the issue of the defence relationship and the pursuit of capability advantage by the ADF and by the PLA. Here also there’s some clarity. We seek a defence relationship where we can engage each other to increase understanding, and we each seem willing to exercise together in ways that don’t give away real capability insights.

There’s no prospect of the Chinese giving us technological or intelligence insights into the PLA’s weapons systems, cyber capabilities or even strategic intent (apparently they don’t conduct cyber espionage for economic advantage now).

Similarly, Australia won’t share JORN over-the-horizon radar, CEA radar, or the joint strike fighter or future submarine technologies with the PLA. That’s because we are not allies and we have markedly different strategic interests. We each know that it’s not in either of our interests to advance the military reach and capabilities of the other. Again, let’s say so.

That will have consequences for research partnerships and for particular types of students in Australian universities. China would never allow Australia (or the US, Japan, France, Germany, the UK …) to put military or other national security individuals in its key military research institutions or in universities that are creating the next wave of technical advantage (with both civil and military applications).

Australian policymakers, universities and the public need a much clearer, more honest and intellectually rigorous discussion about what the Chinese military and the research community tied to that military are seeking to achieve here and in other nations through their research partnerships and student placements.

To date, the Defence Trade Controls Act 2012 seems to have resulted in not one refusal of a research proposal involving the Chinese military on national security grounds, maybe because it relies on universities’ self-assessment of national security risk.

Doctoral and post-doctoral researchers from China who have access to cutting-edge research in STEM that has military applications will apply that knowledge for PLA purposes. We’re fooling ourselves if we think that PLA students studying explosives technologies or quantum computing would be doing so for peaceful purposes.

Given Xi’s agenda of using civil–military fusion to create strategic and military strength through next-generation technologies, it’s hard to see that research partnerships contributing to the PLA’s capability agenda are in our national interest.

A clear declaratory policy on China around economics and security would look a bit like this:

• We want to continue our close and growing economic relationship because it’s to both countries’ benefit. We get high-quality resources and education and tourist services at competitive prices. We get revenue and economic activity that’s important to our society.
• We gradually diversify our economy to reduce the business and strategic risks from relying too heavily on a single country. That will make us a more resilient economic partner.
• We welcome debate and exchanges of views as part of our politics and national decision-making. However, we won’t tolerate foreign influence activities that are in any way covert, coercive or corrupt.
• On investment in critical infrastructure, energy and telecommunications, we’ve reached a point of cumulative investment where further large-scale investment by Chinese entities isn’t in our national interest.
• We’re in favour of defence cooperation, but only as a reflection of shared strategic interests.
• We’re happy to engage in a defence relationship that increases understanding of each other’s intent and creates habits of communication so that tensions can be resolved and the prospects of conflict between us reduced.
• We won’t help China increase its military capabilities because we’re seeing that how it is beginning to use them, most obviously in the South China Sea, isn’t in the interests of Australia or the region. Here, our countries’ strategic interests are in direct tension, given the direction of Chinese policy and action.
• We also don’t support plans to create military advantage for the PLA through next-generation technologies, so our economic and research interactions will have limits in that key area.
• Overall, we seek a mature, respectful relationship between our nations, in ways that enhance the prosperity and security of our region and the world. Clarity on where our interests work together—and where they don’t—is an important step in building this relationship.

If such a declaratory policy were in place, Australian ministers wouldn’t be as hostage to pressure (as much from the various wings of Australia’s commentariat as from Chinese authorities) on individual decisions.

As an example, the treasurer’s forthcoming decision on the bid by CKI holdings to acquire a large stake in Australian electricity and gas distribution systems would already be clear—and future such bids would be unlikely.

Let’s take the heat, light, noise and excitement out of the relationship by establishing a clear, declared policy that governs our approach to the economic and strategic relationship with the Chinese state. It won’t be new news to Beijing and the CCP leadership, but it will make our government’s deliberations and public statements easier.

It will also be a welcome relief to both sides of politics to have a clear bipartisan approach.

This may well encourage similar clearer declarations from other nations facing similar tensions and competing interests in their own relationships with the Chinese state and economy.

Observers outside of Papua New Guinea may find it a somewhat puzzling exercise to try to pinpoint PNG’s position on the current geopolitical manoeuvrings between the United States (and its allies) and China. What factors define PNG’s interactions with the various parties in this rivalry? The crudest way of answering that question is: PNG’s foreign relations have to be understood in the context of PNG’s domestic politics and the perceived benefits of those relations.

On the whole, PNG’s foreign relations are not informed by any rigorous process of foreign policy engagement with domestic stakeholders and interest groups. What is touted as PNG’s interest isn’t necessarily the product of a serious refining of priorities. PNG’s official foreign relations are determined mainly by personalities and circumstances or perceived material benefits, rather than by any distinctive decision-making structure.

Cabinet and ministerial prerogative in most instances frames how foreign policy agendas are executed on behalf of the Independent State of PNG. References to cornerstone foreign policy ‘principles’ are made, but often as an afterthought. Domestic players, if they exist at all, are disconnected from the foreign-policymaking process.

The latest move to build a naval facility with Australia in Manus province provides a good example. It is the first time since independence that a facility housing foreign powers will be constructed in PNG. The agreement to have a joint naval base on PNG territory faces a ‘democratic deficit’ because Papua New Guinean input was never sought, yet it is Papua New Guineans who will live with the impact. Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley note that ‘foreign policy making is a realm of government that needs to be subjected to a greater amount of public accountability and transparency’. The Manus naval base agreement is a foreign policy strategy that doesn’t reflect Papua New Guinean designs.

Already, there are objections to the decision by political leaders of Manus, who feel that the province’s people weren’t consulted on the matter. The PNG government’s decision to be party to a joint naval base agreement was never debated in parliament, even though that is the highest law-making body in the land with the power to ratify international treaties and agreements. The parliamentary committee on foreign affairs is ineffectual and has never been allowed to consider submissions from the public on issues such as the naval base.

Two previous Australia–PNG cooperation arrangements—the 2004 enhanced cooperation program and the 2013 deal to process asylum seekers on Manus Island—were belatedly ruled unconstitutional by the PNG Supreme Court. Australian engagements with PNG have an unsavoury history of bypassing initial domestic scrutiny.

The fact that these landmark bilateral arrangements were found to be unconstitutional attests to deficiencies in domestic scrutiny and debate. Checks and balances on national positions in PNG’s international commitments are dispensed with. It is an efficient way of keeping Papua New Guineans passive and reliant on external forces and the all-knowing executive arm of government.

I am tempted to argue that the competing powers in the Sino-American rivalry are capitalising on the weaknesses in PNG’s domestic scrutiny of foreign policy and an uninformed populace to advance their own agendas.

Without the input and constructive participation of Papua New Guineans, our country’s position on international matters will further erode democratic processes and ultimately the sovereignty of PNG. If PNG’s partners are serious about helping us build on our common values of adherence to the rule of law and democratic principles in decision-making, the same level of participation that American and Australian citizens enjoy has to be encouraged for PNG.

This may mean demanding that the PNG government show cause on the level of domestic input into a serious issue like a naval base on PNG territory. The US and Australia should make adequate consultation with the people of PNG a condition for agreements on issues that will profoundly affect them.

In Western democracies like Australia and the US, foreign policy is an outcome of a range of alternatives, and the participation and influence of domestic interest groups and actors is pronounced. In Australia, for instance, the media is an agenda-setting stakeholder. Non-government organisations; advocacy and lobby groups; political parties; research think tanks wholly committed to informing foreign-policy positions; and a multiplicity of interest groups and individuals make the process of foreign-policymaking a rigorous and sometimes protracted affair. Moreover, foreign policy is a serious item in the electoral cycle, not least when it comes to decisions like whether or not to go to war. It’s not unheard of for political parties and candidates to either win or lose based on the foreign policy platforms they align with.

Voters in industrialised democracies are often also tax-paying citizens. Taxpayers invariably vote with the assumption that their tax dollars will be spent on policies and programs that are consistent with their interests. In foreign relations, taxpayers prefer certain levels of accountability. The Australian and New Zealand governments, for example, are exacting when it comes to reassuring taxpayers about the quality and transparent delivery of their foreign aid to countries like PNG.

It is these processes and institutions in Western democracies that directly connect the citizen to foreign-policymaking processes, and make foreign policy relevant to the average citizen.

It is therefore misleading to assume that the same kind of connection of the citizenry to the foreign policy apparatus exists in developing democracies like PNG. PNG’s parliament is dominated by the executive. In a political system where elected officials are focused on more parochial and tribal matters and concerned with the immediate chores of pork-barrel politics, foreign relations is a sideshow preoccupation over which the cabinet, the prime minister and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have significant influence.

Western powers in the region that wish to enlist the diplomatic support of PNG in countering non-democratic powers ought to be mindful of the domestic dynamics of PNG’s foreign policy decision-making processes, to help nurture inclusive values. Western countries that are governed according to democratic principles should look no further than their own political systems and the standards to which their citizens and interest groups hold their elected leaders.

The first strategic priority for Australia in the Indo-Pacific is to manage great-power competition. And the central trend of that competition is the challenge to US dominance.

So says Australia’s defence minister.

Here’s Christopher Pyne describing the regional race:

We see today that the relationships between the great powers of the region are becoming more competitive. There are worrying signs of a return of ‘might is right’. That is just one of the reasons we regard the United States as our most important security partner. For decades, it has used its considerable power to sponsor rules and institutions that have benefited countries of all sizes and provided the stability that has allowed this region to grow into the engine room of prosperity and growth it is today. But the United States will find it increasingly difficult to provide this security unchallenged—and frankly we should not expect it to underwrite that security alone.

Australia’s responses, as listed by Pyne:

• Lift the defence budget to 2% of GDP by 2020–21, three years ahead of schedule: ‘the largest recapitalisation of our defence capability in peace time history, including the largest regeneration of Australia’s maritime capability’.
• Pursue stronger military-to-military relations ‘with a wide range of partners, new and old’.
• Enhance Australia’s military capability and presence in the region, ‘so we have good options to respond to a wide range of contingencies’.
• Reinforce the Pacific pivot (a headline description embraced by Pyne): ‘a generational realignment of our framework and support to the South Pacific’.
• Deal with the threat of terrorists coming to or returning to Southeast Asia from the Middle East.

The terrorism point is the category outlier. Everything else leans towards Pyne’s first priority—managing great-power competition. Cast your mind back to the way the previous decade was defined by terrorism. Talk about a shift in strategic focus.

The sense of a new era arriving is the launch point of the Regional security outlook 2019 from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific.

As Ron Huisken writes in the volume’s introduction, we face a change likely to have major and enduring consequences for stability and order: ‘the end of ambiguity and denial about whether the United States and China saw themselves as in an essentially adversarial contest for global preeminence’. He links a ‘decisive shift’ in America’s attitude to the judgement that ‘the challenge of adapting the global order to accommodate a powerful China is proving too hard’.

The US and China may yet surprise us with concessions and initiatives, Huisken writes, but the two states can no longer credibly assert that they have everything under control:

An overtly adversarial relationship between America and China is precisely the outcome that everyone has been seeking to avoid over the past 30 years. Such a development was first mooted in the late 1980s as a theoretical possibility suggested by history. Since the turn of the century, it has evolved from a detectable tendency into an increasingly probable outcome.

Giving the CSCAP view from Washington, Lindsey W. Ford reports on a sharp-edged US embrace of strategic competition:

Two years after President Trump’s election, most of the worst fears about what a Trump presidency might mean for Asia have not been realised. The United States remains engaged in the region, focused on maintaining alliance relationships, and committed to creating greater freedom and openness.

But the administration’s shift toward a more openly competitive US–China relationship suggests that US strategy may be on the precipice of a significant, and potentially longer-term, realignment.

From Shanghai, Zhong Zhenming says the US–China relationship is being transformed:

[A] vicious competition between China and the United States may lead to the two countries trying to please other countries in the Asia–Pacific region, and some will try to benefit from their strategic competition by playing one off against the other. The dynamics of great power competition will worsen the ecology of international relations in the region. China and the United States will find it costly to compete for allies, partners or friends. More importantly, some countries are likely to be victims of Sino-US competition as their national interests are discounted and priority given to power rivalry.

From Tokyo, Masayuki Tadokoro offers key questions being quietly debated in Japan: ‘Is the US still a reliable ally? How do we balance China and hedge against the erosion of the alliance?’ And in the classic Japanese manner, the professor’s article ends on those questions.

They’re good questions, though, as decision-makers and thinkers in Canberra would agree.

The new era of great-power competition has arrived. Now to work out how it’ll work and where it might go.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has given an expansive speech about Australia’s strategy for the South Pacific. And he’s backed his words with new resources—some $2 billion in funding for infrastructure and $1 billion in financial support to small and medium-sized Australian businesses to operate in the South Pacific, along with an increased ADF presence in South Pacific nations.

The speech collects numerous proposals from the 2017 foreign policy white paper together with more recent initiatives like the agreement with Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to develop a joint naval base on Manus Island and hold annual leaders’ meetings between Australia and PNG. It’s a practical and imaginative new strategy on issues critical to our region’s security, prosperity and people-to-people connections.

Morrison’s acknowledgement that Australia sees itself as having special responsibilities in its neighbourhood was frank. However, while language like ‘This is our patch’ might play well domestically, it risks being received badly—almost as an ownership claim—in parts of the South Pacific. Fortunately, he balanced this with a more important sentiment, saying, ‘It’s time to open a new chapter … in relations with our Pacific family. One based on respect, equality and openness.’

The agenda laid out by the prime minister has substance. Australia will establish diplomatic posts in Palau, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Niue and the Cook Islands—meaning we’ll have representation in every Pacific Islands Forum nation. There will be a new annual meeting of defence and police and border security chiefs to deepen our collaborative efforts, along with an Australia Pacific Security College and a new ADF Pacific Mobile Training Team.

Most refreshingly, the strategy is not just about defence, foreign affairs and traditional security activities. The real novelty and power of the strategy are in its economic initiatives. The new $2 billion infrastructure fund will enable direct competition with Chinese infrastructure projects, but with the defining advantage that financing won’t be through soft loans with predatory interest rates. So, no debt traps here for small island states.

And there’s the more imaginative $1 billion in Export Finance Insurance Corporation (EFIC) funding aimed at supporting Australian small and medium enterprises operating in the South Pacific. This support seems well targeted to address the practical obstacles that smaller Australian firms face and will help them meet the real needs of South Pacific communities.

One hugely important if simple example is building small renewable power systems in remote island communities. Projects like this have foundered on the inability of small firms to obtain financing, owing both to their own small scale and to the perceived business risks of operating in the South Pacific.

The EFIC financing should change this rapidly. Australian firms providing small renewable energy systems that are cheap to build and cheap to operate will end the drain on small communities’ resources from having to pay the high costs of shipping diesel fuel to remote locations. This kind of program will make a meaningful difference in the lives of many people across the South Pacific.

Both the $2 billion infrastructure fund and the EFIC financing will need effective but minimal bureaucracy and complexity in administration to achieve timely results.

Some elements of the strategy seem yet to be fully developed. Doing more to facilitate Australian business partnerships in the South Pacific by removing impediments like the complicated visa system and encouraging the big Australian banks to reverse the reduction in their presence would add to the step change the prime minister seeks.

Perhaps the least developed area of the strategy is in its soft power elements. For one thing, broadcasting in the South Pacific clearly requires further consideration. Morrison promised that the government ‘will be working with our commercial media operators to ensure our friends in the Pacific have access to more quality Australian content on television and other platforms. This will include things like lifestyle programs, news, current affairs, children’s content, drama and sports potentially.’

What’s missing here is alignment with his overall goal of ‘opening a new chapter’.

Broadcasting Australian content into the Pacific is good—far better than previous government cuts to past broadcast efforts. But for this element of soft power to be effective—and valued by the people of the South Pacific—we need to do more than talk at our neighbours.

We need this relationship to be one of talking and listening—so our broadcasts must involve more than Australian content and include a commitment to, and funding for, creating content with journalists and producers within South Pacific communities. For our regional family to work, we must hear as much or more from them as they hear from us.

Perhaps the prime minister is leaving this further work to the soft power review underway in Foreign Affairs. That review needs to consider not just commercial operators, but also Australia’s public broadcasters—the ABC and SBS.

The final missing element is a surprising one given the known security priorities of Pacific island leaders, but wholly unsurprising for anyone who has followed Australian energy debates over the last decade. Morrison’s strategic plan is silent on mitigating the consequences of climate change in South Pacific communities.

As the Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration says, ‘climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific’. Morrison acknowledged that statement in an appearance on Sydney radio in September. At that time, he noted that his decisions about Australia’s Paris agreement commitments had to go beyond domestic politics and take account of Pacific neighbours’ views.

Perhaps Morrison is leaving this to be dealt with by Australian businesses enabled by the EFIC financing, and perhaps it will be real enough and happen quickly enough for Pacific island leaders and people to notice.

The prime minister’s speech should form the opening chapter of a deeper conversation and deeper engagement with Pacific islands leaders. Early follow-through will be critical to both the design and the implementation of Morrison’s vision. If it all works, the big shift for Australia will be doing things with, not to, our Pacific neighbours.

Dhruva Jaishankar’s recent Strategist post and Huong Le Thu’s ASPI special report are useful correctives to the widespread misreading of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. That infrequent, irregular meetings of (not the most) senior officials from the US, Japan, India and Australia are seen as a threat to ASEAN centrality and/or a containment device against China tells us more about particular ASEAN and Chinese sensitivities than it does about the Quad. ASEAN organises dozens of regular meetings at this same level every year, and all of them rightfully pass by with little or no mention.

The overanalysis of the Quad and the cognitive trap behind it have coloured analysts’ interpretations of current concepts of the Indo-Pacific region. The international relations analysis of the ‘region’ in this part of the world has been captured by a particular understanding of that term that suits the power-enhancing interests of ASEAN, the states of Southeast Asia, and China quite well.

In this version of reality, regions are created and maintained by formal regional organisations that states are invited to join or not. Moreover, despite an expanding array of anomalies—including APEC, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, ReCAAP, and the recently activated Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—ASEAN is and should always be at the centre of any region that includes Southeast Asia. Hence, the interstate institutions that give meaning to these wider regions should be ASEAN-plus bodies. Kevin Rudd’s 2008 Asia–Pacific Community proposal was read as ignoring this first principle and was declared ‘dead in the water’.

‘Inclusivity’ is often presented as the second core principle of regionalism in this part of the world. In practice, however, the inclusivity principle is applied very selectively. It routinely excludes Taiwan, Mongolia and Pacific island countries, and at times the US, India, Australia and New Zealand. Indonesia’s conception of the Indo-Pacific enunciated by Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa in 2013 and its revision under Joko Widodo’s administration reflect this predominant view, with the ASEAN-led East Asia Summit seen as the central Indo-Pacific regional body.

The conflation of ASEAN-led regionalism with the region also misinforms many of the criticisms of the Indo-Pacific canvassed by Jaishankar and Le Thu. In this view, the Quad is the potential core organising mechanism of the Indo-Pacific that breaks both of the hallowed principles. The Indo-Pacific concept is disparaged and frequently written off for not respecting ASEAN centrality and excluding China. Some critics go further and argue that the concept is best left with ASEAN to develop.

These criticisms misread the Indo-Pacific regional concepts of the individual Quad nations and of the Quad itself, which are more the opposite of the predominant view of the region than a failed attempt to reproduce it. The Indo-Pacific concepts being defined separately but discussed together by the US, Japan, India and Australia and the informal, irregular nature of the Quad are overlapping responses to the shortcomings of the ASEAN-led selectively inclusive regional architecture.

It is unlikely that the Quad will become a formal regular institution among even the four members to the east, west, north and south of Southeast Asia or seek to expand by inviting Southeast Asian nations to join. The ‘Indo-Pacific’ is likely to remain what it is today, comprising four overlapping views of:

• the main arena of strategic concern for the US, Japan, India and Australia labelled in geographic terms
• the identification of the same major power, China, whose current behaviour poses the greatest strategic challenge
• a commitment to global principles that are under challenge
• the desire to seek out areas of greater cooperation with ‘like-minded’ states through bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral (or bigger) arrangements.

The Indo-Pacific concepts’ real message to China is that its aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific is creating the opposite of harmony, a sense of common destiny, or a win–win situation. For ASEAN, the message is that the current regional architecture is a means for and not the end of regional cooperation, particularly for non-ASEAN member states. For ASEAN and China, the most productive response to the Indo-Pacific and the Quad may be self-criticism and not denial.