Hedging Through Multilateral Economic Frameworks in the US–China Strategic Competition: A Case Study of Singapore

The article explores the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) position and policy toward China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI). South Korea’s interests and intentions regarding linking of Moon Jae-in’s New Northern and New Southern Policies (in an earlier period – Park Geun-hye’s Eurasia Initiative) and China’s BRI are examined. The potential risks and factors that will influence such cooperation are defined, in particular the deepening of US–China rivalry in the region, fears of overdependence on China, instability on the Korean Peninsula, and costs associated with a slowdown in economic growth during the (post) pandemic period. At the official level the ROK has not joined the Belt and Road initiative, but Moon Jae-in’s government adheres to the position of the need to develop cooperation with the PRC. The ROK is interested in economic benefits it can have through its participation in the BRI. In particular, it expects to enter new infrastructure markets together with China. Seoul’s diplomatic curtsy over the BRI is not least related to the ROK’s interest in the Chinese consumer market, which in 2020 became the largest in the world after the US consumer goods market, as well as the importance of economic cooperation with China, its largest trading partner. Projects with the participation of North Korea are of great importance for Seoul as well, but their implementation at this stage is extremely problematic due to international sanctions. Under these circumstances, South Korea is trying to find common ground between its regional policies and the BRI at the level of interregional cooperation and joint investments in third countries (in particular, ASEAN). Thus, South Korea is highly likely to continue its balancing act towards China’s BRI. Seoul will support the Chinese initiative at the level of official rhetoric about the search for formats of linking it with South Korean regional policy, while emphasizing the multilateral nature of cooperation and avoiding as much as possible too much involvement. Acknowledgements. Research for this article was supported by MGIMO University, project No. 1921-01-02.

Focusing on the US–China rivalry in the Horn of Africa (HoA), this study investigates the geoeconomic implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on long-standing US preeminence, using offensive realism as a theoretical lens. Based on an in-depth literature review and using a qualitative research approach, the authors examine Beijing’s growing geoeconomic engagement with the HoA and its consequences for great power competition on the African continent. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of President Biden’s Build Back Better World (B3W), a development initiative designed to counter China’s BRI economic influence on the HoA. The study concludes that both the BRI and B3W initiatives and their implementation strategies demonstrate that both Beijing and Washington have strong national interests in the HoA regions, resulting in fierce geopolitical competition.

The participation of most Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2018 illustrates how China has filled the void left by the US in its traditional sphere of influence. The BRI represents a vague cooperation platform for developing investment, infrastructure projects, and trade between China and its partners with dubious effects in the region but with certain diplomatic gains for China. The review of the literature and the examination of official documents points to two main factors for its achievement in LAC: the flexibility of choosing different degrees of involvement for each government and the mobilization of the connectivity rhetoric in a region affected by structural infrastructure deficits. This chapter suggests that the BRI should be considered a discursive strategy which has had a noticeable impact on the US–China rivalry in the region.

The twenty-first-century global arena is profoundly shaped by the intensifying US–China rivalry. While theories in the US, such as the Thucydides’ Trap and the Clash of Civilizations, forecast a prospective ‘Cold War II,’ many experts in China propound a ‘divided peace,’ advocating for the stable coexistence of dual powerhouses. Introducing a nuanced lens, the ‘Security in Context’ (SiC) approach argues for a more interconnected and multi-dimensional understanding of great power dynamics. This study dives into the practicalities of a SiC approach, examining key strategies including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy. As we venture into the era of economic and technological decoupling, epitomized by measures like the Chip Act and Restrict Act, the paper suggests that the SiC framework remains central to deciphering the evolving US–China narrative, even in the face of burgeoning uncertainties.

Acute US rivalry with China includes strong efforts to counter Chinese challenges to US interests within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This article goes beyond earlier assessments and identifies and explains the wide range of reasons behind these American efforts and the implications for US–China competition. In particular, the study goes beyond examining US commercial competition with China to assess the serious implications of the BRI for the existing US-backed free market economic order and US-supported international governance. The timeframe used in this assessment is the period from the start of the BRI to 2020. The methodology of the assessment relies on and synthesizes findings of a variety of recent foreign studies on China’s statecraft to offer a largely qualitative examination on how China’s statecraft in the BRI works against US interests economically, strategically and in global governance. The study concludes that the BRI legitimates China’s predatory growth model, and fosters corruption, authoritarian rule, unsustainable lending, and dependence China used by Beijing to leverage and control recipient countries. It foresees no easy way for the US to counter these adverse Chinese-directed developments.KeywordsUSChinaRivalryBelt and Road InitiativeInfrastructureGovernance

This chapter summarizes the volume’s findings concerning US–China bilateral relations and its varying impacts on various regions of the world, amidst crisis-ridden world politics. This chapter highlights several conclusions. First, the need to accumulate capital and crucial resources for continued economic growth are crucial factors in shaping the trajectory of the rivalry, although the precise conditions of such a need depends on where this economic conflict occurs. Second, intersubjective interpretations about physical geography and social relations play an important role in the trajectory of great power relations. Third, understanding how intersubjective meanings about physical geography change over time provides important insights in the analysis of US–China rivalry. Fourth, the manifestations of how physical geography emerges as the locus of contestation between great power could be investigated through the developments in institutional structures. Fifth, the formations and transformations of US–China rivalry ultimately depend on one’s positionality in a highly interdependent global order: across various world-regions, temporal conditions, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Sino-US relations have faced an unprecedented challenge and deteriorated to the lowest point in 4 decades during the Trump presidency. The ongoing Sino-US strategic rivalry led to the speculation that the two giants would head into the “New Cold War”. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) also becomes a main target of this strategic rivalry. This article offers the strategic analysis of China’s BRI from the US perspective at different levels, focusing on the changing role of BRI and its implications among US think tanks during the Trump presidency. It also provides the policy recommendations from the US think tanks in responding the BRI challenge, emphasizing the Indo-Pacific strategy as the main counter-strategy towards the BRI, and finally reviewed both the Trump Administration’s and the Biden Administration’s main efforts in countering the BRI. The Biden Administration focuses on countering China as its foreign policy priority, particularly countering China’s BRI through variety of means as diplomatic coordination, democratic values, and the global infrastructure alternative made by the US-led Collective West. Thus, China’s BRI will be the major target in the US China policy-making in the long run.

The third decade of the 21st century has witnessed more tensions, instabilities, and new alliances in the Indo-Pacific/Asia-Pacific region due to intensifying rivalry and strategic competition between the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), two grand strategies of the US and China respectively. This article aims to assess the Rules-Based International Order (RBIO) and comprehend Biden’s IPS, particularly exploring how the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) may impact China’s BRI. This paper argues that RBIO is debatable and not universal. It is also argued that while the IPEF unveiled by President Biden represents a strategically important step forward, a long-term US genuine commitment to its implementation to counter China’s BRI is essential. The methodology of this research is primarily based on secondary literature and official documents. This study concludes that although China is reluctant to pay too much attention to the US IPEF in its official statements, China is concerned about this economic initiative. The paper also concludes that because of the intense US-China rivalry, new alliances will emerge in the region leading to a new cold war or new world order.

The article describes the United States - China rivalry and Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through a fine-grained review of primary materials such as major US policy documents and speeches by and media interviews with key American foreign policy decisionmakers, as well as the selective use of secondary materials such as think tank studies and articles in scholarly publications. It shows that the BRI has fueled the bilateral rivalry since its birth in 2013 and that the rivalry, in turn, has affected US views about the BRI. Under President Barack Obama, the US took a muted stance towards the BRI, expressing modestly cooperative sentiments regarding it. In contrast, under President Donald Trump, Washingtons posture towards the BRI dramatically changed with his administration frequently denigrating the BRI, raising it in major security and foreign policy documents, initiating competing development schemes such as the BUILD Act, and building closer cooperation with allies against Chinas venture. Despite its angst about the BRI, however, the Trump administration never launched any large-scale countermeasures. This article contributes to clarifying the situation by correcting some factual errors in past analyses and updating the general understanding about the Trump administrations response. It systematically contemplates how internal and external economic, political, and ideational factors affected the Obama and Trump administrations responses to the BRI, demonstrating that such factors shaped or shifted US policy or bounded its form and intensity. These factors, being similar to those stressed by neoclassical realists who emphasize the role of leaders as interpreters within limits of the external environment and responders to it subject to various domestic constraints, provide a foundation which is used to speculate about the USs probable response to the BRI under President Joseph Biden, Jr.

Geopolitical rivalry has intensified to a degree not seen since the Cold War. The US and China have embraced interventionist state-capitalist practices in competing attempts to gain control over the transnational networks that underpin globalization. As a result, multinational corporations (MNCs) are exposed to unprecedented levels of geopolitical risk. Most MNCs are responding in one of two ways. Some hedge and try to remain aloof from the US–China rivalry, while others align with the geostrategic objective of states in order to secure patronage (e.g. subsidies and public contracts). If MNCs maintain global production networks bridging the US–China divide they will attenuate the fragmentation of the global economy. Alternatively, if MNCs align with states’ geostrategic objectives, they will accelerate economic fragmentation. We conclude that this emergent meta-context and MNC risk mitigation strategies are shaping what we refer to as geostrategic globalization.

Can lesser powers still effectively balance between the United States and China? This question has gained significant attention from policymakers and scholars as US–China rivalry intensifies. This article explores Vietnam's delicate balancing act amidst great power rivalry, arguing that the diplomatic flexibility available to traditional hedgers like Vietnam is shrinking. As ambiguity in various spheres diminishes, Vietnam increasingly finds itself compelled to clarify its stance on key issues. While Vietnam continues to hedge whenever possible, it sometimes resorts to strategic alignment to safeguard its national interests. In navigating the US–China rivalry, Hanoi consistently reassures both powers of its benign intentions while maintaining autonomy in policymaking. Vietnam's stance on issues tied to its core national interests is carefully calibrated to protect its legitimate concerns. Notably, when balancing its relations with the two superpowers, Hanoi tends to adopt a “China first, America later” approach, primarily driven by ideological affinity and threat perceptions.

The US-China strategic rivalry has heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific, from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea. The key to a peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific is to manage complex US-China relations judiciously. China has developed new initiatives to promote trade and global influence to project itself as a great power. The Belt and Road Initiative has become a hallmark of Beijing’s contemporary diplomacy. On the other hand, the United States seems bent on countering China’s rapid expansion in power and influence. A loose united front may be formed in the years ahead to meet the China challenge, and the Quad and Five Eyes have already been strengthened with China as a clear target. However, most countries refuse to be forced to make the painful choice between the United States and China. They wish to maintain a strong security alliance with the United States and simultaneously keep dynamic economic ties with China. As two leading developing nations, India and China have more common interests than differences. Looking ahead, both challenges and opportunities exist associated with China’s rise.

This article examines the nature and impact of US–China competition on international infrastructure financing by analysing the China-financed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the US-backed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in Nepal. Inductively building from the case of Nepal, it argues that competition in infrastructure financing is not new, but it has become more competitive, with these states using three strategies to promote their initiatives: political lobbying, people-centred diplomacy, and high-level visits. The article also highlights the paradoxical impact of competing infrastructure schemes in recipient states. Competitive promotion of these schemes has impacted domestic politics, fostering controversies around nationalism and sovereignty, and accentuating political polarisation in Nepal, but it has also enabled domestic political actors to scapegoat these schemes to enhance their political standing and portray themselves as more nationalistic than their opponents. Reconciling such political divisions has led to multiple delays and renegotiations of the schemes, ultimately shaping the scope of the BRI and the MCC. The article offers a corrective to the broader scholarship in International Relations by highlighting the agency of political elites and centrality of domestic politics in recipient states, as well as the domestic effects of international infrastructure financing.

This exploratory article is interested in how transnational foreign policy ideas are shaped and institutionalised. One such idea that has re-emerged more prominently since the early 2000s is that of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ that covers the geoeconomic landscape of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The question is whether such a concept can exist beyond white papers and the current environment of US–China competition. In order to understand how transnational concepts become embedded and promoted, the example of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – not only as the perceived anti-thesis to the Indo-Pacific but also as a relatively successful concept in Africa–China ties – will be examined. While there is no strict formula for the success of foreign policy ideas that go on to become institutionalised, it is of interest to understand the elements and contexts that bring about concept durability beyond their initial formation.

As a geographical concept, ‘Indo-Pacific’ has existed for decades. As a political and strategic concept, it has since 2010 gradually become established in the foreign policy lexicon of some countries, especially Australia, India, Japan and the United States. However, China seems to be reluctant to identify itself as part of the Indo-Pacific; Chinese leaders believe that the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy aims to contain China's rise. While the battle between the two geographical concepts ‘Indo-Pacific’ and ‘Asia–Pacific’ may be fairly easily settled in the future, US–China strategic competition has just begun. Will the Indo-Pacific become a battlefield for US–China rivalry? How will China cope with the US ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy? How will other regional actors respond to the US–China strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific? What are the strategic implications of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept for regional order transformation? How will the Indo-Pacific be institutionalized, economically, politically and strategically? This article introduces the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs, which aims to address those questions, using both country-specific and regional perspectives. Seven articles focus on the policy responses of major players (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and ASEAN) to the US FOIP strategy and related US–China rivalry in the region. A further three articles examine the profound implications of Indo-Pacific dynamics for regional institution-building and for geopolitical and geo-economic architecture.