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Current geopolitical dynamics in East Asia is generated by the US rebalancing and China’s counterbalancing. The US rebalancing has so far ended in an encircling of China, whereas China counteracts to extend into the seas and the lands as typified by the Belt and Road Initiative and assertive activities in the South China Sea. China under Xi Jinping...
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... The popularity of South Korea's Hallyu, that is an array of cultural exports linked to K-pop, K-drama and the like, has had a great impact on the region and further complicates East Asia's competition for 'soft power' . In short, it is claimed that each of the three strongest nations in the area have specific strengths: Japan has a strong economy, South Korea's economic miracle is combined with its cultural Hallyu, and China has a strong military, economic competitiveness and a rich cultural heritage (Lee 2017 (Mattern 2005). ...
This article investigates the use of sports mega-events by nations in East Asia to leverage ‘soft power’. The focus is on Japan and its ‘soft power’ strategies, building on existing work by adding a novel tripartite analysis to understand Japan’s domestic, regional and international rationale for hosting sports mega-events. The empirical data for this study is drawn from government documents and bespoke in-depth interviews (N = 10) with experts involved in sport. This, alongside engagement with the extant literature in the field, allows a more nuanced understanding of Japan’s rationale behind hosting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the city’s second hosting of an Olympics, the 2020(1) summer Games. Key findings include the use of sports mega-events to ‘open up’ Japan’s society and bolster domestic politics, to maintain their regional status competing with China and South Korea and to improve the nation’s global status.
... Moreover, contemporary East Asia appears to be a perfect fit for these approaches because of low levels of institutionalization, numerous territorial disputes, and great power competition between the US and China. This has resulted in a growing body of scholarship applying the geopolitical writings of Mackinder, Spykman, and Mahan to explain the rise of China and the international relations of East Asia (Auslin, 2020;Dueck, 2019;Lee, 2017;Mitchell, 2020;Schreer, 2019). A key concern of this literature revolves around the control of the Rimland, the littoral zone surrounding the Eurasian continent, and its implications for US hegemony (Auslin, 2020;Schreer, 2019; also see Spykman, 1942). ...
The declaration of China’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over portions of the East China Sea in 2013 has often been interpreted by international relations scholars as an aggressive “land grab” in the sky. However, classical geopolitical perspectives of territory and control, despite their popularity when analyzing the politics of East Asia, fail to present a full understanding of ADIZ creation, adjustment, maintenance, and contestation. Rather than a problem created by the rise of China, conflicts over airspace are a regional phenomenon. By engaging with the critical geography literature on airspace, verticality, and space production, this paper theorizes ADIZs as the partial extension of state sovereignty via assemblages in response to the emergence of new vertical threats and opportunities. It then shows how the Cold War consensus on the function and performance of these volumes has broken down in East Asia, which has paradoxically encouraged both the expansion of ADIZs as well as their systematic violation. These “grey volumes,” which are characterized by debates over the legality, function, and performance of airspace, are explored in a case study of the ADIZs of Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Ultimately, these patchworks of ambiguous and overlapping airspaces are difficult to reconcile with classical geopolitics’ one-dimensional assumptions of sovereignty and territory.
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This paper aims to analyze the strategies of each ASEAN member states towards China related to the dispute in the South China Sea (SCS). SCS area is becoming a platform of power competition between China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. Five parties mentioned above are competing over sovereignty in certain areas of the SCS. SCS area became interesting to certain parties, considering its strategic value for expansive policy. In the contemporary era, the rise of this conflict perceived as a problem which caused by shifting balance of power, that happened when the U.S. sought to preserve its unilateral moment after the end of cold war. This lead to vacuum of power situation in the Southeast Asia, thus encourage China to build up presence in the dispute area. Even though there are only four ASEAN countries that directly involved, however the adoption of the Declaration on the SCS by all ASEAN member countries, asserted that in this case ASEAN is standing together to show their objections of China’s aggressiveness. With structural realism perspective as the analysis tool, tendencies of ASEAN member states’ different strategies are understandable by the explanation about motives behind it. Which Philippines and Vietnam tend to leaning towards balancing strategy against China. Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar indicate towards bandwagoning strategy with China, while the rest of the members did not show tendencies of leaning either ways.
Recent years has seen confusion in the international political system as the hegemony of the U.S. has waned while China's international influence has dramatically increased. This change to the status quo from a unipolar system immediately after the Cold War to a bipolar or multipolar system has compelled states in the Asia region to formulate strategies in response to this change. The three typical strategies available to a state are what is referred to as bandwagoning, balancing, and this article's focus; hedging. In the case of Thailand, being relatively far removed from the epicentre of any future confrontation between Washington and Beijing, the state has options as to how it will approach the upcoming change in the regional power distribution. This essay intends to analyse the foreign policy strategy of Bangkok from early 2012 to the contemporary period to determine whether trends have emerged that may illustrate the direction of its foreign policy in the near future. By examining recent hardware purchase diversification, public statements, and the changing nature of military exercises between Thailand and the USA and Thailand and China, it is possible to make the conclusion that Thailand has adopted a hedging policy. This essay will explore how Thailand has moved beyond the traditional Thai-U.S. Alliance that lasted for most of the Cold War and is now entering into a more pragmatic position where overt allegiance is less public than before, prompting questions and possibly suspicion from both great powers in the near future.
This article aims to observe the behaviour of China’s foreign policy in the conflict of South China Sea (SCS), by analyzing the internal factors and external factors that affect China’s foreign policy. China is one of the parties that take direct claim on the SCS. China’s claim is overlapping with other parties such as Vietnam, Filipina, Malaysia, dan Brunei. In defending its claims, China seeks to dominate both in the dispute area and in multilateral negotiations. In the dispute area, China seized the area, building land reclamation, and attacked other countries’ ships under various pretexts. In multilateral negotiations, China rejects the intervention of great power countries outside the region and maintains ambiguous and non-binding code of conduct. China also continues to increase its military power to press other countries. The author argues that the internal factors has greater influence on Chinese foreign policy decision and action in the SCS dispute than the external factors. Thus, it could triggers China to keep dominating the issue of SCS disputes.
