While visiting Vietnam in November 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump put forward the Indo-Pacific Strategy, which aims to build an alliance among four countries, namely the United States, India, Japan and Australia, so as to form a ring of encirclement and check the development of China.
The strategy looks beautiful. Actually, the United States, India and Japan have been holding the Malabar naval exercise in the West Pacific Ocean for several years. Australia is also hoping to take part in the joint military exercise. But as a framework chucked together, the Indo-Pacific Strategy is not tight enough to hold water.
As for China’s relationship with India, President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a summit meeting in Wuhan, Hubei Province between April 27 and 28 this year. The summit sent strong and positive signals to the world after the border standoff between the Chinese and Indian armies last year. Both countries agreed to properly manage differences and deepen mutual cooperation. President Xi stressed that common interests between the two countries far outweigh their differences. “Problems between China and India are limited and temporary, but the cooperation is comprehensive and long-term,” he said.
The two countries also aim to boost people-to-people exchanges. China and India, with a combined population of more than 2.6 billion, are two of the largest countries worldwide in terms of population. However, the two sides have only 1 million people-to-people exchanges annually, far fewer than China’s exchanges with other neighboring countries, such as Japan, Thailand and Malaysia.
China and Japan are neighboring countries. Communications and exchanges between the two nations have been going on for thousands of years. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship. The treaty, which includes Japan’s self-reflection on aggression against China during World War II and its one-China stance, is an important document with which both countries should fully comply.
There are still many undercurrents that could hamper China’s relations with Japan, such as the Taiwan issue, the Japanese attempt to nationalize the Diaoyu Islands, and Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Despite these twists and turns, the two countries have decided to repair ties and reopen high-level economic dialogue.
Trade and culture are very good starting points for any serious attempt to restore the China-Japan relationship. While visiting Japan on May 9 this year, Premier Li Keqiang announced that China had agreed to grant a quota of 200 billion yuan (US$31.4 billion) to be used in the yuan qualified foreign institutional investment mechanism by Japanese investors. Moreover, China would also give Japan two crested ibises as gifts and as a symbol of China’s friendship with the Japanese people. Crested ibises are native to Japan, where they are called Toki, but were declared extinct in 2003.
Among the four countries within the so-called Indo-Pacific framework, Australia is the weakest in terms of both economic strength and military power. In recent years, Australia has been trying to hype the “China Threat” theory. In the Australia Foreign Policy White Paper published in November 2017, the country highly values its long-time partnership with the United States but views with suspicion the action of China, its largest trading partner.
It seems that Washington’s political pressure, perhaps using national security as a bargaining chip, has prompted Australia to terrifically change its diplomatic policy, which has had a negative impact on China-Australia relations. China is not only the largest investor in Australia, but also the country’s biggest market and No.1 source of foreign tourists and students. Australia’s iron ore, other natural resources and housing properties mainly rely on buyers from China. According to statistics, about 1.39 million Chinese visited Australia in 2017 and they spent 50.2 billion yuan (US$7.82 billion) in the country. To advance with the times, it is necessary and sagacious for the Australian Government to adjust its foreign policy in light of the changing global situation and pay deserved attention to its relations with China.
(The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)