This book is devoted to taking a lead in establishing a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary platform for exchanging fresh thinking in the field of strategic studies. The book gathers invited reports from various prestigious scholars from home and abroad. The aim of this book is threefold: firstly, to provide a comprehensive overview of the emerging evolution in international and regional orders, as well as the recent strategy adjustments among major world powers; secondly, to discuss major strategic issues facing China, and to further propose the Chinese wisdom and a Chinese strategic approach to sustaining peace and development, and to reaching a benign international interaction between China and other entities in the world, such as achieving cooperation and mutual benefits between China and the world; thirdly, to investigate the key factors in enhancing China’s domestic governance such as strengthening state political capacity, national environmental governance, etc. The editorial group selected 10 high-quality reports to disseminate the findings and promote future research collaboration in this area. This timely book offers both theoretical insights and rigorous quantitative method that impact China’s peaceful rise in the international arena.

This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and its political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies, an expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal, and increased great-power competition with the United States.

The timing of Dr. Robert J. Bunker’s new SWJ pocket book is apropos given the increasing intransigence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in both its domestic ‘police state’ security policies and foreign ‘expansionistic’ economic and military activities. This authoritarian regime—bereft of its former Marxist and Maoist ideologies except in name only—under the iron fisted leadership of ‘president for life’ Xi Jinping is increasingly in the news for the many draconian and predatory behaviors and actions in which it is now engaging. Dave Dilegge Editor-in-Chief Small Wars Journal

This volume explains China’s foreign policy from the perspective of its historical recovery after 1949 and the country’s subsequent rise as a great power, including its transformation into a global power. It also illuminates how China has, in tandem with its rise, developed an increasing array of political, economic, ‘sharp power’ and military capabilities that is helping it to further its increasingly expansive foreign policy objectives. The volume examines two key questions: What have been the implications of China’s rise for its foreign policy? And how has an increasingly powerful and confident China used a range of foreign policy instruments to pursue its expanding national interests in Asia and beyond? The volume is divided into three parts, covering the conceptualization and drivers of China’s foreign policy, China’s relations with the world, and the instruments of China’s foreign policy, namely its economic power, military capabilities and its ‘sharp power’ manipulation of information and relationships. It will be of interest to academics, students and researchers interested in understanding China’s role in world politics.

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of South Asian foreign policy, examining the complex history and present state of South Asian foreign policy, the foreign policy of the countries of the region, as well as their relationships with their neighbors and key external players, such as China and the United States, in an effort to understand South Asia’s place in the world order. It illustrates the future trajectory of foreign policy in the region and analyses future of regional arrangements like SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) and BIMSTEC. The handbook is structured in five parts, each representing a focused area of enquiry: Foreign Policy Relations within South Asia Relations within Indo-Pacific Relations with China, Europe and the United States Security A carefully selected collection of 26 chapters written by experts on South Asian foreign, economic, and security policy, this handbook provides an objective yet accessible overview of the history and current state of foreign policy of each country and the region. It is an authoritative reference work for academics and students as well as international think tanks, research institutes, and non-governmental organizations working on South Asian Politics, Asian Politics, Foreign Politics, International Affairs, World History, and International Relations.

In this collection, 17 leading scholars based in Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and China analyse key dimensions of the changing relationship between China and the Pacific Islands and explore the strategic, economic and diplomatic implications for regional actors. The China Alternative includes chapters on growing great power competition in the region, as well as the response to China’s rise by the US and its Western allies and the island countries themselves. Other chapters examine key dimensions of China’s Pacific engagement, including Beijing’s programs of aid and diplomacy, as well as the massive investments of the Belt and Road Initiative. The impact of China’s rivalry for recognition with Taiwan is examined, and several chapters analyse Chinese communities in the Pacific, and their relationships with local societies. The China Alternative provides ample material for informed judgements about the ability of island leaders to maintain their agency in the changing regional order, as well as other issues of significance to the peoples of the region. ‘China’s “discovery” of the diverse Pacific islands, intriguingly resonant of the era of European explorers, is impacting on this too-long-overlooked region through multiple currents that this important book guides us through.’ —Rowan Callick, Griffith University ‘The China Alternative is a must-read for all students and practitioners interested in understanding the new geopolitics of the Pacific. It assembles a stellar cast of Pacific scholars to deeply explore the impact of the changing role of China on the Pacific islands region. Significantly, it also puts the Pacific island states at the centre of this analysis by questioning the collective agency they might have in this rapidly evolving strategic context.’ —Greg Fry, The Australian National University

The Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment provides insight into key regional strategic, geopolitical, economic, military and security topics. Among the topics explored are: the deteriorating USChina relationship and great-power competition; US alliances and security partnerships; the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty; diplomatic gridlock on the Korean Peninsula; Japan’s role in Indo-Pacific security; the breakdown in Japan–South Korea relations; Indonesian policy towards the South China Sea; Australia’s defence and security outlook; the European security role in Asia. Authors include leading regional analysts and academics Douglas Barrie, William Choong, Aaron Connelly, Andrew Davies, Michael Elleman, Bonnie S. Glaser, Euan Graham, Christopher W. Hughes, Meia Nouwens, Brendan Taylor and William Tow.

Cybersecurity Governance in Latin America discusses how the massification of the Internet has exposed emerging democracies' high-tech vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks and questions why states have decided to introduce policies and legislation facilitating the militarization of cyberspace. Carlos Solar offers a comparative analysis using the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela to help navigate the changing security landscape and the growing risks found in the digital domain. His analysis includes a review of civilian and military preparedness emphasizing the ongoing alliances with the world's superpowers to finally debate what are the side effects for peace and development in the Americas from the current cybersecurity rivalry between the United States and China. Providing a much-needed account of state-technology affairs in the global south Cybersecurity Governance in Latin America challenges scholars and policymakers to rethink the protection of cyberspace to avoid unnecessarily sacrificing rights and freedoms in the name of national security.

Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyses their response to China's increasingly muscular regional posture in the Asia-Pacific through the development of diplomatic and security initiatives with partners in the region. Secondly, it delineates how they have confronted China's inroads into Europe, looking at the measures that they have taken to tackle Chinese investments in, and supply of, technologies in strategic sectors such as critical national infrastructures, dual-use technologies, and in the digital domain, including Huawei's 5G networks. A longstanding assumption in the IR literature has been that European foreign policies toward the People's Republic of China have been driven by a 'naïve' and self-interested focus on the economic opportunities presented by such a vast market, overlooking security considerations. This book challenges such common belief through a detailed examination of the policies of France, Germany and the United Kingdom from 1989 to the present. Its central argument is that, whereas this assessment aptly characterized the first two post-Cold War decades, Beijing's growing assertiveness after 2009 caused the three major European powers to awaken to China's rise. In the 2010s, heightened threat perceptions of China, coupled with increasingly competitive bilateral economic relations with the PRC, have gradually and cumulatively caused the hardening of their policy goals which, in turn, translated into the formulation of new policy instruments to confront such a challenge. To substantiate this argument, the book relies on a large body of previously undisclosed primary sources, including: 223 interviews conducted with senior officials in Europe (Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris), in the United States (Washington DC), and in Asia (Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, Seoul); declassified archival documents from France, the UK and Germany; leaked US diplomatic cables; and new data on European naval deployments.