Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / VOA Source- The Diplomat Author-  Joshua Kurlantzick After a decade, in the 2000s, in which China aggressively pursued warmer relations with many Southeast Asian nations, using a combination of diplomacy, aid, and soft power to woo its neighbors, the past five years have seen a significant chill in China-Southeast Asia relations. First, Beijing’s more aggressive pursuit of its claims in the South China Sea led to heightened tensions between China and other claimants—most notably Vietnam and the Philippines, but also increasingly Indonesia, where the armed forces are trying to rapidly modernize Jakarta’s naval capacity in part out of fear of China’s actions in the South China Sea. However, even as China alienated countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, it had until recently maintained relatively warm relations with several of the other leading Southeast Asian states, including Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia. These countries were

G-8 Meeting ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Credits- White House) Source- The National Interest Author- Michael Mazza On his inaugural visit to Southeast Asia as president of China, Xi Jinping announced a plan to build a “maritime silk road.” In November of the following year, the Chinese government established the Silk Road Fund, and contributed an initial $40 billion, which will be used to invest in both overland transportation infrastructure and in “expanding ports and industrial parks in Asia, the Mideast, Africa, and Europe.” Given Southeast Asia’s market size, economic potential, and location, it is a key link in China’s maritime silk road plans. Earlier this year, with significant international participation, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB. The bank “will focus on the development of infrastructure and other productive sectors in Asia, including energy and power, transportation and telecommunications, rural infrastructure and ag

Chinese destroyer ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons) Source- The National Interest Author- Elliot Brennan At the opening day of the ASEAN Foreign Ministerial Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, current ASEAN chair Malaysia set the tone by placing the South China Sea disputes firmly on the agenda. “Let this be the day we say we do more,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in his opening address. Australia, as well as several other key ASEAN partner countries, is present at the talks. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has expressed Canberra's desire for ASEAN to do more, and Bishop said she would 'register' her country’s concerns over the disputes at the meeting.  Australia has of late been more vocal in calling for a resolution of disputes in the South China Sea, through which the majority of its trade is shipped. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this year, Defense Minister Kevin Andrews spoke of the need for freedom of navigation in the dispu

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Navy Source- The National Interest Author- Richard Javad Heydarian No more hiding its claws, no more biding its time, China has unquestionably entered a new era of assertiveness, casting aside Deng Xiaoping’s decades-long call for moderation, humility, and calculation in foreign policy. China is slowly but surely moving from consolidating its claims on features it has been occupying for decades to dominating the entire South China Sea, gradually achieving the capability to fully drive out Southeast Asian claimant states from other features under their control. Quite naturally, a sense of panic has gripped neighboring countries such as the Philippines, which have been locked in a bitter and seemingly hopeless maritime spat with their giant neighbor. We are no longer just talking about hypotheticals here; China is unabashedly operationalizing its sweeping claims across adjacent waters. Far from resorting to its fr

Image credits- Xinhua Source- The Diplomat Author- Prashanth Parameswaran While a lot has been written about China’s growing economic influence in Southeast Asia, the analysis is often based on a survey of certain ambitious initiatives that have yet to play out – like the Maritime Silk Road – or flowery statements and declarations by leaders rather than measuring its actual impact using hard data. I’ve pointed out the folly of this before, most recently in an article on Sino-Indonesian relations for The Diplomat. A recent report released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission attempts to actually measure China’s economic ties with the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) using trade and investment data. The report’s findings suggest that China is actually much less of a juggernaut than it is often portrayed to be in Southeast Asia, and that there are still lingering problems with Beijing’s economic relationships in the

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Attributes- Philippines Government Source- The National Interest Author- Richard Javad Heydarian  By all possible measures, 2014 was a roller-coaster year for East Asia, particularly for the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which have anxiously watched Beijing’s widening shadow of influence and territorial assertiveness across the region. China kicked off the year with a bang, introducing a second amendment to its fisheries law in Hainan, which placed additional restrictions on the freedom of movement of foreign fishing vessels, particularly Vietnamese nationals, in the South China Sea.  This was followed by an intensified showdown with Filipino forces stationed at the Second Thomas Shoal, placing tremendous pressure on the United States to check China’s yet-another bold foray into a treaty ally’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Manila was gripped by panic, keeping in mind the Scarbor

Source- The Eurasia Review Author- Jayashree Sengupta/ Observer research Foundation  By all accounts, poor infrastructure is the biggest stumbling block for achieving higher economic growth. Lack of roads, highways, power, ports, airports and water has acted as the main deterrent to attracting foreign direct investment, especially in the South Asian region. The first initiative to address the needs of developing and emerging market economies for infrastructure was the establishment of the New Development Bank by BRICS in Shanghai. This was announced at Fortaleza, Brazil, in July 2014 and marked a paradigm shift in the global financial system towards a new economic order in which the role of the IMF and the World Bank will be considerably diminished. And now the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has reinforced the trend. The AIIB was announced October 24, 2014, by China along with 20 other Asian countries which signed the MoU. The bank will be fun

Image courtesy- Wikimedia Commons On March 18, officials from China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Singapore to resume consultations on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea  that began last September. This meeting should have created an atmosphere for the lowering of tensions in the South China Sea. At the least, China and the ASEAN claimant states could have been expected to avoid provocations while the consultations were progressing. Just the opposite occurred. Nine days before the ASEAN-China discussions commenced, Chinese Coast Guard vessels stationed at Second Thomas Shoal took the unprecedented action of  blocking routine resupply for Philippine Marines stationed at the shoal. At the end of March, as the deadline approached for the Philippines to submit its memorial to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal set up to hear Philippine claims regarding its maritime entitlements under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China u