How Leaders Are Seeking to Rebalance Asian Regionalism

Introduction: Five Pivots to Asia – Comparisons and Overall Impact

Leaders in five great powers have all announced some version of a “pivot to Asia.” In this Special Forum we juxtapose analyses of their initiatives. The introduction offers us an opportunity to compare the pivots and to assess their collective impact on the regional security architecture. In contrast to the usual preoccupation with Obama’s pivot or even to the recent awakening to the competi..

Editorial Staff
December 01,2014

China’s Eurasian Pivot

Since President Xi Jinping came into office, China has been actively pivoting to the vast expanses of Eurasia, particularly reflected in the strengthening of Beijing’s engagement with its neighbors on its western frontier. One of the most important components of China's Eurasia pivot is an attempt to build the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), with which Beijing intends to bind more than 40 countr..

Zhang Xiaotong* , Marlen Belgibayev
AIIB , Eurasian Economic Union , Marching Westwards , Shanghai Cooperation Organisation , Silk Road Economic Belt
December 01,2014

China’s Views and Responses to Multilateral Talks in Pacific Asia

In November 2014, at the 25th APEC summit in Beijing, President Xi Jinping announced the USD 40 billion Silk Road Infrastructure Fund, raising awareness of China’s new regional strategy at the world stage. Outside observers had been debating how China would react to the US-led TPP negotiations and the ASEAN-centered Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Expectations had risen, in t..

Min Ye
ASEAN centrality , New Silk Road Strategy , Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership , Trans-Pacific Partnership , US rebalance
December 01,2014

When Big Powers Pivot, the Little States Roll: Southeast Asia Between China and Japan

The announcement by President Xi Jinping of the “Asia-Pacific Dream” at the start of the APEC summit in Beijing has been seen by many as China’s latest attempt to respond to the Obama administration’s “pivot.” Unlike the “Pacific Dream” used by Secretary of State John Kerry to describe Washington’s rebalancing, Xi puts China at the center, using its growing power to promote “ne..

Christopher R. Hughes
December 01,2014

From Look East to Act East: Transitions in India’s Eastward Engagement

India’s “Look East Policy”, rechristened as the “Act East Policy” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government,1 has been lauded as the country’s most successful foreign policy initiative taken in the past two decades.2 Modi expanded its scope and focus after sensing that Phase I and Phase II of the “Look East Policy” could not achieve their ful..

Rahul Mishra
Act East Policy , Civilian nuclear cooperation agreement , hedging against China , Look East , Regional and maritime connectivity , security agreement
December 01,2014

The Russian Pivot to Asia

Vladimir Putin’s “turn to the East” (povorot na Vostok) greatly intensified in 2014. Of the various pivots to Asia it is one of the most controversial, but, at various times, was encouraged by all countries active in the region. Compared to the others, it has the most diversified objectives, but also the greatest contradictions among them. In the context of multiple pivots, this one has the ..

Gilbert Rozman
APEC summit , Eurasian Economic Union , Eurasianism , Russian Far East Development , Silk Road Economic Belt , turn to the East