Indo-Pacific Minilateralism and Strategic Competition (I): Australia/Japan and Chinese Approaches Compared

This East-West Center Occasional Paper is the first in a set of two papers examining the ways in which Australia and Japan have sought to leverage minilateral forms of cooperation as a means of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. The topic of minilateralism is usually treated as response to the rise of China on the part of “Western” countries, but this obscures the fact that Beijing is also a major practitioner of minilateral forms of cooperation. This paper concludes that Australia and Japan have taken a traditional “security-first” approach
to minilateralism. This stands in contrast to the more expansive approach pursued by Beijing, which focuses primarily on geoeconomics along with China’s broader goal of becoming a global leader, which has potential implications for international order. This indicates a significant “mismatch” between the respective vectors along which Australia/Japan and China are pursuing competitive advantage, and underscores how Canberra and Tokyo will need to manage the “security/economic disconnect” in the region, questions to be examined
further in the second Occasional Paper that follows.