Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future, by Rory Medcalf

An excellent primer on emerging power struggles in our region.

How does the world balance China's emergence as a global super-power? What are the risks ahead? How do nation states dilute China's hegemony and avoid capitulation to its interests? These and other pressing questions are examined in Rory Medcalf's elegant and absorbing Contest for the Indo-Pacific.
The Indo-Pacific, a term first used in the mid-nineteenth century, is making a comeback in government circles, its geographically inclusive language seen as a bulwark against Chinese aspiration. Currently the region, spreading across East Africa to West Asia, is a strategic puzzle as countries jostle for power and position.

Medcalf, an academic and former diplomat, argues that the so-called Indo-Pacific's middle players – Japan, Australia, Indonesia, India, etc. - could collectively hold China's power in check. By mid-century, the combined economic and defence capability of these middle powers will match China's. Cooperation and coordination in such an alliance would not be easy, but could bring substantial benefits.

Contest for the Indo-Pacific provides a nuanced and subtle assessment of emerging power struggles in the region, with a strong focus on China. Optimistic, yet realistic about the possibilities of war and conflict, this is an essential guide for anyone – politician, policy specialist or informed citizen - interested in the future of the region.

Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future, by Rory Medcalf. Published by La Trobe University Press $32.99

Review by Chris Saliba

This review first published at Books + Publishing. Click here.

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About Face: Asian Accounts of Australia

A book by Alison Broinowski, who has also written about Australian perceptions of Asia.

The book details Asian opinions, from some ten countries, about Australia. It's not a fun book. Depressing is how across the board racism is, and how similarly petty we all are. We thought we had a Pauline Hanson problem. You should read what Asians - or rather a certain segment of Asian society - think about us. Lazy, uncivilised, boorish, racist, lower class, stupid. The list goes on.

The most interesting part of the book describes two cases of where Australia and the rest of Asia totally misunderstood each other.

1.) Pauline Hanson. They barely cared in Asia, and just thought of it as an embarrassing internal problem. After all, Asian countries have their own problems with racism.

2.) The East Timor independence vote. There was wide hostility to Australia's involvement, something I never understood. We were seen as aggressors, sticking our nose into something that wasn't our business. Plus the fact we always look to the US for our foreign policy, right over our neighbours.

The book's main point is that we need to start caring more - much more - about our image in Asia. We can't afford to be misunderstood. Nor can we afford not to care what our neighbours think of us.