25th March 2023
Editorials
Context:
- Prime Minister Fumio Kishida chose India to unveil Japan’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
About Indo pacific strategy of Japan:
- Free and Open Indo Pacific (FNOIP): Japan has insisted that Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP’s) contemporary relevance goes beyond regional security concerns, and it will be the defining feature of the new global order.
- Curbing china: While the ostensible focus of the strategy would be to promote a FOIP, the initiative is aimed at “curbing China’s growing regional assertiveness,” Japan Times reported.
- Rules-based international order: The plan is designed to maintain a rules-based international order across the Indo-pacific region.
Why to curb rise of China:
- Clash of world orders: China intends to undermine the existing liberal global order and replace it with a more hegemonic and less liberal order dominated by it.
- Violating national boundaries: China disregarded sovereign national boundaries in the name of historical claims and disputed the mandates of international agencies.
- Conception of the universe as tianxia: Traditional Chinese wisdom looks at the conception of the universe as tianxia — everything under the heavens with China as the central authority and all other states as tributaries. It is this hegemonic and authoritarian order that Kishida wants the world to reject.