The Indo-Pacific is a strategic system encompassing the Indian and Pacific oceans, reflecting the expanding interests and reach of China and India as well as the enduring role of the US. The Lowy Institute's International Security program presents a weekly selection of links illuminating the changing security picture in this increasingly connected super-region.
- A few links from China this week. First, China has announced its military spending will increase by 10% this year, even with the economy expanding just 7.4% in 2014.
- A PLA general has said that Hong Kong's Occupy protests were an 'orchestrated Hong Kong version of a colour revolution', in what is seen as a warning to pro-independence Taiwanese.
- What is shaping Xi Jinping's presidency? Historical trauma.
- Why is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership of Asia and the Pacific of particular importance to India?
- Some interesting details have emerged from US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's secret trip to North Korea. Earlier this week, North Korea fired some short-range missiles off its coast to protest annual US-South Korean military drills.
- The US has started to fly the new P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea from a base in the Philippines and is planning on shifting more Aegis-equipped destroyers to the Pacific.
- Submarines in the Indo-Pacific: after push-back from the new government in Sri Lanka over whether it would allow China to continue docking its submarines in Colombo, China has defended its actions.