India and China as ASEAN’s partners in the Indo-Pacific

Abstract

Southeast Asia is often described as a confluence zone situated between the South of China and East of India. ASEAN and its affiliate institutions, as manifestations of Southeast Asian regional aspirations, are at the centre stage of the Indo-Pacific region, directly impacted by the major power politics involving not just the US–China dynamics but the growing role of India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia, and the European Union as well. Notwithstanding initial successes and failures of post-War Asian regionalism, Indian and Chinese institutional engagement with ASEAN only began during the 1990s. Over the past three-and-a-half decades, ASEAN’s ties with both India and China have progressed well with the region attracting greater diplomatic competition among stakeholders vying for economic and soft power influence as well as strategic leverage. This paper aims to analyse the extent to which Southeast Asian engagement with China and/or India could lead to polarisation or partnership. It also aims to examine the conditions under which the potential downside of polarisation competes with the benefits of the partnership. This paper argues that while ASEAN could exercise moderating influence on the two Asian giants in pursuing greater cooperation with the region, its ability to do so gets severely constrained if India–China relations take a more confrontational turn. In essence, ASEAN’s cooperation with China and India hinges on two critically important aspects: (1) China and India’s own interests and aspirations in the Indo-Pacific regional dynamics as well as their bilateral equations and (2) ASEAN’s ability to lead the regional discourse in favour of multipolarity and multilateralism by keeping its normative agency intact.