Development and strategic competition in Asia: toward polarization?

Abstract

The prioritization of economic development, considered as a key in understanding the co-existence of heightened security situations and growing economic interdependence in Asia, should be considered as a political strategy among many chosen by political elites in their own political context rather than a consensus implying general acquiescence to the idea. The recent competition between the Belt and Road Initiative by China and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific by the United States, Japan, Australia, and India confirms and reinforces the tendency toward the mobilization of development policy for increasingly strategic purposes in the context of rising tension between the United States and China. At the same time, there is some cooperative element in prioritizing development in Asia.