China’s industrial policy, exemplified by the rapid expansion of its semiconductor industry, has maintained momentum despite escalating challenges from the US-China tech race and rising geopolitical tensions. These pressures—characterized by declining foreign direct investment and tighter controls on technology transfer and exports—underscore the complexity of technological competition and national strategic planning. This paper examines China’s unconventional “fertilization before weed control” approach to industrial development, which initially lowers barriers to entry and encourages broad participation before shifting toward a process of industry consolidation through an artificial selection mechanism that combines state guidance with market competition. Using a mixed-methods analysis that integrates quantitative data with qualitative insights from industry reports and expert interviews, the study reveals how China’s strategy fosters innovation, self-reliance, and competitiveness under geopolitical strain. However, this approach also incurs significant costs, such as overcapacity in the domestic market and the dumping of surplus products internationally. The findings provide crucial insights into the intricate dynamics of industrial policy in high-tech sectors as a strategic response to shifting global political landscapes, highlighting the associated challenges and trade-offs.
Why and how did Pyongyang’s leadership pursue a strategy of autonomy-maximization despite its continued dependence on China and the Soviet Union/Russia? Conventional alliance theory suggests that, in asymmetric alliances, weaker states (clients) trade autonomy for security, while stronger states (patrons) retain autonomy in exchange for providing security. Yet North Korea’s alliances with its patrons defy this conventional wisdom, as it continues to extract resources while aiming to maintain political autonomy from them. This article argues that the theoretical logic of the tradeoff must be recalibrated when regime security becomes the client’s primary concern and its foreign policy seeks both to deter external aggression (state security) and to minimize political intervention by the patron (regime security). Drawing on neoclassical realism and Gourevitch’s second-image reversed logic, the article demonstrates how systemic shocks in the 1950s, particularly political changes in the socialist bloc, intensified political struggles in Pyongyang, culminating in the aborted August 1956 coup attempt. These external shifts reshaped domestic power dynamics and enabled Kim Il-sung to consolidate a personalist dictatorship. Kim’s Juche-principled foreign policy adopted an equidistance strategy between the patrons to limit their interference while extracting material benefits. The North Korean case thus refines the logic of the security–autonomy tradeoff within asymmetric alliances by linking systemic pressures, domestic political dynamics, and autonomy-maximizing alliance strategies within a unified framework.
This paper examines the conditions under which Chinese infrastructure finance in South Asia generates fiscal dependence or political leverage under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Drawing on a project-level dataset of 221 infrastructure project groups across five countries (2013–2023), it develops a comparative analytical framework that operationalises visibility, dependence, and operational control as three observable mechanisms of influence. The study details the contractual practices rooted in BRI financing arrangements (including safeguards, pledges, and aspects of operational control) in South Asia to reveal how infrastructure creates important structural conditions for influence but not a predetermined “debt-trap”. Chinese infrastructure finance in South Asia concentrates in capital-intensive sectors rather than dispersed small-scale development activities. Any resultant influence perceived as “coercive” is usually conditional on the agency of the hosts. The findings suggest that infrastructure scale alone does not produce political leverage. Instead, the paper challenges the borrower-vulnerability narrative by showing that Chinese infrastructure exposure in South Asia operates mainly through fiscal commitment and repayment safeguards rather than widespread transfer of managerial authority.
This article reconceives Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy as managed balancing: a middle-power approach combining normative entrepreneurship, selective institutionalization, and strategic restraint to sustain a rules-based order without the alliance polarization of hard balancing. Tracing FOIP from Abe’s security-inflected FOIP 1.0 (2016) and inclusivity-oriented FOIP 2.0 (2018), through Kishida’s reinvigorated FOIP 3.0 (2023), to an emergent recalibration under Prime Minister Takaichi driven by expanding Official Security Assistance and bilateral defense cooperation, the article argues that FOIP’s oscillation between confrontational clarity and diplomatic ambiguity reflects managed balancing rather than incoherence. The Quad appears not as an embryonic alliance but as Japan’s principal minilateral instrument for operationalizing this strategy, increasingly embedded within bilateral and trilateral arrangements that now carry much of its intended operational weight. Structurally heterogeneous and non-binding, the Quad remains resilient at the working level, though the absence of a 2025 summit exposes limits to that resilience. Using the South China Sea as a stress test, the article traces how capacity-building, Coast Guard practice transfer, and maritime domain-awareness tools generate cumulative deterrence through partner empowerment. It thereby advances managed balancing as a conceptual contribution and reframes the Quad as a norm-operationalizing platform.
This study put forth that amid shifting global power dynamics and persistent regional volatility in a lopsided multipolar world, Japan’s foreign policy is undergoing a strategic recalibration through minilateralism. While the U.S.-Japan alliance has long served as the cornerstone of Tokyo’s defense strategy, China’s growing assertiveness and Washington’s foreign policy uncertainties have continued to reshape the security status quo in the Indo-Pacific. Drawing on the qualitative analysis, the trajectory of Japan’s response has been to incrementally normalize its defense capabilities and pursue more flexible, interest-based alignments with like-minded partners, such as Australia, India, and the United Kingdom. Employing an inductive, interpretive approach, the study analyzes official documents and existing scholarly literature to offer insights into Japan’s evolving security posture. This study highlights how, through the minilateral framework, Tokyo is hedging against external threats and mitigating the risk of abandonment by the US.
