The Balance of Infrastructure in the Indo‐Pacific: BRI, Institutional Balancing, and Quad’s Policy Choices
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Kai He |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12970 |
The Balance of Infrastructure in the
Indo-Pacific: BRI, Institutional Balancing, and
Quad’s Policy Choices
Kai He
Griffith University - Centre for Governance and Public Policy
Abstract
This paper examines how the Quad countries, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, have countervailed China’s Belt
and Road Initiative in the Indo-Pacific through various institutional efforts both individually and collectively. It argues that the
existing approach of offering an alternative to China’s BRI will hardly be successful. Although the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic
has weakened China’sfinancial and economic capacities in sustaining and expanding its BRI projects, it is unlikely that China
will give up the BRI under Xi Jinping’s leadership. This, however, creates an opportunity for the Quad countries to weigh in on
the future BRI in the post-COVID era. These Quad countries could consider employing an ‘inclusive institutional balancing’
strategy to constrain, change, and shape China’s BRI behaviour from the inside. Inclusive institutional balancing will be also a
viable strategy for recipient countries to maximize their economic interests in the balance-of-infrastructure game among great
powers in the Indo-Pacific in the post-COVID era.
From the moment China proposed an ambitious Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, infrastructure has become a cat-
chy word in the headlines. China’s BRI aims to boost its infras-
tructure development and investments in the world
stretching from Asia to Europe. According to Morgan Stanley
(2018), China will spend US$1.2–1.3 trillion on the BRI-related,
infrastructure projects by 2027. As the Council for Foreign
Relations suggests, the BRI is the ‘most ambitious infrastruc-
ture investment effort in history’(Chatzky and McBride, 2020).
Despite temporary setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic
in 2020 (Wheatley and Kynge, 2020), China will sustain its
efforts in the BRI under Xi Jinping’s leadership as a geo-eco-
nomic strategy to cope with the new trend of de-globaliza-
tion as well as the unfolding US-China strategic rivalry in the
post-COVID era (Flint and Zhang, 2019; Han and Freymann,
2021; Han and Paul, 2020; Li, 2020).
China’s BRI was born with controversies. Despite the self-
claimed attractiveness and popularity that China attributes to
the BRI in the world, some major countries are deeply worried
about its strategic implications. In particular, the United
States, Japan, Australia, and India worry that the ‘BRI could be
a Trojan horse for China-led regional development, military
expansion, and Beijing-controlled institutions’(Chatzky and
McBride, 2020; Friedberg, 2018; Li, 2020; Rolland, 2017a). In
other words, the BRI is seen as a strategic weapon for China
to challenge the US-led, liberal international order (Han and
Paul, 2020; Zhao, 2019). It is why we have witnessed ‘balance-
of-infrastructure’efforts by some states against China’s BRI
since 2013, as the US, Japan, Australia, and India have worked
together to compete with China in offering investments and
aid to infrastructure projects in the Indo-Pacific.
Institutional balancing theory can shed some light on the
rationale as well as the implications of this balance-of-infras-
tructure phenomenon in the region. It suggests that states
can rely on two institutional balancing strategies –inclusive
institutional balancing and exclusive institutional balancing
–to pursue their interests and influence under conditions of
deepening economic interdependence and globalization
(He, 2008a; He, 2008b). While inclusive institutional balanc-
ing refers to an institutional strategy to bind and constrain a
target state within the rules, agendas, and practices of insti-
tutions, exclusive institutional balancing means to exclude a
target state from a specific institution so that the target
state will be isolated or pressured by the cohesion and
cooperation of the institutional grouping. In practice, the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN ) Regional
Forum (ARF) is an inclusive balancing strategy in that ASEAN
constrains China’s foreign policy behaviour by using the
non-aggressive and cooperative security rules of the ARF
after the Cold War. Obama’s TPP, however, is seen as exclu-
sive institutional balancing against China, because China is
intentionally excluded from the TPP due to its high entry
requirements in environment and labour protection (He,
2018).
The current ‘balance-of-infrastructure’phenomenon in the
Indo-Pacific is a policy manifestation of ‘exclusive institu-
tional balancing’by the US, Japan, Australia, and India
against China’s BRI. However, it will not be sufficient in
countervailing China’s growing influence through its BRI in
the Indo-Pacific. Therefore, these concerned countries will
need to consider how to employ ‘inclusive institutional bal-
ancing’to integrate their infrastructure aid and investment
Global Policy (2021) 12:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12970©2021 Durham University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 12 . Issue 4 . September 2021545
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