Sea Control - Sea Control 232 - Free & Open Indo-Pacific vs. Belt & Road

Episode Date: March 14, 2021

Links1. “The Free and Open Indo-Pacific versus the Belt and Road: Spheres of Influence and Sino-Japanese Relations," by Giulio Pugliese, Aurelio Insisa, Pacific Review, December 23, 2020.2. “Sino-Japanese Power Politics: Might, Money and Minds,” by Giulio Pugliese, Aurelio Insisa, Palgrave MacMillan, 2018.3. “Commitment by Presence: Naval diplomacy and Japanese defense engagement in Southeast Asia,” by Alessio Patalano, in Japan's Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, 2017.4. “America’s Naval Presence Problem," by Jerry Hendrix, War On The Rocks, January 26, 2016.5. “Naval drills in the Indian Ocean give bite to the anti-China Quad," The Economist, November 17, 2020.6. “Sri Lanka revives port deal with India, Japan amid China concerns," AFP, Al Jazeera News, January 14, 2021.7. “The Sri Lankan Civil War,” by Kallie Szczepanski, ThoughtCo July 8, 2019.8. “Sri Lanka says to conduct investigation into war crimes allegations,” AFP Yahoo News, January 22, 2021.9. “UN rights chief sends critical report on Sri Lanka to Government," by Easwaran Rutnam, columbogazette.com, January 21, 2021.

Hey folks, Jared here. One significant note on the podcast feed before I talk about the content of this week's episode. So as we execute our site migration, we realize that there are two C-Control feeds out there. The legacy feed is labeled C-Control-SimSec. It's run through something called FeedBurner. We have no control over what's populated in that feed. The current feed is labeled simply C-Control and includes the phrase SimSec's Flagship Podcast in its description. I would encourage you to follow the current Sea Control feed. As an example of the problems that we have with the Legacy feed, you may have noticed episode 228, Dr. Jerry Hendricks discussing his book to provide and maintain a Navy, had

the incorrect audio attached because we don't control that feed. There's nothing that we can do about correcting that. But you can find the correct audio over on the current feed, again, simply labeled Sea Control with the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in the description. So go over and check that out. This week's episode, we have Anna McNeil hosting a conversation on Japan and China competing for influence in the Indo-Pacific. And as always, I want to thank those who have donated to SimSec, whether during our Right Fight Win holiday campaign or afterwards. If you haven't donated yet and you'd still like to, donate on the website or add us as your preferred nonprofit on Amazon Smile so you can support us while you shop.

With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. hey folks anna here thanks for tuning back in to sea control today we speak with dr aurelio and sisa and dr julio puglesi the writing team which has co-authored the book sino japanese power politics might money and minds in 2017 they discuss an essay they published in the pacific review in december of 2020 under the title the free and open indo-pacific versus the belt and Road, Spheres of Influence in Sino-Japanese Relations. The paper focuses on Sino-Japanese interactions as a quest for denial of spheres of influence, wherein the Japanese government

aims at denying Chinese spheres of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. From infrastructure investment to politics and port calls, their work sheds light on the complex and non-traditional regional security issues raised in any conversation about Indo-Pacific sea control. As a reminder, all views expressed are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated and as always we want to advertise and strongly recommend our friends in the simsec podcast network and our second podcast feed the bilge pumps you can find alex drack jamie and a pile of empty iron brew bottles on apple podcast stitcher spotify or wherever else you download your podcasts from it's a more low-key slightly less serious approach to

current events in the maritime domain and naval history aurelio and julio welcome can you tell our guests a bit about yourselves. Hi Anna, thank you for having us here. I'm a lecturer at the Department of History of the University of Hong Kong, where I also got my PhD in Chinese history and I've been researching problems related to East Asian security in the last few years, especially with a focus on Sino-Japanese relations and cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan. Thanks for having me. I'm a departmental lecturer at the School for Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. I am really an expert on Japan's politics and international relations, and I've been looking more and more at Sino-Japanese relations within the framework of

Japan-U.S.-China relations. And it's great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with Julia. Thank you both for being here. I realize that we're spanning multiple time zones, but you have worked together as a team before. Yeah, absolutely. We wrote together a book for Palgrove Macmillan. It was published in January 2017. The title is Sino-Japanese Power Politics, Might, Money, and Minds. I wouldn't be able to tell you the Korean title, though, because the book has been translated in Korean as well. It's an academic publisher, so the number of our readers has actually increased

from 25 to 26. I don't think it's in the New York Times bestseller list, but perhaps after this podcast you know we never know yeah so how did you come to be interested in maritime security topics i would say that our interest stems from our own research on sino-japanese relations and more broadly the triangular relation between china japan and the u.s we focus on these relations with large based on our appreciation that the chinese and japanese governments are very focused only using soft leverages of power. So essentially they focus on economic statecraft and what could be described as the use of strategic communications

to achieve security objectives within the geographical area of what we now define as the Indo-Pacific. Yes, and this has, of course, implications security-wise. And so these geoeconomic communication and traditionalist maritime games are all interrelated because economic leverage may translate into swapping debt for equity. This allows China, for instance, to get a hold on ports, which maybe have dual use purposes.

And this has, of course, maritime implications. And for this very reason, Japan has stepped up its game. And so these games are very much interrelated with traditional security ones. And this is what makes it very interesting as well. There is an interplay also between activities of economic statecraft and then the way they are communicated to the public. You know, there is a refraction in many ways of these activities. So there is this very interesting web of military signaling at time or at least activities related to naval security that feed into broader geoeconomic designs. the signs. I would say that's the most interesting part, a stretch essentially from the Middle East

all the way to the shores of the East China Sea, with a true Indo-Pacific dimension, we could say. Why did you choose to focus your research on contemporary Sino-Japanese competition in South and Southeast Asia, specifically Thailand and Sri Lanka? We decided to focus on Southeast Asia and South Asia because they are regions that are absolutely important to understand the main dynamic of our article, that is one that describes how China is trying to establish a new sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, which in turn leads to a Japanese quest to deny this sphere of influence itself. Now, this term may be a little bit misleading, because whenever we talk about spheres of influence, we may think back about, you know,

historic phases of the so-called new imperialism, so late 19th century and early 20th century extractive colonial rule. This is not the case of the spheres of influence that we are seeing broadly emerging in the Indo-Pacific now. We should think about spheres of influence more about Brzezinski's, already in the 1990s, quite a bit of Clairvoyant's. We should think about the sphere of influence as a specific geographic area where all regional actors have to think about what the major hegemonic power wants before they act. And so, we could say that Southeast Asia is becoming more and more an area where what Beijing wants is definitely in the minds of all political leaders of the region, right? But of course, there's been a reaction

to this Chinese growing influence that is reifying itself into a sphere of influence. And so, Japanese actions can be understood as an attempt to deny this sphere of influence. We focus specifically on Southeast Asia, but in reality, we should have a broader focus. There is a dynamic that we described as geopolitical spillover, because, of course, the establishment of an actual sphere of influence throughout the South China Sea would have consequences also to the balance of power in South Asia, and more broadly about the control and access to sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. And this is where what we describe as Manian geopolitics, a view of power politics that is built on the control of sea lanes for access to goods, really comes into play. And so this is why essentially a research that originally started by looking at the Mekong sub-region stretched to South Asia and specifically to the second case study of our article, that is Sri Lanka, where we see an interesting dynamic of competition between China on one side and Japan and India on the other. What our article, Belt and Road versus the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, is about, it's really also about Japan's expanding strategic horizons, because the attempts at denying a Chinese field of influence go well beyond Southeast Asia and South Asia, but also extend to the Pacific Islands, potentially also go all the way to the eastern shores of Africa. And what is very interesting here is that, of course, Sri Lanka and South Asia and Pacific Islands in Australia's neighborhood, these have traditionally been spheres of influence, respectively, of India and Australia.

And so what happens is that Japan is trying to prop up the spheres of influence of these countries to avoid that China casts its shadow too forcefully and too effectively. And I think that what is also very interesting is not just Japan's strategic horizons, which is a story you'll find in our article, but also the fact that you see incipient cooperation between Quad partners. You know, the Quad is supposed to be mainly a security dialogue and a forum for exchanging political perspectives amongst leaders, but also intelligence and whatnot at the very hard security level, the maritime level, which your podcast is more focused on. But what we see here is that there is incipient cooperation between Quad members, especially at the bilateral and trilateral level, on non-traditional security. So on cooperation on geoeconomics, on economic statecraft. And you see this in the Pacific Islands between Japan, Australia, the U.S. and New Zealand. You see this in South Asia between Japan and India and to a lesser extent Australia. You see this between Japan, the U.S., I could say also Australia, in Southeast Asia.

And this really hints at a momentum, something going on between these partners beyond traditional maritime security. But of course, the game is also a maritime game and the economic and communication games are interlinked with the traditional hard security one. I know there's still a lingering memory in Southeast Asia of Japanese occupation during World War II. Does that memory play at all into the relationships that China and Japan are having in the region? And how are China and Japan navigating that history? The answer is yes, to the extent that history matters, but it's not as straightforward as it may appear, because the memory of Japan in Southeast Asia is not as negative as, for example, maybe in China, of course, or in Korea, where, you know, we all know about the terrible crimes of Japanese occupation. The point is that in Southeast Asia, the Japanese experience of occupation is inherently connected to the experience of anti-colonialism and post-colonialism. So the end of the colonial empires by the end of the Japanese was absolutely important in the process of anti-colonial struggle in countries such as, for example, Vietnam or especially Indonesia.

I'm not an historian of Japan. I wouldn't say that the Japanese experience in Southeast Asia was negative or it leaves the kind of historical issues that we could see, for example, in Korea. But I think what is even more important is the experience of the Cold War, because we shouldn't underestimate the fundamental role that Japan played, at least since the 1970s, in supporting countries such as, for example, Thailand in their economic growth. And so this is interesting because Japan has lots of experience in the field, knows how to play in Southeast Asia, and until, say, the late 2000s, was the major player in most of Southeast Asia. And so this is where the tension between China and Japan becomes absolutely critical. It's very important when we see infrastructure competition between Japan, who has been the number one player in the region for so long, and China. So from that perspective, it really gives us a perfect snapshot of the competition between the two sides. At the same time, maybe we shouldn't really overestimate the role of Easter in the region, too.

Because I would say that I'm thinking about the Thai government at the moment, but also, for example, the previous government in Myanmar. Today we had the coup, so we don't know what's the situation in Myanmar right now. But the previous democratic government in Myanmar, these were all the states that know how to play different sides. So we shouldn't overestimate the impact of history. But maybe here it's more because I've seen things from a realist perspective, right, Giulio, rather than a constructivist one. Japan was, of course, understood as leaving out a brutal legacy in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It was a mixed one, because in some ways the Japanese empire did hasten the post-colonial process against white imperial powers, for instance in Indonesia. But there were demonstrations back in the 60s and 70s when Japan would try to penetrate again economically the Southeast Asian nations.

And to that extent, you would have Japanese prime ministers trying to reassure Southeast Asia of Japan's benign intent. And to give you an example, in the late 1970s, Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo announced the so-called Fukuda Doctrine, which was all about heart-to-heart relations with developing countries in Japan's immediate neighborhood and a reassurance that Japan was relinquishing its great power role and its ambitions to become a military power. Don't forget that this realism was very present in Southeast Asia, precisely because the resident power by the 70s, 80s and eventually the 90s was Japan, really. Japan was the largest economy in East Asia. Up until 2000, Japan's GDP was still double the size of China, India, five ASEAN countries, Korea and Taiwan lumped up together. And so this could have been translated easily into also military might. And Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, was famous as saying in the early 1990s, I'm not sure that Japan really has to step up its military game, as the United States government would have liked, because allowing Japan even the chance to do peacekeeping operations and projecting its power in a minimalistic and incremental way was like giving rum bonbons to an alcoholic.

So there was this fear that by the time that Japan was going to become an hegemonic economic power, it could have easily translated that because of, you know, the Japanese spirit, some realism as well, clouded memories of World War II, of Japanese brutal imperial legacy, but also of the possibility that Japan would become a malign hegemonic power. What we see now is that since China is clearly leading the regional game, and there are memories also between some Southeast Asian countries and China, for instance, Vietnam, but since China is going to be the biggest player in the region and it's right across the border, Japan's presence now, it's needed. So in realist fashion, memories are lost. And this is, for instance, evident in Vietnam, bitter enemies to the end with the United States of America. But of course, the enemy of my enemy is my strategic partner in this case. And so history then is epiphenomenal. It plays a secondary role to balance of power considerations. How would you characterize the existing relationship between China and Japan in regards to the Indian Ocean and the greater Indo-Pacific region? So this is a very interesting question, because I think that to really get a meaningful answer, we need to unpack the issue. More broadly, within the Indo-Pacific region, yes, there is, of course, this contraposition between the free and open Indo-Pacific and the Belt and Road Initiative. But we need to qualify this term contraposition because there is a tendency for both sides to downplay any kind of competitive dynamic, at least at the surface level. And so we could see that clearly, absolutely clearly, when the Japanese government, the previous Abe cabinet, decided to shift the label of the free and open Indo-Pacific from the free and open Indo-Pacific strategy to a free and open Indo-Pacific vision.

The point here was exactly to avoid providing the impression of some kind of containment strategy clearly focused on China. Almost seven years exactly since the Belt and Road Initiative was launched, since the very beginning, Beijing has always tried to downplay any kind of possible security implication related to the Belt and Road. that fits instead within the broader Chinese rhetoric of win-win relations and economic growth for the whole mankind. As you know, they're a very lofty rhetoric. They really like lofty rhetoric in China. So this is an interesting point because we do have two broad visions of East Asia and more broadly the region that connects the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean by both sides.

But these visions, at least at a very surface level and level of public diplomacy, for example, maintain, I would say, a very positive spin. There's no attempt to create a contraposition between the two. However, and this is where I think it becomes really interesting, this kind of bonhomie between the two sides that reflects itself, what appears as a new phase in Sino-Japanese relations since, I would say, 2017.

In fact, while we have this quite positive relation at the surface level, in reality, when we actually go and look at specific case studies that we did work, We see that in reality, especially the frame opening to Pacific, I would say these strategic visions definitely have security implications. And say in our work with our two case studies, we see two different dynamics at work. In South Asia, and more specifically in Sri Lanka, we see quite clearly a dynamic of quiet geopolitical competition. That is, mostly it's fleshed out through strategic use of government financing, focused on the creation of infrastructure with a clear geopolitical vision in mind. While instead in Thailand, and more broadly in the Southeast Asian region, and specifically, I would say, in the sub-region of the Mekong, we have a dynamic that we define as the illusion of cooperation in our article.

So there is lots of work at the public diplomacy level, at least before the coronavirus pandemic. But at the same time, what appears as meaningful third-party cooperation between the two sides in the infrastructure of the Mekong region, in reality hides, again, similar dynamics of geopolitically informed competition to the financing of infrastructure. And Giulio Ndida did some very interesting work on Thailand specifically, right, Giulio? With regards to hard infrastructure such as railways, which of course is as much a geopolitical competition, it's also an economic one because both Japan and China would like to tie these loans with the acquisition of their own railway technology. And so it also favors their own experts and then ties back that country to Japanese or Chinese technology. So there are clearly economic spillover effects. But aside from that, China's Belt and Road rail infrastructure loans clearly develop along a north-south direction, which, of course, makes perfect sense because there is also the willingness to enhance people-to-people connectivity between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors, but also economic connectivity. And so increased trade because these railways will carry freight and so on and so forth.

But at the same time, what happens is that by building up north-south directives, you favor a dependency, if you want, on China because it's the largest economy and it's really around the neighborhood. And so what happens is that the Japanese infrastructure railway projects and loans, interestingly enough, aim to cut through this north-south directive to go through an east-west directive that actually aims to connect the Southeast Asian countries among themselves. So all the way to Bangladesh and potentially also with time India. The aim in Japan is really, along with the United States, and this is part of our claim, to foster a new pole, not just in terms of military balance and maritime balance, which is, of course, India, with growing untapped potential in terms of demographics, in terms of its economic scale and so on and so forth. But of course, this economic and military potential would cause troubles to China in terms of maintaining a balance of power, but would also be a pole of attraction in terms of economic might. And this may pull away then more Southeast Asian or South Asian countries from the economic attraction of such a large economy, such as the Chinese one. And so these two theaters are interrelated much more than you would expect. Yes, and I would say this is, I think, when we did the research, this was probably the most fascinating part, at least for me, because Giulio just mentioned this east-west path of Japanese influence from the shores of Vietnam all the way throughout Myanmar and then Bangladesh.

But we need to keep in mind that this occurs at the same time while the Modi administration in India is working on a mirroring Act East policy. So this is very important to keep in mind. This is exactly what I was mentioning before when I was talking about a geopolitical spillover of the Sino-Japanese competition of infrastructure in Southeast Asia, also in South Asia. So there is a convergence of interest under the surface between Japan and India that stretches beyond the immediate domain of the Indian Ocean and more specifically of Sri Lanka. And I would say it's also interesting to take a look, to better understand these dynamics that connect Southeast Asia to South Asia, to take a look also at the sub-regional strategy of both Japan and China that fit within the broader schemes of the free and open Indo-Pacific and the Belt and Road. So, for example, in 2018, you have two competing visions that are proposed by Beijing and Tokyo with their own respective regional forums, the Tokyo Strategy 2018 and the Five-Year Plan of Action Lansang Mekong Cooperation. And they're very interesting because they map a way forward for multilateral cooperations between Mekong region actors and these two states. But there was really no interaction.

The reason that kind of convergence between Japanese plans and Chinese plans, they actually ignore each other. So if you take a look at the documents, for example, that have been released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you see that the Belt and Road is completely ignored from all the infrastructure plans that have been established with Tokyo Strategy 2018. You see how sub-regional dynamics tell us even more about the Indo-Pacific competition than we could see before at the surface level.

So the Quad refers to the strategic partnership between America, Australia, India, and Japan. What other countries have attempted or succeeded in establishing security partnerships with Sri Lanka? You know, Sri Lankan politics is particularly complex, and there are a series of historical and ethnic factors that we need to take into consideration when we think about the choices of Sri Lankan elites. I would say that we shouldn't overestimate the role of the United States and Australia. So from a Quad perspective, say that the major players in Sri Lanka, at least from the perspective of the Indo-Pacific, are China, India and Japan. But this does not mean that there are meaningful Quad dynamics in this island country, because a very interesting point that we made in our article is that we noticed an interesting division of labor within Quad members. Historically, there have been tensions in Sri Lanka and a kind of wariness, not just for American pro-activism in the country, but also for India.

And this goes back to the civil war between the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority in the region. There is Sri Lankan elites, and specifically Sinhala elites, have a certain wariness in Delhi. To unpack it, I would say that there is a political wariness of the United States that It has to do also with the heritage of left-wing politics in Sri Lanka, which is still particularly relevant. And on the other side, a kind of ethnic awareness about the role in India,

of course, because of the presence of a large Tamil population in the island, in the province of Tamil Nadu. So, in this scenario, we see that Japan is a quiet actor that puts into action, implements broader quad plans in Sri Lanka. For example, we understand the role of Japan in the plan for the establishment of East Container Terminal in Colombo, that is a joint venture with India. But also, I would say, and this is a typical example

of these ethnic and political dynamics in Sri Lanka, also in regards to the port of Trincomalee. And Trincomalee is a very important area in the Indian Ocean. British strategists already recognised in the 19th century the potential role of the Trincomalee harbour, but it remains an undeveloped part of Sri Lanka. If you take a look at the map of Sri Lanka, it's not really in Tamil heartland on the north, it's a little bit southern of the northern tip of Sri Lanka, but it's still in an area that is with a Tamil majority. The previous Sri Lankan government, led by Sri Visena, the previous president of Sri Lanka, invited Japan to actually build a port in Trincomalee.

And in many ways, it would have created an interesting counterbalance to the now famous Chinese port of Hambantota. This is a clear example where an administration that was not a Sinala nationalist, like it is the current one led by President Godapai Arachapaksa, well, a non-nationalist Sinala administration was looking at Japan as a potential actor to create a counterbalance to the Chinese port of Ambantota in an area that is actually with the Tamil majority. And so I think even though ultimately, at least that's the feedback we get from research by scholars in the field, is that Japan was not really interested in building a port in Trincomalee. And so instead, the Eastern Container Terminal in Colombo has the main project. But I'd say that at least the fact that Colombo at the time, say the Sirisian administration, wanted Japan to develop the port really tells us how we have these very complex dynamics and specifically this division of labor. So to simplify, we could say ultimately that certain infrastructure and government financing activities are more tolerable for the Sri Lankan population when are made by Japan rather than when they're made by the United States or India. And this was the case of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, that it was this, well, maybe you're a bit exaggerating, but it was this meaningful American plan to support and bolster infrastructures in Sri Lanka that it was actually rejected by the new Sinhala Nationalist administration of Rajapaksa. Just to simplify, essentially from 2015 to 2019, in Sri Lanka, we had an administration that had the president, Sirisena.

And this administration was essentially sandwiched between the two administrations of the Rajapaksa family. There is this very powerful family in Sri Lanka. The current president is Gotapaya Rajapaksa, while the previous one was Mahinda Rajapaksa. The Cilician administration that was in power between 2014 and 2019 represented in many ways a parenthesis in the Sri Lankan politics because the Rajapaksa to the both brothers, Mahinda and Gotabaya, really dominated the politics of the island country since the civil war. And generally, historically, this family had very strong relations with Beijing.

This has to do because the government in Sri Lanka had been shunned away by Western states because of the violence during the civil war. In the post-Civil War reconstruction era, the Rajapaksa found in Beijing the only meaningful partner for rebuilding the country after the destruction of the Civil War. And this created a very strong relationship between the two sides. And we see that in Ambantota. Ambantota is actually, there is this area in the south of Sri Lanka where the Chinese built this famous port. Ambantota has been historically the feud of the Rajapaksa family, where most of their votes come from and their political power come from. There is this very interesting connection between the domestic politics, of course, of Sri Lanka and the strategic objectives that Japan and China and India are trying to pursue.

You've researched port infrastructure investments as an indication of a concerted attempt by Japan and its partners to deny Chinese spheres of influence. In Sri Lanka, those ports you've researched include Hambatota, Colombo, Trongkommeli. Why are the investments any nation makes in foreign port infrastructure projects worth studying? We need to think about government infrastructure, government financing in ports from a geopolitical perspective, and more specifically from a Mahanian perspective of control of the sea lanes. And so we go back once again to the geography of the Indo-Pacific, the necessity of going through the South China Sea, passing through the Malacca Strait, and crossing the Indian Ocean to reach oil-rich countries in the Middle East. And so there is a specific strategic logic in the construction of a port such as Zambandota, and of course, in the potential construction of a port such as Trincomalee, or the strengthening, the expansion of the Colombo port, in this case, with the new east container terminal that is going to be built by Japan and India. And this itself is quite interesting, the port in Colombo, because it really tells us a lot about the fluidity of the situation at the moment. We submitted our article, I think it was in September, then in December, so after we actually submitted our article in Pre-Review,

the project of the Japanese-Indian port in Colombo was actually scrapped by the new administration, Godapai Rajapaksa. And instead then, just a few weeks later, in early January, the port was back on. So you can see that this is a clear example of how local administrations, being them in Sri Lanka, but also we could take, for example, Djibouti, the other country where, in this case, China has a military base. But these are clear examples of how smaller third countries can take advantage of competition in infrastructure between China and Japan to achieve better deals. Okay, that's ultimately what it is. So we have geopolitical competition between China on one side and unquote countries. And at the same time, we have also very positive dynamics for the third countries. Now, the major issue is to what extent these win-falls, these positive outcomes are actually shared by the government of these third countries to the population. It's a whole different story, of course. But this is definitely one important, I mean, I would say overall, this is the main reason why we need to take a look at the financing of ports. To focus a little bit more on China, one of the major issues about Ambantota was, of course, the so-called narrative of the debt trap. Then Ambantota became essentially a launching pad for widespread criticism of Belt and Road as essentially a Chinese attempt to trap smaller countries into debt.

For the listeners who maybe do not know much about Ambantota, essentially the CDC administration in Sri Lanka realized that it was not able to pay back China for the financing of the Ambantota port. There was a span of time where it was perceived that maybe Ambantota would become eventually fully controlled by China. But after negotiations, now the port is controlled by a joint venture between the Sri Lanka port authority and China. However, these dynamics created this narrative of the death trap. And this, again, is quite interesting. This is a narrative that emerged in India. In the same way, another narrative called the String of Pearls also emerged from the same country. So we could see here how, and this is something that I would say is often underestimated. When we take a look at Chinese activities in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, we could say how Chinese proactivism can easily be perceived and then communicated by third party countries in very negative terms. So China has to be careful. Its own pro-activism in the region exposed the country to the risk of being perceived, even beyond what are its actual strategic plans, as being perceived as a, say, neocolonialist power in the case of Ampadot. And the other major point is the issue of dual use that I think is quite important. So for dual use, essentially, it's time that we used to describe infrastructure that could be easily switched from civil to military use.

There has been debate about whether the major ports that China built in the Indian Ocean, so not just Hambantota, but also the port of Gwadar in Pakistan and the port of Tsiak Piao in Myanmar, if these ports can actually be easily turned into PLA naval bases. This is not the case yet. Scholarship, I would say, is divided on the topic. We need to unpack the issue. And there is quite interesting research. I think the Naval Institute in the US has a very interesting report on what are that came out last year. But this is still something in the making. And so you could see that there are actors that have an interest in pushing for this narrative of dual use and potential transformation of civil ports into military ports.

But, you know, we need to be careful about that. There may be a scenario where China had actually considered, definitely considered the dual use potential. But then its room for action is actually constrained by these offensive narratives, such as maybe the death trap or the string of pearls. And so here again, we see also the importance of state-led strategic communications impacting the choices available, for example, in this case to Beijing. I very much enjoy this. I've learned so much from you both. What projects are on the horizon for you? And where can our listeners follow you on social media or find your publications online? Well, I am quite lucky because I have a very weird surname that is basically a Spanish

surname that has been misspelled. So you just have to add in CISA, I-N-S-I-S-A on Twitter, and you will find me there. I'm actually working right now on cross-strait relations from the perspective of strategic communications and China's hybrid strategy regarding Taiwan. And I have about three articles. One is in peer reviewing already. The other two, I hope, will be published by the end of 2021. And I'll spare you the atrocity of pronouncing my handle. My surname is very hard to actually figure if you want to spell it out. But look me up, Giulio Pugliese, Oxford UI, and you'll find out also my Twitter handle easily.

And I have just started a part-time professorship at the European University Institute. It's part and parcel actually of Japan's strategic communication efforts because the position has been funded by the Japan Foundation and it is essentially aimed at projecting Japanese narratives essentially by having authoritative third parties that know Japan well and can speak about East Asian security perhaps by knowing Japan to start with. I wouldn't qualify myself as an ambassador for Japan, but clearly I'm in the grey books. I'm in the white books.

Apparently, this is something that the Japanese government has been doing more and more in the US, especially in Europe. And this is actually, oddly enough, part of what I'm studying. I'm studying myself, in a sense. I'm studying Japanese communication efforts and public diplomacy. And you could say, in some regards, propaganda. And I think this is very interesting because more and more governments are doing it. The U.S. is doing so with China in mind.

There is an interagency center within the State Department called the Global Engagement Center, which is preoccupied with anti-China messaging. Japan is doing it pretty much, you know, along the same lines. I think that China is the big game. But, of course, methods differ. And, of course, China is doing it. South Korea is doing it. Taiwan is doing it. So it's a very fertile ground for work.

And I'm aiming, oddly enough, at interviewing myself. No, I'm kidding. And in the meantime, I'm also writing a book on Japan-China-U.S. relations. This has been my Ph.D. dissertation, and I'm trying to turn it into a book. And thank you. Sea Control is produced and edited by Ed Salo, William McKinston, and Jonathan Selling. Financial support is provided by you, our listeners, through Amazon Smile and on our website at www.simsec.org. There I met with Greasy Alley, put it on a shimbo now.

So help me, Bob, I'm put in the alley. Way, hey, put it in the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm put in the alley. Put it on a shimbo now. A porter of, and a porter gin of, way, hey, put it in the alley. A porter of wine, both white and red, oh. Put it on the shimbo now. So help me, Bob, I'm putting me out of this world.

I'm putting me out of this world. Help me, Bob, I'm putting me out of this world. Put it on the shimbo now.