Meanwhile, Beijing has continued to ramp up pressure on Taiwan—most notably during its Strait Thunder-2025A exercise in April. These activities are likely designed to establish a “new normal” for Beijing’s coercive activities during the Trump administration. Simultaneously, China has pursued a “charm offensive” with friendly countries and so-called swing states in Southeast Asia.
søndag 10. august 2025
Beijing bolsters its position in the Indo-Pacific with little US pushback
While the Trump administration has been preoccupied with its trade war with Beijing, Beijing has adopted a two-pronged approach to bolster its own position in the Indo-Pacific region: pushing harder against those in the region that challenge China’s sovereignty claims, while pulling its stalwart partners and so-called swing states closer into its orbit. China has been steadily advancing its territorial claims along its periphery without eliciting much discernible pushback from the Trump administration. As Brookings scholar Lynn Kuok has noted, China in April “made its first on-the-ground, formal assertion of sovereignty over a previously unoccupied land feature in the South China Sea in more than a decade.”
