The Indo-Pacific encompasses the majority of the world’s population, and by some estimates will account for over 50 per cent of global growth in the period to 2050. The region is also the source of numerous shared global climate, trade and security challenges – as well as potentially a source of their solutions. While the exact borders of the region, and preferred labels for it, are subject to much discussion, by the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ we are referring broadly in this paper to the span of countries between the Indian and Pacific oceans, incorporating South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Pacific countries including Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It should be noted that this regional definition includes China: where we refer to the Indo-Pacific in the widest geographical sense, we understand China to be part of that region; however, the focus of this paper is the UK’s policy approach to countries in the region outside of China, and how the UK should engage with this ‘non-China’ subset of Indo-Pacific states.
The Indo-Pacific matters for climate action. The region contains some of the world’s most significant carbon emitters – but also the fastest deployers of solar, renewable and other alternative energy technologies. While China is critical to this picture, other countries in the region have potentially substantial roles to play too. South Korea, for example, builds civil nuclear power plants more cheaply and efficiently than many other countries. While the region has contributed less to carbon emissions in historic terms compared with the combined contributions of Europe and the US (though China’s cumulative contributions continue to grow), it will make an outsized impact on emissions if growing economies in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia, do not make a successful transition to greener energy systems; by some projections energy demand in ASEAN will more than double by 2050. In a world of globalized supply chains, countries like the UK rely on Asian centres of production – UK imports of goods from Asia have steadily risen in the last 20 years. The vulnerability of these centres of production to rising sea levels and extreme weather is also a source of economic vulnerability for the UK. The UK government has made global climate leadership a foreign policy priority. There is no addressing climate change without addressing climate change in – and in cooperation with – Asia.
The Indo-Pacific is also an unrivalled economic powerhouse, and will contain four of the world’s five biggest economies – China, India, Indonesia and Japan – by 2032. The UK joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a regional trade agreement, in 2024. In so doing, the UK has not only positioned itself to benefit from the region’s growth potential; it has also gained a seat at the table in an alternative forum for shaping economic integration and trade rules at a time when global trade institutions are under strain. CPTPP membership alone is unlikely to provide a significant boost to UK gross domestic product (GDP) in the medium term, but it provides the foundations to expand trade and investment.
In security terms, the Indo-Pacific is a crucible of geopolitical risks. It encompasses waterways vital for global commerce, particularly the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the Strait of Malacca (the corridor between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia through which trillions of dollars’ worth of global trade passes annually). Maritime freedom of navigation through these waterways is increasingly contested, with the South China Sea in particular the site of rising tensions over territorial claims and military build-ups. China’s growing use of military threats and ‘grey zone’ coercion to intimidate Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its territory, is raising the risk of a conflict that could pitch the US and China, two nuclear-armed superpowers, against each other. Grey-zone tactics include military drills and activities intended to intimidate, as well as political interference and sabotage. Meanwhile, North Korea’s advancing military ambitions and nuclear programme threaten regional stability, raising concerns about nuclear proliferation and potential escalation. These intertwined security challenges have regional and global implications, already evident in some cases even in Europe. North Korean troops, for example, have been fighting alongside Russian ones against Ukraine, while the expanding China–Russia partnership continues to complicate European options for tackling the Russian military threat. Elsewhere, there remain significant potential flashpoints between China and India, and between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
