‘Free’ from What? China and Ten Years of Free and Open Indo-Pacific
‘Free’ from What? China and Ten Years of Free and Open Indo-Pacific
WRITTEN BY ANGELO M’BA
24 August 2026
The year 2026 is particularly symbolic for Indo-Pacific geopolitics, as it marks the tenth anniversary of two major developments: the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework (FOIP), introduced in a speech by then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the South China Sea (SCS) award won by the Philippines, in which an arbitral tribunal ruled that China’s claims over the “nine-dash line” in the SCS were illegitimate.
Both developments echo regional dynamics in which a rising, more proactive China has sparked anxiety in regional and extra-regional capitals alike. For Beijing, these concurrent anniversaries constitute challenges to its objective of reclaiming its status as a respected nation after the ‘Century of Humiliation’.
On 2 May 2026, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi updated the FOIP concept, thereby precipitating Sino-Japanese frictions ahead of the 27 August anniversary. Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of China, branded the framework a “sugarcoated scheme” antagonistic to regional peace, largely overlooking its non-security dimensions such as infrastructure and artificial intelligence cooperation.
This latest escalation provides a useful lens for understanding how China has approached FOIP over the past decade, alongside similar developments such as the SCS arbitral award. Indeed, the row follows a consistent pattern in which Beijing frames an evolving and malleable concept through a persistent security perspective. Both events thus provide examples of China’s use of strategic narratives to challenge Japan’s regional strategies and (re)define the ‘Free’ in Free and Open Indo-Pacific as free of foreign interference.
The ever-evolving Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework
Abe developed FOIP as a framework championing the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and peace in the Indo-Pacific. However, this security-heavy framing has constantly evolved to align with each administration’s priorities. Fumio Kishida’s version emphasised economic dimensions while Takaichi’s iteration strikes a balance between security and economics, reflecting domestic challenges and economic difficulties, including a weakening yen that reached a 40-year low against the dollar in August 2026.
In the future, even less confrontational and security-focused iterations of FOIP are likely to face Beijing’s opposition because their premise of involving external actors — to balance China’s dominance — clashes with Beijing’s own objectives, regardless of content.
Each actor has its own definition of and approach to FOIP, and, as Japan itself demonstrates, a given actor’s concept may evolve. Still, Beijing predominantly frames FOIP as an alliance-building strategy designed to contain China. To be sure, this reading is not baseless. The FOIP framework emerged against the backdrop of the early–2010s US ‘Pivot to Asia,’ whose Indo-Pacific strategic concepts explicitly mentioned China as a disruptive force, and the establishment of regional partnerships such as the Quad. Yet China has maintained that reading for a decade, even as Chinese commentators and officials recognise that the framework is losing relevance and coordination amid a dwindling US regional presence.
As for ASEAN countries, which refrain from naming China as a disruptive force in its Indo-Pacific strategic outlook, Beijing tends to frame Southeast Asia’s support for antagonistic measures, such as the arbitral award, as the regional execution of “manipulation[s]” plotted by foreign actors — primarily the US. China has extended similar criticism to Japan and the EU, which, along with the US and 12 other nations, reiterated support for FOIP and the award and were met with condemnation.
Renewed tensions, same origin
Recontextualised against the broader Sino-Japanese relationship, Takaichi’s FOIP update and its reception suggest that the recent row is closer to the symptoms of a deeper issue than to its cause stricto sensu. These tensions are rooted in the historical grievances between Japan and China, the latter having suffered from the warmongering and colonial expansion of the former, and Japan’s anxiety vis-à-vis China’s assertive regional posture.
More directly, Sino-Japanese relations nosedived after Takaichi’s November 2025 remarks that a Taiwan contingency “could constitute a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” thereby hinting that Tokyo might invoke its right to collective self-defence. Tensions have worsened due to compounding concerns, including Beijing’s warnings of a “resurgence of militarism in Japan” — a trend it has repeatedly described as dangerous to the regional order, including at the 2026 Munich Security Conference. The April 2026 security escalation in the Taiwan Strait and the August 2026 Japanese defence white paper that labelled China its “greatest strategic challenge” have but added fuel to the row.
These hostilities also reveal two opposing approaches towards the Indo-Pacific. On the one hand, Japan is under pressure to bolster its self-defence capabilities in response to a rising China and a withdrawing US. As such, a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific”, for Tokyo, encourages alliance-building to curb China’s growing regional footprint.
On the other hand, Beijing contests frameworks which, like FOIP, draw in non-regional actors such as the US or, to a lesser extent, the EU. Chinese President Xi Jinping developed this position as early as 2014, arguing that “it is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia”.
The SCS arbitral award and the Sino-Philippine example
The Chinese approach to the arbitral award further highlights the contours of how China conceptualises the Asia-Pacific, as it prefers referring to the region, and strengthens the argument that China aims to champion an order free of interference from non-Asian actors. The centrality of the 2016 award in Sino-Philippine relations helps shed light on the matter.
China challenged the Philippine petition as soon as it was brought to arbitration in 2013. During the lead-up to the eventual award in 2016, relations between Beijing and Manila spiralled. However, after Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016, his administration set the award aside, a sine qua non condition to improve relations with Beijing, which had suffered under his predecessor Benigno Aquino III.
Since taking office in 2022, the Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. administration has entirely revised Manila’s position vis-à-vis the award. The latter was unapologetically described as “final and binding” during a July 2026 State of the Nation address, wherein Marcos asserted that Filipinos “do not yield”. On top of its routine rebuttal of the award, China has stressed that the “Philippine side shall bear the consequences” of its “provocative acts”, facilitating a return to tense China-Philippines relations.
These cases highlight that constructive engagement between China and its neighbours is contingent on their silence vis-à-vis the arbitral award. Confronting China on that matter, and on its narratives by extension, is bound to be met by antagonism from Beijing. In both instances, “foreign forces” were criticised for influencing the Philippines in an attempt to destabilise the SCS, instead prompting Manila to resolve the issue bilaterally.
This insistence on bilateral dialogue encompasses two mutually reinforcing dynamics. The first is strategic: bilateral negotiations disproportionately favour Beijing due to its economic, military, and trade advantages. The second is normative: a preference for regional problems to be addressed by regional actors through regional approaches. Chinese statements on the award have extensively featured rhetoric around foreign interference, which, Beijing argues, is unacceptable and destabilising to the regional balance. Such a configuration of bilateral settlements clearly benefits China. The role of the arbitral award in Sino-Philippine relations thus emphasises China’s preference for an Asia-Pacific space free of foreign interference.
Competing strategies crystallised through endemic tensions
As Japan increasingly leads efforts to build Indo-Pacific frameworks with regional actors such as Australia, Tokyo has become the target of stronger protest from Beijing. The arbitral award and its commemorations are, to some extent, read through a similar lens because they feed wider perceptions and anxiety. As for the upcoming tenth anniversary of Abe’s FOIP speech, Chinese uproar over the 4 August Japanese defence white paper suggests further tensions as Beijing and Tokyo harden their own definitions of what a free and open Indo-Pacific should be.
Beijing’s understanding of FOIP and the 2016 award as efforts to throttle China’s rise through security measures and alliances has overlooked evolving frameworks that now include norm-setting and economic development, among other dimensions. This consistency suggests that policies bringing non-regional actors into the Asia-Pacific region will continue to provoke China’s ire, notwithstanding whether these strategies include non-security dynamics. In the future, even less confrontational and security-focused iterations of FOIP are likely to face Beijing’s opposition because their premise of involving external actors — to balance China’s dominance — clashes with Beijing’s own objectives, regardless of content.
How Beijing reacts to the twentieth anniversary of both will thus hinge less on how FOIP is conceptualised or how the arbitral award is invoked. Rather, it will depend on how two competing visions of a “Free” and Open Indo-Pacific — one championing extra-regional alliances, the other rejecting interference — collide.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Angelo M'BA is the incoming Schwarzman Fellow at the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute, and an Associate Editor for 9DASHLINE. A graduate of the Schwarzman Scholar programme at Tsinghua University and of the University of Oxford, he specialises in Indo-Pacific geopolitics, Chinese foreign policy, and the South China Sea dispute. Image Credit: DVIDS/Nicolas Quezada.