This paper sets out three challenges to the creation of a future for Indo-Pacific states and peoples consistent with the visions of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) expressed by Japan, India, the US and Australia, and now by the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific.

Economic co-operation is the main pillar of India-China relations. According to the liberal school of thought, industrialised countries prefer economic development and foreign trade as a means of achieving prominence and prosperity.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is building links between China’s civilian universities, military and security agencies. Those efforts, carried out under a policy of leveraging the civilian sector to maximise military power (known as ‘military–civil fusion’), have accelerated in the past decade, according to the research behind this report.

This report finds that the nation needs to take better advantage of the tremendous goodwill of Australians towards helping those in humanitarian need, and to give voice to the particular desire of those regional communities which see refugee settlement as one important way to secure their futures.

Though coal, oil, and gas are the central drivers of climate change, they are rarely the subject of international climate policy and negotiations. This report aims to expand that discourse and provide a metric for assessing how far the world is from production levels that are consistent with global climate goals.