Why Should We Care if the Gray Zone War is Heating Up Again in East Asia?

Why Should We Care if the Gray Zone War is Heating Up Again in East Asia?

Days before ASEAN's foreign ministers landed in Manila, a Chinese Coast Guard sailor clubbed a Filipino sailor bloody at Second Thomas Shoal. Beijing normally lowers the temperature before diplomatic set pieces. This time it raised it, and nobody outside China knows whether that was a local commander improvising or a deliberate message. Co-host Ray Powell was in Manila for all of it, and this week he and Jim Carouso work through why the gray zone war across East Asia is heating up again and why it reaches well beyond a few contested reefs. The Philippines chairs ASEAN in 2026, and this month hosted regional foreign ministers as well as China’s Wang Yi and America’s Marco Rubio. Ray and Jim work through why a quarter-century of Code of Conduct negotiations still lead nowhere: China's nine-dash line claim is maximalist; its 1996 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ratification carved out "historic rights" incompatible with UNCLOS itself; it rejected the UNCLOS-prescribed 2016 arbitration outright; and it profits from talks that never end, or from a code weak enough to push UNCLOS aside. Ray owns the “code-of-conduct pessimist” label and explains why. On the related political warfare front, Ray's new report traces how the CCP's United Front Work Department has captured Chinese-language education in the Philippines: teachers supplied through so-called "blood transfusion" and "blood generation" plans; Beijing-supplied materials; career pipelines into Chinese state firms; and how much if it homes back to Jinan University, whose Center for Philippine Studies-hosted symposium recently declared the Philippines’ northernmost islands to be China’s. Finally, the Bashi breakout: China Coast Guard patrols east of Taiwan along the Japan-Philippines EEZ boundary, radio challenges to inbound shipping and Beijing's boast of "inspecting" more than a hundred vessels. Ray's question: will we look back and say Taiwan's quarantine actually began here – not with an open declaration, but one incremental squeeze at a time, as more and more ship captains quietly decide that complying is cheaper than resisting? Subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing. * Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast [https://x.com/IndoPacPodcast], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-should-we-care-about-the-indo-pacific/] or Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/IndoPacPodcast] * Follow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay [https://x.com/GordianKnotRay], or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondpowell/], or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLight [https://www.sealight.live/] * Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-carouso-baa31a9/] * Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia [https://bowergroupasia.com/], a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific

Why Should We Care if China Won’t Restrain its Flood of Exports? | with Wendy Cutler

China posted a record $1.2 trillion global trade surplus in 2025, and its export machine is still accelerating. From electric vehicles and batteries to electronics and household goods, Chinese products are pouring into markets across Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Consumers may welcome better products at lower prices, but what happens when local manufacturers cannot compete, workers lose their jobs, and countries become dependent on Beijing for essential goods? This week, co-hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso welcome Wendy Cutler, Senior Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator who spent nearly three decades at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Wendy explains how government support allows Chinese companies to keep producing even when markets are saturated. Beijing rejects the idea that it has an overcapacity problem, and Wendy argues that negotiations cannot succeed when the two sides cannot even agree that a problem exists. Her solution is a coordinated response by the major economies receiving these exports. In this episode: * How China’s industrial policies help its companies outlast foreign competitors * Why U.S. tariffs redirected Chinese exports toward Europe and Southeast Asia instead of slowing them down * How cheap imports can destroy local businesses, eliminate jobs, and create dangerous dependencies * Why the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and Southeast Asia must act together to change Beijing’s calculations * How China weaponizes its control of critical minerals, rare earths, and permanent magnets * Why Washington’s tariffs against allies could undermine the coalition it needs * How developing economies can defend local industries without losing access to the Chinese market * Whether the fragile U.S.-China trade truce can survive as both sides test its limits * Why today’s low prices could become tomorrow’s strategic vulnerabilities * Wendy’s candid reflections on three decades at the negotiating table Subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing. * Follow Wendy Cutler on at the Asia Society Policy Institute [https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/wendy-cutler], on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-cutler-8584202a4/] or on X, @wendyscutler [https://x.com/wendyscutler] * Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast [https://x.com/IndoPacPodcast], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-should-we-care-about-the-indo-pacific/] or Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/IndoPacPodcast] * Follow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay [https://x.com/GordianKnotRay], or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondpowell/], or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLight [https://www.sealight.live/] * Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-carouso-baa31a9/] * Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia [https://bowergroupasia.com/], a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific

Why Should We Care if China is Salami-Slicing Its Way Out of the First Island Chain? | with Brad Lendon

For the first time, China's coast guard is asserting sovereignty over waters beyond the First Island Chain and out in the open Pacific, far to the east of Taiwan. To justify it, a hastily assembled group of Chinese academics has suddenly declared that the Philippines' northernmost (and very much inhabited) Batanes island province actually belongs to China. Is this a dangerous new escalation or just another day in East Asia’s highly contested maritime gray zone? This week, co-hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso flip the script and put a reporter in the guest chair: Brad Lendon, CNN's Senior News Desk Reporter for Global Military Affairs, who's covered China's maritime rise for over a decade and authored the June 25 story that sparked this conversation, “‘Salami slicing’: How China is trying to increase control in the Pacific [https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/china/salami-slicing-china-control-pacific-intl-hnk-ml]” Brad makes the case that this "salami slicing" is nothing new. Beijing has spent years applying steady, below-the-threshold pressure using white-hulled coast guard ships rather than navy gray-hulls. But now those ships are radio-challenging commercial vessels east of Taiwan, mapping the seabed and settling in for what looks like a permanent presence outside the First Island Chain. In this episode: * Why coast guard "law enforcement" ships are a more insidious tool for asserting sovereignty than warships * What China's radio challenges to commercial ships could be rehearsing, and Ray's "boa constrictor" warning about a soft quarantine of Taiwan already beginning * How the out-of-nowhere Batanes claim fits Beijing's long-game strategy * Whether the Japan-Philippine maritime delimitation talks were a real trigger or just a convenient pretext * What it all means for the U.S. defense strategy built around the First Island Chain, and whether it's the right tool for a non-military threat * Brad's unforgettable story from the bridge of a Canadian frigate threading the Taiwan Strait at midnight * A sharp, practitioner-level look at how the map of the Western Pacific is being quietly redrawn one slice at a time. Subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing. * Follow Brad Lendon’s reporting on CNN [https://www.cnn.com/profiles/brad-lendon] or on X, @BradLendon [https://x.com/BradLendon] * Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast [https://x.com/IndoPacPodcast], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-should-we-care-about-the-indo-pacific/] or Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/IndoPacPodcast] * Follow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay [https://x.com/GordianKnotRay], or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondpowell/], or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLight [https://www.sealight.live/] * Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-carouso-baa31a9/] * Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia [https://bowergroupasia.com/], a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific

Why Should We Care About Rising Dissent in China? | with Kevin Slaten

We picture China as a place where no one dares speak out, but the reality is quite different. In 2025, despite one of the most sophisticated censorship machines on earth, workers protested over unpaid wages, homebuyers demanded stalled apartments, and rural communities pushed back against land dispossession. In this episode, hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso sit down with Kevin Slaten, who leads Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor [https://chinadissent.net/], the only public database tracking protests across China, from its office in Taipei. Slaten’s team recorded about 40 to 50 percent more dissent in 2025 than the year before, including the largest pre-Lunar New Year labor protest peak the project has ever recorded. The twist: US budget cuts had recently knocked the project offline for four months, and it still came back with a skeleton crew to record its highest numbers yet. Fewest resources ever, most dissent ever recorded. Slaten explains what more than 15,000 cases reveal about the real China beneath the propaganda--an economy under strain, a “social contract” that may never have been one, and why even “local” protests matter politically in an authoritarian system. He also unpacks who protests and why, where Beijing’s red lines fall, and how protest pressure can actually produce real concessions, from policy reversals to quiet legal changes. Key topics: * Why dissent is rising even as China tightens censorship * Who is protesting: workers, homebuyers, rural residents, and more * How Beijing decides what to tolerate, censor, or crush * The 2022 White Paper protests: anomaly or symptom? * A school bullying case that spiraled into crowds chanting “we want democracy” If you want to understand where China is really heading, pay attention to the people already demanding change. Subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing. * Follow Kevin Slaten on X, @KevinSlaten [https://x.com/KevinSlaten], or on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinslaten/] * Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast [https://x.com/IndoPacPodcast], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-should-we-care-about-the-indo-pacific/] or Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/IndoPacPodcast] * Follow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay [https://x.com/GordianKnotRay], or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondpowell/], or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLight [https://www.sealight.live/] * Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-carouso-baa31a9/] * Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia [https://bowergroupasia.com/], a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific

Why Should We Care if a U.S.-India Alliance is Achievable? | with Kurt Campbell

What if the most important strategic relationship of the 21st century is the one Washington is actively damaging? In this episode, hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso sit down with Kurt Campbell - former Deputy Secretary of State, President Biden's "Asia czar," a key figure in building the modern Quad, and founder of The Asia Group - to ask whether the U.S. and India can move beyond damage control toward something far more ambitious: a new kind of alliance. Last year, U.S.-India ties hit their lowest point in a quarter century: 50% tariffs over India's Russian oil purchases, a tilt toward Pakistan, and a sharp breakdown of trust. Yet at that very low point, Campbell and Jake Sullivan published "The Case for a U.S. Alliance With India [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/india-alliance-jake-sullivan-kurt-campbell]" in Foreign Affairs, warning Washington risked driving India into its adversaries' arms. Drawing on decades of firsthand diplomacy, Campbell offers a candid insider's read on what went wrong and what might still go right. He reveals why Pakistan has out-maneuvered India in navigating the Trump White House, why his own successor's speech in Delhi drew audible gasps from the audience, and why India's celebrated "strategic autonomy" masks a quiet but unmistakable tilt toward the West. In this episode: * Why Campbell calls India America's most consequential 21st-century partner, and what "escape velocity" means * How he and Sullivan are trying to recast what "alliance" means for a country that will never host U.S. bases * How Pakistan adapted to Trump-era diplomacy more effectively than India * The surprising story of how India went from reluctant Quad participant to its driving force * How India quietly cut its reliance on Russian arms from 80% to under 40% * Campbell's new Asia Group report on the Strait of Hormuz crisis and why it's hitting the Indo-Pacific harder than markets expect * His warning that the South China Sea, not Taiwan, is the likeliest flashpoint for miscalculation Follow and subscribe for your weekly Indo-Pacific briefing. * Follow Kurt Campbell at The Asia Group [https://theasiagroup.com/talent/the-hon-dr-kurt-m-campbell/] or on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-campbell/]. * Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast [https://x.com/IndoPacPodcast], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-should-we-care-about-the-indo-pacific/] or Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/IndoPacPodcast] * Follow Ray Powell on X, @GordianKnotRay [https://x.com/GordianKnotRay], or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondpowell/], or check out his maritime transparency work at SeaLight [https://www.sealight.live/] * Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-carouso-baa31a9/] * Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia [https://bowergroupasia.com/], a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific