If you think of soft power as being diplomatic power

If you think of soft power as being diplomatic power and economic power, they have vag com been very effective in spreading throughout the region, making investments, building things that countries wanted, working to create relationships to displace some of the historic animosity or suspicion. And it s not only in Asia. I mean, they have moved into Africa, moved into Latin America, doing the very same thing.
Now, they have every right to do that. I believe in a global economic market, so if they want to get in there and compete with the mining industry or anything else, they have every right to do so. But I did not and do not believe we should cede that to them, that we need to be also competing for soft power influence. So whether it s joining more organizations or making investments that are important to people, responding to natural disasters that have been plentiful in the world and that region, we have our story to tell and we will be missing a great opportunity if we are not on the ground telling it.
At the same time, we know it s no classified secret that China is increasing its military assets. Yeah, as a country used to do if they ve got the resources, which China has. And it s our obligation to make sure that we are present where we have treaty allies, like the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, for example, where we have close working relationships, as we do in Australia, and where we have very important partnerships all across Asia.
And so when China began to show some muscle, and in part I think it was motivated by their assessment that, given our economic position, we couldn t really be as involved as we once had been. [The] future, I think, demands us to be. There was a lot of activity in the South China Sea, about China asserting lexia 3 itself, China moving to block oil exploration to countries, and more along that line. So I felt strongly that we had to say freedom of navigation is an international right. There are methods for resolving disputed claims over territories, so we re going to be not choosing sides. I