US admiral says Indo-Pacific is standing up against China

Countries in the Indo-Pacific region are beginning to take a stand against Chinese attempts to manipulate them through debt-trap diplomacy, coercion and bullying, a senior US naval commander said Thursday.

Adm. Philip S Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told a foreign policy think-tank in Sydney that all nations in the region were involved in a strategic competition "between a Beijing-centric order and a free and open Indo-Pacific."