HONG KONG: There was a time when China tried hard to convince the world its rise is peaceful. That pretense was abandoned seven years ago when in the wake of Great Recession China thought its time had come to claim its place as controlling “all under heaven,” or tianxia in Asia. Like all great powers in history, China’s emergence is accompanied not just by military expansion but also assertion of its own law.

In China’s narrative, the rise is still peaceful. The nation built military installations on reefs and rocks in the South China Sea simply because China claims to own them from time immemorial. As Hu Shijin, editor-in-chief of Global Times, told Quartz in a recent interview. “We can’t lose these islands.” Fighting the Philippines arbitration case in court could result in defeat, and did, a risk China wanted to avoid. China decided not to participate in the proceedings or accept any decision of the arbitral tribunal set up under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. From the Chinese standpoint, the South China Sea is a core interest. There can be no backing down.

To justify its position on this and other issues, China creates an imagined universe where, in the words of Bill Hayton, the BBC specialist on the South China Sea, “They start from the position that everything China does is virtuous and correct and therefore that anyone who disagrees must be wrong.” What China thinks is right must be the law. The day the tribunal’s decision was made public, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called it a “farce” and said that China, by refusing to accept the ruling, was “upholding international rule of law.”

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/claiming-dominance-china-sheds-pretense-peaceful-rise