Edited by a Taiwanese law professor, this latest volume in a series on contemporary China examines the competing claims to the waterway and the geopolitics of one of the world’s major flashpoints
This latest volume in a series on contemporary China published by World Scientific looks at the historical, geopolitical, and legal aspects of the disputes over the South China Sea and its islands, reefs, and rocks.
Edited by Tsu-Sung Hsieh, a retired Taiwanese navy captain and professor at the Ming Chuan University School of Law in Taipei, The South China Sea Disputes: Historical, Geopolitical and Legal Studies is composed of papers presented at the 2017 South China Sea Conference by scholars from Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and the United States.
The South China Sea – The Struggle for Power in Asia
The South China Sea is one of the major flashpoints of world politics. China claims the entire sea as its territory – via the now much discussed nine-dash line. This claim is countered by rival claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia. The United States’ interest is part legal – freedom of navigation – and part geopolitical – preventing Chinese hegemony in East Asia and beyond.
In 2016, the international tribunal at The Hague sided with the Philippines against China and the latter’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. China has ignored the ruling, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction over the dispute – a legal position supported by Professor Tsu in the book’s final chapter.
She believes that the arbitration tribunal and the UN have overlooked the significance of the Taipei Treaty of 1952, in which Japan surrendered “all right, title, and claim to the Paracel and the Spratly Islands” to the Republic of China on Taiwan.
As a result, the South China Sea, she writes, is not the “inner sea” of any country and all interested countries should each have their exclusive economic zones without impinging on the rights of any other country. She believes that both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) – as Taiwan is officially called – would benefit from such a resolution.
China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier is accompanied by navy frigates and submarines conducting exercises in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: AP
Nanjing University professor Chen Qianping reviews the Nationalist Chinese government’s efforts to recover sovereignty over the islands of the South China Sea, including the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands), Woody Island (Yongxing Island), Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands), Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands), and Taiping, islands after the second world war. The Nationalists, he writes, complied with international law in reclaiming those islands.
Both history and international law, he asserts, support the PRC’s sovereignty over the South China Sea. Implicit in this analysis is the PRC’s official position that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China.
But it won’t be history or international law that ultimately decides the South China Sea disputes – it will be geopolitics. The most important articles in the book by Nathan Kuanghua Liu and Jay L. Batongbacal analyse the broader China-US rivalry and its impact on the South China Sea disputes.