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This chapter analyses the South China Sea dispute from 1992 to present day. It shows how partial interest convergence between the Philippines, Vietnam and the United States has been insufficient to prevent these dual vanguard states from having their maritime sovereignty violated by an assertive China. Through the analysis of three separate time periods, 1992-2012, 2012-2016, and 2016 to present, the chapter traces the varying levels of interest convergence and intra-ASEAN cohesion, both of which have failed to reach the robust levels required to satisfy vanguard state theory.

This chapter introduces the rival territorial claimants, all of whom, besides China and Taiwan, are members of ASEAN, and their claims in the South China Sea. It provides historical background for several of the claims to the Paracel and Spratly island chains, focusing on those of China, which has been most successful in actualizing its claims. It analyses the shifts over time in China’s foreign policy in the region, highlighting efforts at cooperation near the turn of the century and China’s more aggressively asserting its claims in recent years. It lays out the two tales the book tells: the story of China’s efforts to divide ASEAN in pursuit of its territorial claims and the broader story of how China uses its financial power to influence foreign governments in developing states. The chapter also provides a justification for the selection of the three case studies in the book: China’s relations with Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar, emphasizing variation in the key variable of political regime type. Finally, it introduces each subsequent chapter.

This chapter analyzes each ASEAN member state’s territorial claims and disputes both in and outside of the South China Sea as well as its current position regarding ASEAN efforts to negotiate multilaterally with China over rival South China Sea claims. It highlights the broad support for freedom of navigation within ASEAN as well as the stated desire of each government to pursue a peaceful resolution based on the Code of Conduct with China that the ASEAN members agreed to develop in Phnom Penh in 2002. The chapter makes clear that, despite the many overlapping and competing maritime territorial claims among ASEAN member states, these states have managed to cooperate to resolve disputes outside of the South China Sea and, unlike China, since the signing of the DOC have largely refrained from taking provocative actions related to contested claims within the region. The chapter further notes the important differences in the dynamics between, and preferences of, China and the rival ASEAN claimants in the South China Sea when compared to the cases of successful dispute resolution discussed in the chapter; the most obvious difference is the asymmetry in the balance of power between China and the other claimants.

The chapter summarizes the book’s findings on China’s efforts to divide ASEAN and conquer the South China Sea, using variation in member state’s reactions to the decision in favor of the Philippines by the tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration to illustrate the impact of China’s influence. The book concludes that because of the inherent differences within ASEAN, especially in political institutions, as well as the intrinsic difficulties of effective multilateralism and collective action, ASEAN will be unlikely to come together to force China to the negotiating table, as long as China wishes to resist taking a seat. The chapter notes that China’s efforts to influence states in the region have not always been successful, as the case studies illustrate; China has advantages in influencing developing state, authoritarian governments but faces more and higher hurdles in its efforts to influence developing state governments operating within relatively democratic institutions. A brief comparative analysis of China’s bilateral relations in Latin America suggests that the book’s findings are generalizable to China’s relations with developing states globally. The book concludes that the potential evolution of political institutions toward democracy is a form of long-term political risk facing Chinese efforts to influence developing state governments.

This chapter examines the main issues for Vietnam since the launch of its Doi Moi (“renovation”) policy in the mid-1980s and its foreign policy in the past, present, and near future. The chapter also analyzes the country’s relationship with its two most important partners—China and the United States—with the main focus on the interactions among key players in the South China Sea.

Southeast Asia has strong ties with China in the areas of economics, diplomacy, and culture. China also has a security interest in the South China Sea, which has become a major source of conflict between China and the United States, due to American fears that China’s military buildup in the South China Sea may threaten American “freedom of navigation” in the sea and the entire Western Pacific. China’s main interest in Southeast Asia is defending its sovereignty and security in the South China Sea.

This chapter proposes additional policy options that the United States might pursue in the South China Sea. It recounts existing U.S. policy toward the South China Sea and finds that it is comprehensive, sensible, and well balanced. It focuses on creating stability by exhorting all parties to follow international law; it explicitly defines conflict solving; and it includes U.S. hard-power demonstrations as well as initiatives aimed at redressing some of the power imbalance between the Philippines, Vietnam, and China. It also incorporates deterrence by not ignoring America’s security alliance with the Philippines as well as providing for U.S. naval and air access. The chapter concludes by recommending several additional policy approaches while acknowledging the difficulty of getting Beijing to pay serious attention to U.S. objections to what Washington has called its “bullying” approach. Along the way it addresses what U.S. interests are involved in the South China Sea and makes the point that U.S. policy toward the South China Sea and China must be kept in perspective. The overall Sino-U.S. relationship is global in nature and involves many U.S. interests in which Beijing’s cooperation is necessary.

ASEAN has long promoted its key interests in a stable and autonomous Southeast by binding outside powers to ASEAN’s norms and institutions. Today, domestic political change, divergent interests among ASEAN countries, and the changing balance of power in the Asia-Pacific are eroding the ASEAN cohesion necessary for a collective ASEAN external policy. ASEAN policy is based on soft power and therefore is dependent on a stable balance of power. China’s rise has upset that balance, triggering Sino-American tensions and conflicts with some Southeast Asian states. ASEAN’s goals of regional stability and autonomy from great power hegemony are increasingly coming into conflict, which may force ASEAN members to choose between them.

This chapter examines three implications of these patterns of difference and dominance for the wider field of international law. First, although most legal academies and law schools remain relatively nationalized, there are outliers that are significantly more internationalized than their counterparts. Different academies also evidence different strengths and areas that are ripe for future development. Second, the existence of distinct national or regional communities of international lawyers may result in substantial disconnects developing within the field, such as in debates about Crimea and the South China Sea. Third, some of the patterns of dominance that emerge in the academies and textbooks are replicated elsewhere in the field, including privileging sources and actors from Western states in general, and from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in particular. Choice of language and the emergence of English as the lingua franca play particularly important roles in this privileging process.

This chapter examines how the rise of China affects the South China Sea dispute. What is collectively known in the West as the Spratly Islands group is claimed in whole by China and Vietnam and in part by the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. At stake are fishing rights, potentially large hydrocarbon deposits, valuable minerals in the seabed, and access to a strategically important waterway astride important shipping lanes. China's rise has emboldened it to stick uncompromisingly to its expansive and unreasonable claims, to eschew compromise, and to rely increasingly on its growing comparative advantage in the capability to project military or quasi-military force into the South China Sea in defense of Chinese claims. Beijing intends to establish a maritime sphere of influence over the seas on China's periphery now that this objective is becoming feasible. This is exacerbating frictions with the United States as well as with China's Southeast Asian neighbors. China's South China Sea claim is based on the so-called nine-dashed line.

This chapter examines China’s efforts to shelve the South China Sea territorial disputes by negotiating joint development agreements (JDA) with rival claimants. Through JDAs China aims to influence indirectly how other claimants manage the sovereignty conflicts, by leveraging on their shared preferences for economic development and re-framing the issue with the narrative of joint development bringing mutual gains, thereby putting aside the sovereignty conflicts through constructive cooperation. However, Vietnam and the Philippines have resisted China’s attempt at discursive persuasion, and Beijing has failed to achieve its aims of shifting their focus away from formal multilateral conflict management mechanisms, and international arbitration of the sovereignty disputes. But Beijing’s influence is constrained by China’s own behaviour. Its refusal to clarify its territorial claims in accordance with international law, unilateral development of oil and gas exploration, and coercion of other claimants contradicts the JDA narrative.

The chapter pursues the chronological linkage of the two shipbuilding traditions: the East China Sea tradition and South China Sea tradition. The latter tradition has been advocated in a pioneering study on the hybrid feature of excavated ships in the South China Sea regions—the integration of construction methods from two regions, Southeast Asia and China, is evident. The chapter, however, explicates the processes of the hybridization; that is, the emergence of the South China Sea shipbuilding tradition is posited as the result from of the expansion of the East China Sea shipbuilding traditions into Southeast Asian regions. Some excavated ships in the Thai Gulfs proposed that the country was once a major supply source for the long distance merchant ships constructed by the South China Sea tradition. The voyage of these “Gulf Traders” stretched Japan, recognized as a hybrid ship.

This chapter examines smuggling in the South China Sea during the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. The findings reveal that smuggling in the region has operated as big business for many centuries and that a variety of actors and interested parties have all participated in these activities. It considers the interplay among European, Chinese, and other Asian actors in smuggling and other clandestine activities over the past several centuries.

This chapter evaluates Chinese mistakes in managing US policy by examining three critical junctures of the relationship during the Obama administration. In President Obama’s first year in office (2009), Beijing failed to fully reciprocate Obama’s positive signals for a cooperative relationship. The second juncture came in February 2012, when Vice President Xi’s visit to Washington ignited high-level diplomacy for building a new model of major-country relationship. With the third juncture in late 2013 and early 2014, the relationship once again took a turn for the worse, and it did not recover during the rest of Obama’s tenure. China lacked a productive strategy for managing its relations with the US, and contradictions between its US and Asia policies undercut its goal of building a new relationship with the US.

Although we often hear reference to the “invisible college” of international lawyers, it may be better to understand international lawyers as constituting a “divisible college” whose members hail from different states and regions and often form distinct, though sometimes overlapping, communities with their own understandings and approaches, as well as their own influences and spheres of influence. This chapter draws on two recent high-profile controversies—Crimea’s annexation by, or reunification with, Russia in 2014, and the legality and legitimacy of the award in the South China Sea arbitration in 2016—to explore how the divisible college of international lawyers operates with respect to Chinese, Russian, and Western international lawyers. It looks at the extent to which international lawyers in these case studies operated in their own silos or made an effort to communicate across national and geopolitical divides.

With the exception of the Philippines, America’s strategic interest in and engagement with Southeast Asia begins with World War II. Prior to that “Monsoon Asia” was remote and exotic—a place of fabled kingdoms, jungle headhunters, and tropical seas. By the end of the nineteenth century European powers had established colonial rule over the entire region except Thailand. Then, as the twentieth century dawned, the Spanish colonial holdings in the Philippines suddenly and unexpectedly became available to the United States as an outcome of the Spanish-American War and Admiral Dewey’s destruction of the decrepit Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. This chapter examines the strategic pivot in Southeast Asia and the role China plays in affecting the U.S. position in this region.

This chapter examines great power management of regional conflicts in East Asia and the degree to which authority over conflict management has been shared or diffused or challenged. In analysing the two critical conflicts with systemic impacts – those on the Korean Peninsula and in the South China Sea – it evaluates the degree to which the U.S. has been able to establish its hegemonic position pinned upon its authority to manage these conflicts. To a significant extent, the U.S. retains its hegemonic role in defining key public goods and in determining how these goods are to be provided and on what terms. It has been able to co-opt China onto its security agenda to some extent on the Korean Peninsula, but China’s authority in conflict management is relatively unproven. Other East Asian states have by and large continued to grant Washington authority as the regional security guarantor in these test cases.

This chapter examines the impact of China's rise on its neighbors. All of China's neighbors see opportunities to benefit economically from China's growth, but they also face the prospect of increasing vulnerability to political domination by the Chinese. If the focus is limited to security, we can say that none of these countries—from India to Vietnam, Russia, South Korea, and Burma—is better off with China as a military great power. India, for example, believes that even the ostensibly economics-driven Chinese investments in new infrastructure linking China with India's neighbors have the strategic purpose of containing India by extending China's influence to India's doorstep. China's close relationship with India's longtime enemy and neighbor Pakistan is the clearest example of Chinese containment. As for Vietnam, several territorial disputes complicate its relations to China, including the one involving the South China Sea.

China has been addicted to US Treasuries and is financing the US lasting global power, defying the common conception that China is displacing US global leadership. China's geopolitical influence is growing in Asia and in the developing world, but it has been contained by the anxiety of smaller countries that seek US protection.