How Valid Are The South China Sea Claims Under The Law Of The Sea Convention
The South China Sea disputes continue to plague policy-makers and defy solution. Six governments ? China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philip pines, and Brunei ? claim all or some of the islands and rocks in the south central South China Sea, known as the Spratly Islands, as well as all or some of the surrounding sea, seafloor, and associated resources. And all except Brunei have military forces on their claimed features. This article reviews the conflicting claims and recent developments in the context of regional politics and international law, including the law of the sea. China's 1995 occupation of Mischief Reef on the Philippine-claimed con tinental shelf and its 1999 construction of fort-like structures there consider
Planting Flags on the Tide: Sovereignty, Containment, and Conflict Resolution in the East and South China Seas
The rise of China’s economic and military power is transforming global politics while U.S. strategic interests are re-balancing toward Asia. Meanwhile, tensions over maritime boundaries and island claims within the region are punctuated by police and military stand-offs in the East and South China Seas. This paper considers the discourse surrounding the dispute over sovereignty in the South China Sea. It also examines the roles international law, multilateralism, and traditional diplomacy play in the conflict, and how it serves as a test case for China’s future diplomacy and traditional norms of non-interference and a peaceful rise. Finally, the paper suggests pathways toward conflict resolution of the immediate disputes, including de-territorialized and de-nationalized ideas of possession when it applies to contested yet uninhabited maritime frontiers.
Legal status of the Paracel and Spratly Islands
Abstract The four groups of uninhabited coral islets scattered in the South China Sea have been the object of territorial claims by the surrounding coastal states for the past few decades. The ownership issue became a serious territorial dispute in January 1974, when the forces of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Vietnam clashed over the Paracel Islands. In many points, this South China Sea dispute is so similar to the Tiaoyut'ai‐Senkaku dispute of the East China Sea between China and Japan that the settlement of one is likely to bear on that of the other as well as on the development of marine resources in the two China Seas. It is not possible to determine the validity of the conflicting claims in either case. Relying on the available historic facts, however, China's claim to the Paracel and Spratly islands appears to be relatively stronger than that of Vietnam.