China’s Maritime Embroilments

• China's maritime periphery or ‘‘near seas’’—the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea—are waters through which a great deal of vital commerce flows, as China, Japan, Korea, and numerous Southeast Asian countries are all major trading nations that import the energy and raw materials that sustain their thriving economies. Since 2009 the East and South China Seas have become increasingly fraught with tension. This has generally been attributed to rising Chinese assertiveness, but not because China has started making a lot of assertions it never made before. As the authors assembled here point out in replete detail, China’s explicit claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku islets in the East China Sea date back at least to 1971, while it can trace its claim in the South China Sea back to the publication of the famous ‘‘nine-dashed line’’ map by the Nationalists in 1947 (at the time it contained eleven segmented lines; the victorious Communists subsequently dropped two). What has changed since 2009 is China’s more rigorous enforcement of existing claims. This too is brought out in the articles collected below: its actors have seized islands well within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of neighboring Southeast Asian nations, detained fishing boats and confiscated their catch, cut the cables of ships engaged in oil exploration, harassed American surveillance vessels, and most recently undertaken ‘‘reclamation’’ of subsurface islets in order to construct airstrips and harbors. 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

International Relations

Peace and Conflict Studies

Maritime History

Maritime Law

War Studies

East Asia

Security Studies

South-East Asia

International Cooperation

China

Conflict Resolution

Yellow Sea

Conflict Management

Japan

Conflict prevention and resolution

Peace Studies

Peacebuilding

Maritime Security

Maritime

South China Sea

Defence and Strategic Studies

Security and Peace Studies

Politics and International relations

North East Asia

The South China Sea dispute

Conflict and Conflict Resolution

Sino-Asean relations

and East China Sea

Kina

Internationella relationer

maritim säkerhet

Asien

Östasien

Sydostasien

Nordostasien

Sydkinesiska sjön

Östkinesiska havet

Fredsbyggande

Konfliktlösning

Konflikthantering

Konfliktprevention

Kina

ASEAN

Japan

Kina-ASEAN

MAritimt samarbete

Krigsvetenskap

Krigsvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)