Enterprises, Localities, People, and Policy in the South China Sea

Beneath the Surface

Jonathan Spangler, Dean Karalekas, Moises Lopes de Souza, Jonathan Spangler, Dean Karalekas, Moises Lopes de Souza

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319628271
• eBook ISBN: 9783319628288
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume takes readers beneath the surface of the South China Sea by exploring critical but under-researched issues related to the maritime territorial disputes. It draws attention to the importance of private sector, civil society, and subnational actors' roles in the disputes and sheds light on key policy issues that are addressed less often in the literature. By going beyond mainstream analyses focused solely on issues of traditional security, resource economics, and international law, it offers a fresh and engaging look at the South China Sea disputes. The book is divided into five parts – historical foundations, enterprises, localities, people, and policy – and its chapters investigate historiography in the region, the global defense industry's role as beneficiary of the disputes, tourism as a territorial strategy, the roles of provinces and local governments, disaster management, confidence-building measures, environmental and science diplomacy, and other topics seldom discussed in other analyses of the South China Sea disputes. The book's diverse content and fresh perspectives make it an essential read not only for policymakers and those in the international relations community but also for all others interested in gaining a more well-rounded understanding of the many issues at stake in the South China Sea maritime territorial disputes.

Part I
Historical Foundations

© The Author(s) 2018

Jonathan Spangler, Dean Karalekas and Moises Lopes de Souza (eds.)Enterprises, Localities, People, and Policy in the South China Sea Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacifichttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62828-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Writing the History of the South China Sea Disputes

Bill Hayton¹

(1)

Asia Programme, Chatham House, London, UK

Bill Hayton

End Abstract

Introduction

Analysis of the South China Sea disputes only emerged in English-language publications following the occupation by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) of the western half of the Paracel Islands in 1974. Since then the volume of analysis has ebbed and flowed in parallel with the course of the disputes themselves. The latest flood has followed the 2011 announcement of the United States’ pivot to Asia . In the past few years there has been a profusion of research papers, think-tank reports, and news articles about the disputes. The vast majority of these discusses contemporary developments and provides only cursory examinations of the disputes’ history. A few delve a little deeper. All, however, ultimately rely for their historical background on a very small number of papers and books. Worryingly, a detailed examination of those works suggests that they are unreliable bases from which to write reliable histories.

Who Controls the Past, Controls the Future

This unreliable evidence is clouding the international discourse on the South China Sea disputes. It is skewing assessments of the disputes at high levels of government—both in Southeast Asia and in the United States . I will use three recent publications from diverse perspectives to illustrate my point: two 2014 commentary papers for the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore written by Chinese academic Li Dexia and a “Singaporean researcher” Tan Keng Tat, a 2015 presentation by the former US Deputy-Ambassador to China, Charles Freeman, at Brown University, and a 2014 paper for the US-based Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) by Pete Pedrozo (Li and Tan 2015; Li 2014; Freeman 2015; Pedrozo 2014).

What is striking about these recent works—and they are just examples of a much wider literature—is their reliance on historical accounts published many years ago: a small number of papers published in the 1970s, notably one by Hungdah Chiu and Choon-Ho Park (1975); Contest for the South China Sea by Marwyn Samuels (1982); China’s Ocean Frontier by Greg Austin (1998); and two papers by Jianming Shen examining the historical legal perspective (Shen 1997, 2002).

These writings have come to form the backbone of what has become conventional wisdom about the disputes. Google Scholar calculates that Chiu and Park’s paper is cited by 85 others and Samuels’ book by 143. Works that quote these authors include one by Brian Murphy (1994) and those by Jianming Shen from 1997 and 2002—which are, in turn, quoted by 34 and 35 others, respectively—as well as by Chi-kin Lo (1989), whose book is cited by 111 other works. These references are probably just the tip of the iceberg, since some descendant works have been re-cited hundreds of times. Lo explicitly relies on Samuels for most of his historical explanation and indeed praises him for his “meticulous handling of historical data” (Lo 1989, p. 16). Retired Admiral Michael McDevitt, who wrote the forward to Pedrozo’s CNA paper, noted that Contest for the South China Sea “holds up very well some 40 years later” (McDevitt 2014, p. ii).

These works were the first attempts to explain the history of the disputes to English-speaking audiences. They share some common features:

• They were written by specialists in international law or political science rather than by maritime historians of the region.
• They generally lacked references to primary source material.
• They tended to rely on Chinese media sources that contained no references to original evidence or on works that refer to these sources.
• They tended to quote newspaper articles from many years later as proof of fact.
• They generally lacked historical contextualizing information.
• They were written by authors with strong links to China .

The Early Works on the Disputes

English-language writing on the South China Sea disputes emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Paracels in January 1974, when armed forces of the PRC evicted forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from the western half of the islands. The first analyses were journalistic, including one by Cheng Huan—then a Chinese-Malaysian law student in London, now a senior legal figure in Hong Kong —in the following month’s edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review. In it, he opined that, “China’s historical claim [to the Paracels] is so well documented and for so many years back into the very ancient past, that it would be well nigh impossible for any other country to make a meaningful counter claim” (Cheng 1974). This judgment by a fresh-faced student was approvingly quoted in Chi-Kin Lo’s 1989 book China’s Policy Towards Territorial Disputes (Lo 1989). The next substantial analysis came in an article by John F. Copper (1974) in the May–June 1974 edition of China Report, a New Delhi-based publication.

The first academic works appeared the following year. They included a paper by Tao Cheng (1975) for the Texas International Law Journal and another by Hungdah Chiu and Choon-Ho Park (1975) for Ocean Development & International Law. In 1976, the Institute for Asian Studies in Hamburg published a monograph by the German academic, Dieter Heinzig (1976), titled Disputed Islands in the South China Sea. Cheng concluded that, “[I]t is probably safe to say that the Chinese position in the South China Sea islands dispute is a ‘superior claim’” (Cheng 1975, p. 277) and Chiu and Park concurred, writing that “China has a stronger claim to the sovereignty of the Paracels and the Spratlies [sic] than does Vietnam” (Chiu and Park 1975, p. 20). Heinzig opined that, in terms of historical argumentation, “There cannot be any doubt that in this respect the Chinese are in a more favorable position than the others” (Heinzig 1976). These were pioneering papers, but their sources—and therefore their analyses—were far from neutral.

Cheng’s paper relied primarily upon Chinese sources with additional information from American news media. The main Chinese-language sources were commercial magazines from the 1930s, notably editions of the Shanghai-based Foreign Affairs Review (Wai Chiao P’ing Lun/Wai Jiao Ping Lun) from 1933 and 1934 and New Asia Monthly (Hsin-ya-hsi-ya Yüeh-k’an/Xin Ya Xiya Yue Kan) from 1935. These were supplemented by material from the Hong Kong -based news magazine Ming Pao Monthly (Ming Pao Yüeh K’an/Ming Bao Yue Kan) from 1974. Other newspapers that were quoted included a 1933 edition of National News Weekly (Kuo Wen Chou Pao/Guo Wen Zhou Bao), published in Shanghai, People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao), and The New York Times. Cheng didn’t reference any French, Vietnamese, or Philippine sources with the exception of a 1933 article from La Geographie that had been translated and reprinted in the Shanghai-based Foreign Affairs Review.

The paper by Hungdah Chiu and Choon-Ho Park relied upon similar sources. In crucial sections it quotes evidence based upon articles published in 1933 in Foreign Affairs Review and Diplomacy Monthly (Wai-chiao Yüeh-pao/Wai Jiao Yue Bao) (1933, p. 78), and Geography Monthly (Fan-chih yüeh-k’an/Fan Zhi Yue Kan) (1934, p. 2) as well as National News Weekly from 1933 and the Republic of China (ROC) Government’s own Gazette of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Wai-chiao-pu Kung-pao/Wai Jiao Bu Gong Bao) (1933, p. 208). It supplements this information with material gathered from a 1948 Shanghai publication by a geographer seconded to the ROC Ministry of the Interior, Cheng Tzu-yüeh (Zheng Ziyue), General Records on the Geography of Southern Islands (Nan-hai Chu-tao Ti-li Chih-lūeh/Nan-hai Zhudao Dili Zhilue), and ROC government statements from 1956 to 1974 (Free China Weekly 1956, p. 3; Chung-yang jih-pao 1956, p. 6; Shao 1956; United Daily News 1974; “Memorandum on Four Large Archipelagoes” 1974).

Chiu and Park do use some Vietnamese references: eight press releases or fact sheets provided by the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam in Washington. They also refer to some “unpublished material in the possession of the authors.” However, the overwhelming majority of their sources are from the Chinese media.

Writing a year later, Dieter Heinzig relied, in particular, on editions of two Hong Kong -based publications Seventies Monthly (Ch’i-shih nien-tai) and Ming Pao Monthly published, respect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Historical Foundations
• 2. Enterprises
• 3. Localities
• 4. People
• 5. Policy
• Backmatter