Extensive land borders and complex historical issues have brought a series of territorial disputes to the People’s Republic of China since its foundation in 1949. Over the past decades, China has settled land-boundary issues with twelve of its fourteen land neighbours, covering more than 90 per cent of the entire length. Nevertheless, territorial disputes between China and India remain a serious challenge, and China must consider how to mitigate and resolve the island issue with some Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, in the South China Sea and the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. China’s approach to settling territorial disputes is characterized by its preference for bilateral negotiations and its argument based on the ‘customary line’. The vision of creating a harmonious regional/international environment to achieve the policy goal of ‘peaceful rise’ is likely to prompt China to continue and increase its use of international law to settle its disputed border issues, which is also in line with its high priority goal of maintaining domestic stability.

Chapter 3 examines Chinese coercion in the South China Sea. My previous work examines the overall trends of Chinese coercion in the South China Sea. I find that China used coercion in the 1990s because of the high need to establish a reputation for resolve and low economic cost. China used militarized coercion because the US withdrawal from the Subic Bay in Southeast Asia and the focus on Europe reduced China’s geopolitical backlash cost of using coercion. China then refrained from coercion from 2000 to 2006 because of the high economic cost and low need to establish a reputation for resolve. It began to use coercion again after 2007, but because of the increasing geopolitical backlash cost since the post-2000 period, Chinese coercion remains nonmilitarized, which includes economic sanctions and gray-zone coercion. This chapter also examines three case studies – the cross-national comparison of China’s coercion against the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia, the Sino-Philippine Mischief Reef incident in 1995, and the Sino-Philippine Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012. These case studies demonstrate that the mechanisms of the cost-balancing theory are present in them.

This chapter gives brief descriptions of Post-WWII interstate conflicts linked to the main phases in great power tensions: the bipolar Cold War, with Korean war 1950, the Viet Nam war 1965, Interventions, Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, the Détente and unipolar conflict resolving world that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union and the multipolar world that is emerging thereafter with terrorism, Russian intervention in Georgia and war in Ukraine and sharp tensions between the Koreas and in the East and South China Seas.

Although islands have long been geologically, ecologically, economically and strategically linked to oceans, they are now juridically linked to them, also. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea grants states the right to claim exclusive economic zones projecting up to 200 nautical miles from their coasts, and continental shelves projecting up to 350 nautical miles. Bird islands have been transformed into anchors of pelagic sovereignty, leading to fierce diplomatic disputes over the legal definition of island-ness.

Nature conservation has also served as one means of forging new legal connections between islands and oceans, for in the past few years pelagic states have established a series of vast oceanic reserves anchored by bird islands. The US has expanded Roosevelt’s Hawaiian Islands Reservation into the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, and Britain has established the Chagos Islands Marine Protected Area in an attempt to protect the US military base on Diego Garcia. It is hard to find a more chilling example of nature conservation as a tactic for conserving sovereignty over territory.

This chapter explores how the strategic value of bird islands increased in the interwar period, even as their economic value dwindled. The Marcus Island Incident helped spark Japanese interest in offshore guano mining for use as phosphate fertilizer, and Japanese-managed mining operations began to pop up on islands throughout the East and South China seas. They were only intermittently profitable, and were abandoned during economic downturns. But they triggered diplomatic disputes first with China (over the Pratas and Paracel groups) and then with France (over the Spratlys). Over time military planners began to conceive of the islands as potential airstrips or submarine refuelling stations. Japanese companies, often competing with each other for rights to the islands, exploited these visions by portraying themselves as useful adjuncts in the defence of Japan’s ‘maritime lifeline’. By the late 1930s the Japanese Navy was directly bankrolling civilian enterprises as cover for military operations.

Maritime claims and competition for resources often disregard conservation and sustainability, undermining cooperation on environmental protection. The South China Sea presents a case where the rule of law is failing to protect the marine environment. Overlapping maritime claims and open confrontation for control over areas of the SCS culminated in the PCA South China Sea Arbitration. The requirement to cooperate under UNCLOS is at fundamental odds with the competition for natural resources. Even UNCLOS’s due regard mechanism which ensures a balance of rights and interests among coastal and non-coastal States in their uses of EEZs presumes peaceful co-existence and willingness to cooperate. A binding ASEAN Code of Conduct is a possible avenue to enforce a moratorium over the claims and drive urgent cooperation based on Chapter XII to reverse the fast-deteriorating marine environment. The rule of law is relevant to conservation cooperation in the South China Sea.

In this chapter Germany’s position on Antarctica, the law of the sea, as well as air and space law will be examined. Concerning the law of the sea, Germany’s critical position on China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, expressed on many different occasions, will be addressed. Besides that, it will be addressed that Turkey accused Germany of illegally boarding its merchant vessel on the high seas in the Mediterranean. Yet, it will be concluded the boarding and search of the vessel even against the expressed will of Turkey was not illegal under international law. Regarding Turkey’s conduct of seismic surveys in the eastern Mediterranean, Germany’s calls on Turkey to respect international law will be criticised as lacking a legal basis. That Germany joined the UK-led Global Ocean Alliance, will be evaluated as a way for Germany to lobby for greater parts of the ocean being assigned Marine Protected Area status. In the last part, Germany opposing Russian initiatives on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space will be assessed a sign of its increasing frustration with the double standards displayed by Russia and the other major space powers.

In this chapter Germany’s positions on Antarctica, the law of the sea and on air and space law are examined. Concerning the law of the sea, Germany’s response to the Turkey-Libya memorandum of understanding is criticised as one-sided. Further, Germany’s position on migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean are addressed and criticised as often vague or inexistent. Regarding the South China Sea dispute, it is asserted that Germany takes a more outspoken and active position while avoiding an open and direct confrontation with China. In light of the increasing importance of the Arctic region, Germany developed new policy guidelines in which more restrictive regulation is advocated. In the last part, air and space law, Germany’s activities in preventing an arms race in outer space are addressed, paying particular attention to United Nations negotiations. Moreover, Germany’s criticism of India over an anti-satellite missile test is evaluated as a call for a legally binding instrument prohibiting the destruction of space objects.

This chapter introduces the book and its main arguments. It first discusses the International Relations debate over China’s rise, and its limitations. The debate is polarised between those depicting China as a revisionist actor, or as supporting the status quo. The debate is at an impasse because evidence exists on both sides. What is needed is a framework that can account for both sorts of behaviour. This requires rejecting the assumption that China is a monolithic actor pursuing a coherent grand strategy. In reality, since the late 1970s, the Chinese party-state has become fragmented, decentralised and internationalised, greatly expanding the range of actors involved in China’s foreign affairs. Because these actors are only loosely coordinated within a Chinese-style regulatory state, this produces a wide range of international outcomes that do not necessarily reflect top leaders’ intentions. The chapter also outlines the structure and contents of the rest of the book.

This chapter presents the book’s first case study: the South China Sea (SCS). Typically, the SCS is seen as a geopolitical struggle for sovereignty and territory, prompting military tensions and power balancing, and as a major security flashpoint that could spark World War III. This chapter shows that Chinese conduct in the SCS is shaped less by a detailed strategy determined in Beijing and more by struggles for power and resources within the transformed Chinese party-state. Reflecting the model described in Chapter One, Chinese conduct is only loosely guided by the poorly-defined nine-dash line and an injunction to balance the maintenance of stability and the protection of maritime rights, which are often contradictory objectives. This has created wide latitude for maritime actors – including the navy, coastguard agencies, the national oil companies and the Hainan provincial government and associated fishing interests – to promote their sectional interests, with often very negative consequences for China’s wider diplomatic objectives. Xi Jinping’s efforts to rein in competing actors has only partially succeeded. Although China’s position in the SCS has overall strengthened, it has done so in a rather unplanned manner and consequently at considerable cost.

This chapter elaborates the theoretical and methodological approach used in this book. Guided by Gramscian state theory, we trace the post-1978 rise of a powerful, though divided, cadre-capitalist class, and the associated, uneven and contested fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of China’s party-state. We then elaborate a theoretical model capable of explaining how policymaking and implementation work under these changed conditions: the Chinese-style regulatory state. In this model, rather than making detailed, binding decisions and strategies, top leaders try to loosely steer and coordinate a plethora of actors towards favoured ends. But other actors can influence, interpret and even ignore these policy frameworks. Chinese behaviours thus represent an ongoing struggle within the fractured party-state. Outcomes are further shaped by socio-political dynamics within the other countries in which Chinese actors operate. The chapter also explains our method and case selection, and canvasses and rejects some predictable objections to our argument: that China’s state transformation is nothing new, and that recentralisation under Xi Jinping has made the state transformation argument outdated.

Chapter 8 focuses on State practice, with an emphasis on acts taken unilaterally by States in disputed maritime areas, due to which a conflict has arisen in bilateral relations. To provide the most complete picture of acts undertaken unilaterally in disputed waters, examples have been collected from two types of disputes: first, where disputes to title to territory underlie the disputed maritime areas; and, second, where overlapping claims to maritime zones exist. Unilateral conduct in disputed maritime areas is not exclusively concentrated to certain parts of the world. Varying extents of conflicts are created in State practice when activities under the authority of the coastal State – including concessioning, seismic work, exploratory drilling, exploitation, marine scientific research and fisheries activities – are undertaken unilaterally in a disputed maritime area. Reacting to such a unilateral act is often seen as vital by a claimant State, and these reactions can take various forms, including law enforcement. Acting in response might be a double-edged sword, however, as this reaction can sometimes set in motion a spiral of action and reaction, whereby each State feels obligated to react to the other’s act, so as to defend their sovereign rights and interests.