PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Buoyancy 12 13 Blue Territorialization 14 of Asian Power 15 16

AIHWA ONG 17 18 19 20 21 Are nations frmly delimited by national terrain? 22 Can sovereignty be expanded through the zoning of ocean and sky? 23 24 What are the implications of sovereign buoyancy for the world order? 25 26 27 Fixed and Contained? 28 Our notion of the nation- state as a physically fxed territoriality contained 29 by its formally delineated bound aries is increasingly difcult to uphold. It ap- 30 pears that the late twentieth- century global order is turning out to have been 31 a brief interregnum of agreed- upon sovereign power as contained within fxed 32 national borders. The League of Nations frst proposed an international sys- 33 tem of nation- states in the 1930s, and a global arrangement was formalized in 34 the aftermath of the Second World War. Defeated countries and newly inde - 35 pen dent ones were recognized as in de pen dent nation- states each with its own 36 politico- legal territoriality. Nevertheless, the requisite po liti cal infrastructure 37 of formal government with its own territoriality was not fully realized every- 38 where, and on some continents (with decolonized states or former Communist 39

218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 191 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 Bloc countries), many nation- states have been challenged and fragmented by 2 breakaway groups, po liti cal uprisings, or drug cartels. The model of a sover- 3 eign nation- state with fxed physical borders may have a less stable temporality 4 than we imagined. 5 Sovereign power in the twentieth centur y has not always been contained 6 within nation bound aries, although most small countries toe the line. In the 7 aftermath of World War II, colonial empires unraveled, reverting back to small 8 Eu ro pean nations while the inde pen dence of many new nations from former 9 colonial rule became ordered under the auspices of the United Nations. The 10 geography and size of a nation- state, its mode of border management, and its 11 specifc goals for keeping things in or out of its territories are principle relative 12 variables through which sovereign space is managed. Maintaining clear bor- 13 ders is a basic requirement of state-premised governance in the global system 14 of nation- states. The politi cal and territorial containment of a nation- state, 15 however, comes into confict with humanitarian ideals of ofering asylum to 16 refugees. Some Eu ro pean nations challenged by the current food of refugees 17 and asylum seekers from poor countries and confict zones are closing their 18 borders against illegal arrivals. But even the continental United States has 19 long held an ambivalent view toward mi grants; the current administration is 20 planning to build a border wall to keep out aliens. Under the administration 21 of Donald Trump, nativist fervor against illegal immigration has reached its 22 highest point since the 1940s. But building walls against noncitizens does not 23 confict with the state’s pursuit of fexible borders to attract selective immi- 24 grants bearing human capital.1 25 26 Hard and Soft Power 27 28 Indeed, ambitious nation- states regularly violate their own borders, and tho se 29 of other nations as well. Over the course of the Cold War, the United States and 30 the USSR developed competing empires based on satellite regimes created after 31 the Second World War. As the Cold War was drawing to a close, the United 32 States’ victorious military- industrial complex gained the upper hand over the 33 USSR. Amer i ca subsequently not only established military bases in dozens of 34 allied countries, but “expanded into much more extensive alignments based 35 on ideology, economic interactions, technology transfers, mutual beneft, and 36 military cooperation.”2 As the lone remaining superpower, the United States 37 operated as the patron of the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World 38 Trade Organ ization, i.e., the system of international agencies that anchor the 39 global economic system. The North Atlantic Treaty Organ ization, moreover,

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 192 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF has formed a military network between twenty- nine North American and Eu- 1 ro pean nations under the “nuclear umbrella” of the United States. In other 2 words, American capacity to insert itself into other national sites is not due 3 exclusively to its nuclear and military arsenal, or what we may call hard power. 4 Equally impor tant is soft power, or the cultural capacity to attract and persuade, 5 to inspire emulation and adherence in others through ideological vision, cul- 6 tural institutions, and politi cal ideals.3 The strategic combination of hard and 7 soft powers is what has made the United States the paradigmatic model of an 8 exceptional nation- state, a charismatic hegemon that has sustained its buoy- 9 ant sovereignty through a kind of stealth imperialism. 10 11 12 Zonal Technologies 13 The most impor tant legacy of Pax Americana is East Asia, a region that has 14 rapidly developed under the American nuclear umbrella to achieve sustained 15 growth. From Asian tiger economies to rising China, Asian nation- states have 16 become the world’s manufacturing center of gravity and attained a high level 17 of technological prowess. The focus on developing civil rather than military 18 infrastructures has protected national autonomy and fast- tracked cap i tal ist 19 growth. A hallmark of Asian tiger economies has been their deliberate frag- 20 mentation of national territory into zones, which are then linked to global 21 fows of capital and technology. 22 The zoning of spaces is a distinctive Asian take on the governance of 23 people, spaces, and resources. Indeed, one may say that “vital security systems” 24 as evolved in Asia are less focused on securing normative conditions of mod- 25 ern life than on securing the critical spaces and connectivities that prop up 26 sovereign power.4 States learned that by carving out spaces of exception—for 27 manufacturing, investment, and shared governance— within a national terri- 28 tory, capitalism could be enhanced at strategic points and further reinforced 29 by tactfully calculated infrastructural connections. I have argued that the de- 30 liberate fragmentation of the national territory into zones has generated po- 31 liti cal efects of “graduated sovereignty” as sovereign power becomes unevenly 32 distributed across the land.5 As it advances beyond the nation’s terra frma, 33 this refexive sovereign practice of subdividing state space into a series of zones 34 has increasingly taken on volumetric heft. 35 Below, I juxtapose the dif er ent approaches taken by Singapore and 36 China— two ambitious Asian countries— seeking to materialize sovereign 37 buoyancy through infrastructural prowess, rather than military might, by 38 zoning the oceans as inclusive elements of a sovereign topology.6 Two kinds 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 193 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 of challenges accompany a maritime thrust: the technological capacity to con- 2 trol watery spaces and resources, and the legal limits set by the international 3 maritime regime. This essay explores how the zonal manipulation of land- sea- 4 air interfaces can buoy sovereign power. A tiny nation delimited by its island 5 geography grows into a sea state, and a continental nation deploys zonal tech- 6 nologies in extraterritorial space. The question is whet her state buoyancy can 7 be sustained through the exercise of sheer material power, or whether soft 8 power is a necessary ingredient. 9 10 Buoy 11 12 At the Venice Biennale, 2015, the Singapore Pavilion hosted the exhibition SEA 13 STATE by Singapore-born artist Charles Lim Yi Yong. A former Olympic sailor, 14 Lim devised a method of spinning his sailboat in the water and repeatedly dip- 15 ping himself into the sea, thus performing the recursive pro cess of land- sea inter- 16 changeability that has become state policy. The SEA STATE exhibition has since re- 17 turned home to Singapore where it was mounted at the Center for Contemp orary 18 Art, Nanyang Technological University. When I visited on July 2016, Charles Lim 19 showed of a gigantic buoy he had retrieved from the seafoor. Planted like the 20 head of Neptune in the center of the room, the buoy’s pervasive odor of the ocean 21 washed over the exhibition. Charles noted that it did not take long for the aban- 22 doned buoy to be heavi ly encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. This manmade 23 object has been transformed into the property of the ocean. 24 Digital videos on multiple screens track Lim’s peregrinations in Singapore’s 25 surrounding sea, his recorded per for mances describing the elastic notion of 26 the state. We see Lim in his boat spinning in and out of the water. He also 27 prowls underwater caves, traces the seabed, and follows the “sandman,” a semi- 28 legal man- boat operation that pillages unguarded wat ers. He boards a survey 29 ship that engages in “sand search” by identifying rock formations, which dot 30 these waters’ surface like tiny islands. These outcroppings exist in a grey zone 31 of overlapping and ambiguous sovereignty and are considered “uncontrolled,” 32 since the neighboring countries of Malaysia and Indonesia have been unable 33 to patrol them. Like ghostly sentinels for pirates, the islets menace gigantic oil 34 tankers as they plow through the narrow Straits of Malacca en route to China. 35 To the sandman, each and every isle, harvested and pulverized, is a potential 36 source of sands to be sucked up and transported by barge to Singapore, where 37 demand for landfll is ongoing. As a constant search for sea sand physically 38 augments the island nation, the land/sea boundary is the conceptual support 39 for an emerging entity Lim calls “sea state.”

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 194 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF Justly famous for its cramped and expensive real estate, Singapore is 1 thrusting above and below the sea level. The displacement of dirt and garbage 2 can bulk up islets, build beaches, and carve under ground caverns. A landfll 3 built the beach resort on Sentosa Island. Currently, the national environmen- 4 tal agency is converting one islet, Pulau Semakau, into the world’s frst ecologi- 5 cal ofshore landfll. Two rocky points are linked by solid garbage pro cessed to 6 be sanitary and supportive of rare plant, bird, and fsh species, covering a zone 7 of 350 hectares. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to most citizens, the state has been 8 diging a gigantic tunnel system a hundred feet under neath the Singapore Is- 9 land; the Jurong Rock Caverns now store 126 million gallons of crude oil to be 10 further refned for export. 11 Besides building up and diging down, volumetric sovereignty involves 12 managing watery resources from the sky and the ocean. As an island nation 13 of few natu ral resources, Singapore has devised dif er ent ways to ride the tide. 14 Drinking water has long been delivered by pipes from neighboring Malaysia 15 and Indonesia. Seeking water in de pen dence, the government has developed 16 water technology to capture seasonal monsoon rains and channel runof wat er 17 through a purifying system of fltrations. Besides reservoirs, the cleaned-up 18 Singapore River remains a last resort source of potentially potable water.7 Even 19 the undrinkable ocean is having its waters rethought as an aqueous prop for 20 the lateral extension of space: there are plans to foat solar panels on the seas 21 surrounding Singapore. Both by claiming the water, sunlight, and rock from 22 the ocean’s surface as under its jurisdiction and by physically carving an un- 23 dersea demimonde of storage tunnels, this three- dimensional sovereignty bol- 24 sters its buoyancy in preparation for a perilous near future. 25 Sovereign territory includes a two- hundred- mile radius surrounding a 26 nation- state. In the sea state, the clarity of legal language muddles into the ma- 27 terial and politi cal interchangeability of land and wat er. Garbage turns from 28 waste into a valuable material for engineering this indistinction. Increasingly, 29 the surrounding ocean is being engineered as a technosphere that responds to 30 an expansion of sovereign anxiety and opportunistic resiliency. But increasingly 31 ferocious typhoons remind us that the relentless ocean easily washes away man- 32 made props to sovereign claims. A policy of land- sea interchangeability is thus 33 vulnerable to actual pro cesses of ceaseless land erosion. It raises the question of 34 whether the logic of sovereign territoriality can easily invest in watery spaces. 35 Impending threats due to climate change, considered alongside the peren- 36 nially volatile dynamics of weather in the tropics, have served as ideological 37 justifcation for swelling sovereign space. For instance, merely an ocean away, 38 the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal are gradually drowning, and the 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 195 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 population is shifting to the Indian mainland. According to Shabbir Hussain 2 Mustafa, a se nior curator at the National Gallery Singapore, the island state 3 has grown from 245 to 277 square miles through the steady reclamation of land. 4 While acknowledging the island’s anxiety amid changeable climatic and tropic 5 conditions, he fnds a po liti cal message in the exhibition: “In the SEA STATE, 6 the efects of erasure and residue are then a simultaneous re sis tance to and 7 ac cep tance of the tropics that demands constant renewal and replacement.”8 8 Con temporary Asian artists are invariably engaged in anticipatory politics, 9 projecting the homeland’s future as an entanglement of borders, knowledges, 10 and media.9 In Lim’s imagination, the geobody of Singapore is technologically 11 sustained in a fuid material environment: the island is re imagined both as a 12 buoy (the iconic item in the Lim exhibition) and as a human body likewise 13 learning to foat as a way to survive rough seas. The Venice Biennale becomes 14 an international soft power venue, a platform publicizing the story of a tiny 15 but nimble island’s metamorphosis into a supple sea state. 16 17 Blue Territorialization 18 19 I use the term blue territorialization to describe the delineation of special zones 20 on the sea and in the sky as a nation- state fexes its muscles beyond its own 21 territorial limits. Adapting the concept from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guat- 22 tari, I note that territorialization connotes the pro cessual operation of de- and 23 reterritorializations, in which prior fows of politics, culture, and capital are 24 displaced and their forces reassembled as dif er ent (and often tentative) forma- 25 tions.10 As a state strategy, blue territorialization aims to subvert and push back 26 the prevailing legal—to mention the physical and the ecological—gov ernance 27 of the oceans. A 1982 United Nations convention established the law of the sea 28 that clearly defnes each country’s legal maritime bound aries. The compre- 29 hensive UN regime also lays down rules governing all uses of the oceans and 30 seas and their resources.11 As a rising power, China has begun to challenge the 31 maritime regime as its sovereign ambitions overfow both its spatial geography 32 and national territory. 33 In 2013, Chinese ofcials asserted that Admiral Zheng He’s historical 34 ffteenth- century voyages give credence to their current claims to sites in what 35 it calls the Southern Seas (Nanyang), or the South China Sea. On his seven 36 Ming voyages, Zheng He only promised to extend China’s favors to small king- 37 doms along his route but did not invade any land nor colonize native territo- 38 ries. But in contemp orary times, China’s rise has generated a reimagined sover- 39 eignty, one that challenges con temporary international laws binding national

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 196 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF territoriality. China’s expansive exercise in extending sovereignty advances by 1 claiming a variety of dif er ent zones abroad: economic, military, and fyover 2 zones in Southeast Asia. 3 Through its Maritime Silk Road initiative, China is establishing special 4 economic zones in nations adjacent to its southern border: Myanmar, Cam- 5 bodia, Laos, and Vietnam. For instance, in return for infusions of capital, 6 technology, and labor, the Viet nam ese government has given leases of ninety- 7 nine years to People’s Republic of China (PRC) investors to operate special 8 economic zones. From Vietnam to Myanmar, local protests have articulated 9 growing fears of long- term indebtedness to Chinese banks as China gains 10 local control over parts of their territories. Furthermore, in Cambodia and 11 Myanmar, Chinese- built casino resorts and plantations have replaced farm- 12 lands and displaced peasants. Dara Sakor, the bigest Silk Road proj ect so far, 13 is a $10 billion investment zone and port fa cil i ty on the Cambodian coast. 14 This forty- fve- hectare lease is beset by poor infrastructure and has failed to 15 attract tourism.12 I have argued elsewhere that the Silk Road, based on im- 16 proving rails, pipelines, and seaports, seeks to stitch dif er ent sites in South- 17 east Asia together into a logistical network that promotes Chinese trade and 18 control of the region on China’s periphery. But ther e have been bumps along 19 the Silk Road as the infux of Chinese developers, workers, students, and tour- 20 ists it facilitates has greatly disrupted rural livelihood, threatened local ecolo- 21 gies, and increased labor migration in addition to the trafcking of both sex 22 workers and wildlife.13 23 Besides establishing manufacturing zones abroad, China has also resorted 24 to military means for securing its economic and communications zones in 25 contested waters. In the last decade, China has made maritime claims to long- 26 contested islets in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea. Most atten- 27 tion has focused on the Paracels and the Spratlys, both of which lie just outside 28 the two- hundred- mile radius of Southeast Asian nation- states in international 29 waters of the South China Sea.14 A “nine- dash” line, traceable to the Ming 30 voyages, demarcates a region in which maritime claims by Vietnam, Malaysia, 31 Brunei, Taiwan, and the Philippines overlap. Con temporary Chinese state- 32 ments refer to its “indisputable sovereignty” (wuke zhengi zhuquan) over the 33 Spratly and Paracel Islands and a maritime zone encompassing the two island 34 clusters as well. In 2016, an international arbitration invalidated China’s island 35 claims and upheld the Philippines’ rights to exploit resources of its west coast 36 in the Scarborough Shoal. But this Eu ro pean upholding of the Philippines’ 37 legitimate maritime borders has been dismissed by Chinese authorities as they 38 solidify their claims by building the islands into garrison sites. 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 197 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 Indeed, China has thus embarked upon blue territorialization, a process of 2 technological and ecological manipulation of land- sea- sky interfaces.15 China 3 has dredged the contested islets and atolls and built military installations and 4 runways on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands and on Woody Island in the 5 Paracels. It is planning another militarized base in the Scarborough Shoal. 6 These sites are patrolled by armed boats and can deploy fghter jets to control 7 a strategic zone where $5 trillion in ship- borne trade passes every year. 8 Other Southeast Asian nations have protested China’s encroachments in 9 the South China Sea, but there is a sense of having to bow to the inevitability 10 of China’s will in controlling this strategic waterway. In addition, the reluctant 11 compliance of countries such as the Philippines is rewarded with billions in 12 economic aid in the near futur e. In 2017, some Southeast Asian nations and 13 China held joint naval drills in the contested waters that somehow eased ten- 14 sions in the area. By framing the island claims as a matter of unresolved territo- 15 rial dispute, China has played brinksmanship short of an all- out war. 16 Down the line, the disputed islands in the South China Sea may be drawn 17 into a massive transnational One Belt , One Road policy initiated and fnanced 18 by the Chinese state. In Southeast Asia, the Maritime Silk Road project will 19 strengthen connections from economic zones in the region to new port facili- 20 ties at Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean and Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden.16 This 21 infrastructural assemblage linking several ofshore zones greatly expands the 22 volumetric sovereignty of China’s blue territorializations, which threatens to 23 dislodge American overlordship of the region since World War II.17 24 Technological prowess has allowed China to take its island claims to new 25 depths. Earlier, in 2009, the Chinese had established a Center for Underwa- 26 ter Cultural Heritage to undertake a comprehensive survey of undersea sites 27 including in disputed areas. Marine archaeology dives beneath the waves to 28 collect artifacts and secure a contested ocean region against “illegal” underwa- 29 ter archaeology by outsiders. The head of the Underwater Cultural Heritage 30 Center states, “We want to fnd more evidence that can prove Chinese people 31 went there and lived there, historical evidence that can help prove China is the 32 sovereign owner of the South China Seas.”18 33 In a critical June 2018 meeting with the US defense secretary, President Xi 34 Jinping categorically declared, “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory 35 left behind by our ancestors. What is other people’s, we do not want at all.”19 36 From the PRC state perspective, the force of Chinese historical and archeologi- 37 cal claims overrides international maritime law. 38 Given that the South China Sea is a global crossroads, po liti cal contes- 39 tation over its territories will continue for a protracted time as major world

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 198 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF powers try to avoid open confict. Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander 1 of the US Pacifc Fleet, called the Chinese island fortifcations “a great wall of 2 sand.”20 Meanwhile, the United States occasionally sends warships to pass by 3 the contested islands, as a reminder of international law and order, which the 4 Chinese state has chosen to ignore. In response to China’s eforts to militarize 5 atolls in the South China Sea, the US military presence in northern Australia 6 has steadily increased since the Obama administration’s 2012 “pivot” to Asia, 7 which has resulted in a US- led multinational co ali tion’s rapid multibillion- 8 dollar buildup of airbases and naval operations in Darwin, Northern Australia. 9 In addition to American, Australian, and Asian allies mounting large- scale air 10 exercises and maritime operations ther e, Darwin is also the base of one of the 11 world’s most advanced long- range radar systems.21 12 The joint production of ocean and air zones, and of civilian and military 13 infrastructures, is an imperial strategy of overseas expansion. During the Cold 14 War, the containment of communism made the Pacifc Ocean the main arena 15 of American surveillance. American fghter jets and submarines routinely pa- 16 trol the region and gather intelligence on Soviet- Russian, North Korean, and 17 Chinese naval exercises and other activities. For over sixty years, American 18 warships and fghter jets established hegemonic control over the Pacifc, but 19 the PRC is now punching holes in this US- dominated Pacifc Rim. 20 In other words, China’s great wall of sand in the South China Sea is accom- 21 panied by a “ great wall in the sky” over the East China Sea.22 By 2013, aeronau- 22 tics development had allowed China to declare an Air Defense Identifcation 23 Zone (ADIZ) overlapping with the air defense spaces of Japan, South Kor ea, and 24 Taiwan. China’s new ADIZ is a direct challenge to ADIZs drawn in the region by 25 the US military after the Second World War. So far, China has avoided explicit 26 military enforcement of its reclaimed air defense space. The United States has 27 sent military aircrafts to fout China’s new rules, and China has not scrambled 28 jets to buzz them or threatened to shoot down foreign aircrafts. For now, the 29 PRC is only insisting on enforcing the zone as a space for air communications 30 navigation. Because the danger of air trafc miscommunication is very high, 31 the US government has advised American commercial airlines to send tran- 32 sponder signals. Many observers view this compliance as a step to ward the tacit 33 recognition of PRC’s sovereignty over that airspace even without ofcial rec- 34 ognition of the Chinese claim. Japan is especially worried as the overlapping 35 ADIZ enables China to extend surveillance to the Ryukyu island chain. In the 36 midst of rising tensions over a trade war between the Trump administration 37 and China, American military aircraft fying over the East China Sea are men- 38 aced by laser signals coming from fshing boats near the China coast. 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 199 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 Indeed, Pax Americana has provided lessons on the exercise of vertical sov- 2 ereign power. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States 3 frst engineered a new topology, connecting disparate and far-f ung zones and 4 enhancing its volumetric sovereignty over oceans and islands by fying high 5 and diving low. Chal mers Johnson has written cogently about Amer i ca’s as- 6 cendancy as built upon an extended empire underpinned by military garrisons 7 in sites all over the world.23 Pro- American observers would argue that the he- 8 gemon is a legitimate extraterritorial power as it has enforced the post– World 9 War II global order of liberal humanism and led a multilateral framework for 10 preserving a global commons. The American Empire also foats on values and 11 standards of liberal democracy and rules- based trade. There are, however, dis- 12 turbing signs that the contemp orary American administration is distracted 13 from a rules- based trade regime and from its commitments to preserving a 14 nuclear umbrella over East Asia as well. In this opening, China promises to 15 provide an economic umbrella that will seed zones overseas and promote the 16 rises of smaller nations, and not only in Asia. 17 China has learned deterritorializing moves from Ameri ca’s hyperpower 18 playbook, deploying its infrastructural prowess and hard currency to plant its 19 footprints overseas. A Made in China 2025 plan seeks to dominate the most 20 critical areas including aerospace, robotics, and artifcial intelligence, for 21 strengthening national autonomy and expansion abroad. Rising China mimics 22 earlier imperialist powers and the American Empire, mainly through the ofer 23 of technological and fnancial aid in rebuilding economies overseas. 24 Less developed, however, is a Chinese soft power equivalence to the Amer- 25 ican cultural appeal that can attract and persuade reluctant allies. China’s his- 26 tory of promoting its overseas infuence beyond infrastructure and capital is a 27 checkered one. Up until the end of the Vietnam War (1975), China professed 28 communist solidarity with socialist Asian nations. Since market reforms (early 29 1980s), postsocialist rhetoric has been steadily replaced by development- speak 30 and business diplomacy toward small countries in Southeast Asia.24 One out- 31 come has been China’s ofcial link with the trade-based Association of South- 32 east Asian Nations (ASEAN), as in ASEAN Plus One (China). Cultural diplomacy 33 drives state- funded Confucian Institutes to promote fa cil i ty in Chinese lan- 34 guage and familiarity with Chinese culture in many countries. The Silk Road 35 initiative adds to this the language of cosmopolitanism, highlighting historical 36 crosscontinental relationships based on trade, friendship, and multicultural- 37 ism. But China’s charm ofensive has been clumsy and constantly undercut by 38 the disruptive activities of Chinese businesses and tourism associated with the 39 Silk Road. Despite the “win- win” propositions of Chinese aid, these proj ects

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 200 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF have trampled over the rights, property, livelihood, workers, and mi grants in 1 host countries. The PRC has yet to develop ideological or cultural soft power 2 that is appealing to a wide swath of overseas nations and that is needed to 3 make it an uncontestable hegemon in the region. 4 5 6 Ambitious nations can engineer claims over extraterritorial zones, but they 7 need to foat values that can be shared across borders as well. Technological 8 innovations allow states to actively redraw the material bound aries between 9 their insides and the outsides as they proceed from drawing zones for enforc- 10 ing a “graduated sovereignty” on national terrain to the blue territorialization 11 of surrounding water and sky. The po liti cal tension and ambiguity generated 12 by heteromorphic states may encounter foreign military interventions that 13 seek to contain or defate the buoyancy of volumetric sovereignty. 14 This burgeoning space carved out by China’s state capitalism promises to 15 mold not only a new material topography but also a new global order of eco- 16 nomic liberalism, albeit stripped of liberal po liti cal rights. The PRC has been 17 eager to replace the cancelled US- led Trans Pacifc Partnership trade pact with 18 a so- called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that currently 19 lacks labor and environmental standards. China’s leadership of an alternate re- 20 gime of global free trade would be hard to sustain in the midst of the relentless 21 fows of capital, information, and actors worldwide. Corporations and NGOs 22 are shaping an emerging order of global governance that upholds the ideology 23 of human rights. Can China’s soft power, based on economic paternalism and 24 Confucianism, sustain its volumetric sovereign ambition? Blowback refers to 25 the unintended consequences of overseas operations,25 and sovereign buoy- 26 ancy can expect to be bufeted or even burst by natu ral and po liti cal forces 27 beyond state control. 28 29 30 31 NOTES 32 33 1 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: 34 Duke University Press, 1999). 35 2 Chal mers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Ameri- 36 can Empire Proj ect (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2004), 20. 37 3 Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in Global Politics, new ed. (New York: 38 PublicAfairs, 2005). 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 201 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 4 Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakof, “Vital Systems Security: Refexive Biopolitics 2 and the Government of Emergency,” Theory, Culture and Society 32, no. 2 (2015): 19–51. 3 5 Aihwa Ong, “Zoning Technologies in East Asia,” in Neoliberalism as Exception, 4 97–120 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 6 Aihwa Ong, “The Chinese Maritime Silk Road: Re- Territorializing Politics in 5 Southeast Asia” (keynote address, International Conventional of Asian Studies, 6 Chiangmai University, July 20, 2017). 7 7 Aihwa Ong, “Island- Nations,” in Patterned Ground, ed. Stephan Harrison, Steve 8 Pile, and Nigel Thrift (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 266–67. 9 8 Shabbir H. Mustafar, “— SEA STATE, Some Mea sure ments,” in SEA STATE, by 10 Charles Lim Yi Yong, 10–18 (NTU CCA Singapore, April 30– July 10, 2016, exhibi- 11 tion cata log). 9 Aihwa Ong, “What Marco Polo Forgot: Asian Art Negotiates the Global,” Current 12 Anthropolog 53, no. 4 (2012): 471–94. 13 10 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo phre- 14 nia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); 15 Stephen J. Collier and Aihwa Ong, “Global Assemblages, Anthropological Prob- 16 lems,” in Global Assemblages, ed. Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier, 3–21 (Malden, 17 MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2005). 18 11 Wikipedia, s.v., “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” last modifed October 5, 2019, 02:10, https:// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / United _ Nations 19 _ Convention _ on _ the _ Law _ of _ the _ Sea. 20 12 Brenda Goh and Prak Chan Thul, “In Cambodia, Stalled Chinese Casino Embod- 21 ies Secrecy, Risks,” Reuters World News, June 5, 2018, https:// www . reuters . com 22 / article / us - china - silkroad - cambodia - insight / in - cambodia - stalled - chinese - casino 23 - resort - embodies - silk - road - secrecy - risks - idUSKCN1J20HA. 24 13 The Maritime Silk Road initiative in Southeast Asia is a regional version of 25 China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road proj ect to build infrastructure in dozens of developing countries by extending both capital and expertise. See Ong, “Chi- 26 nese Maritime Silk Road.” 27 14 China also claims Diaoyu/Senkaku in the East China Sea. 28 15 Andrew Chubb, “China’s ‘Blue Territory’ and the Technosphere in Maritime 29 East Asia,” Technosphere Magazine, 2017, https:// technosphere - magazine . hkw 30 . de / p / Chinas - Blue - Territory - and - the - Technosphere - in - Maritime - East - Asia 31 - gihSRWtV8AmPTof2traWnA. 32 16 Ong, “Chinese Maritime Silk Road.” 17 Since the end of World War II, the United States has been a technological god 33 exercising vertical sovereign power. Especially since the containment of commu- 34 nism during the Cold War, the Pacifc is the main arena of American surveillance, 35 especially the northwestern region where rival powers converge. American fghter 36 jets and submarines routinely patrol the region and gather intelligence on Soviet- 37 Russian, North Korean, and Chinese naval exercises and other activities. The recent 38 Chinese declaration of identifcation zones and international communications in 39 the East and South China Seas are a direct challenge to this Pax Americana regime.

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 202 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 18 “China Takes Territorial Dispute to New Depths,” Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1 2013, A1, A16. 2 19 “China Won’t Yield Inch on Sea, Says President,” New York Times, June 28, 2018, A11. 3 20 “A ‘ Great Wall of Sand’ in the South China Sea,” Washington Post, April 8, 2015. 4 21 “Australia Strengthens Darwin’s Defenses,” Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2018, A16. 5 22 Jun Osawa, “China’s ADIZ over the East China Sea: A ‘ Great Wall in the Sky’?,” Brookings, December 17, 2013, https:// www . brookings . edu / opinions / chinas - adiz 6 - over - the - east - china - sea - a - great - wall - in - the - sky. 7 23 Johnson, Blowback, 15. 8 24 See, e.g., Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan, Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia (Seattle: 9 University of Washington Press, 2017). 10 25 Johnson, Blowback, 8. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

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218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 203 12/03/20 4:23 AM