LEGITIMACY AND THE MARITIME BORDER: CHINA'S LEGITIMATION STRATEGY IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Conflict Resolution

By

Drake M. Long, B.A.

Washington, DC April 22, 2020

Copyright 2020 by Drake M. Long All Rights Reserved

ii

LEGITIMACY AND THE MARITIME BORDER: CHINA'S LEGITIMATION STRATEGY IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Drake M. Long, B.A.

Thesis Advisor: Matthew Kroenig, Ph.D

ABSTRACT

Legitimacy, in constructivist international relations theory, is an asymmetric concept that can restrain or embolden rising powers. Sticking to foreign policy that is seen as illegitimate in the eyes of established norms will invite ‘hedging’ behavior and potentially the ire of the enforcers who maintain the current order, whereas acting with legitimacy eases the concern of established powers by convincing them a rising power does not plan to alter the world or regional order. However, legitimacy requires justifications for actions abroad as well as arguments tailored for a domestic audience at home. In the South China Sea, China has employed legal warfare alongside provocative military maneuvers and paramilitary activity within disputed waters. China has expansive claims with little basis in international law that threaten the security and territorial integrity of other states in Southeast Asia. However, rather than make it clear it plans on replacing the regional order governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China employs a host of legal scholars, institutions, and actors to continually refine arguments couched in international law that legitimize its actions. These arguments are prolific, both within and outside China, and are communicated clearly at international fora and to the international community.

iii

The research and writing of this thesis is dedicated to family and friends who encouraged me, committee members and faculty members of the program that taught me, and the numerous coworkers and mentors who trained me.

Many thanks, Drake Long

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

NATIONAL REJUVENATION ...... 3

CHINA’S LEGITIMACY STRUGGLE...... 12

DOMESTIC SOURCES OF LEGITIMACY ...... 15

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA IN CHINA’S GRAND STRATEGY ...... 24

LEGAL ARGUMENTS ON THE SOUTH CHINA SEA ...... 28

DISPUTING UNCLOS AND THE PERMANENT COURT OF ARBITRATION ...... 31

DELEGITIMIZING UNCLOS ...... 36

CO-OPTING INTERNATIONAL FORA ...... 41

CONCLUSION ...... 44

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 47

v INTRODUCTION

Foreign policy requires legitimacy.

Ian Hurd defines ‘legitimacy’ in international relations as the normative belief that a rule or institute must be obeyed.1 It is an asymmetric concept to an actor’s actual capacity or military power, because to look illegitimate could invite the ire of ‘enforcers’ in the international system, to act illegitimate feels wrong or dangerous to the actor themselves, and acting legitimately is assumed to be in a state’s best interest. In these manners, legitimacy shapes actor behavior. It runs extremely counter to the treatment of material power as the sole basis for decision-making in the international system.

To legitimize its foreign policy, an actor is strategic, and must be social, interacting with other actors and the system around them. An actor’s legitimacy imparts meaning to what political action they take, which makes that action easier or harder for other actors to accept. Legitimacy is inherently contested, as domestic elites use legitimacy against one another for political power, and a state actor employs legitimacy even in disputes. Finally, legitimacy is a matter of rhetoric, and the power of rhetoric has always come through contentious dialogue with other actors that will sharpen and strengthen the original actor’s argument.2

1 Hurd, Ian. “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics.” International Organization 53, no.2 (April 1, 1999): 379–408. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081899550913. 2 Goddard, Stacie E., and Ronald R. Krebs. “Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy.” Security Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.1001198.

1 Without legitimacy, an actor will be seen as irrational at best or be demonized at worst, complicating its ability to accomplish any foreign policy goals in the face of stiff resistance from other actors.

The purpose of this paper is to treat modern China’s strategy in the South China

Sea under the lens of legitimacy: whether China cares about legitimizing its actions in the

South China Sea, how China could be legitimizing its South China Sea strategy, and what the effectiveness of this legitimation strategy is. The South China Sea represents the convergence of scholarship on borderlands and constructivism; it is simultaneously resource-poor, uninhabited, and far-flung from the centers of power of any country. Yet a policy of weakness in the South China Sea is treated as a threat to the territorial integrity of claimant states, most especially China, and the history of the South China Sea as well as its strategic importance has been almost wholly fabricated from nothing by actors competing to have their wide-ranging claims over its waters and features look more credible.

For China, foreign policy goals in the South China Sea are twofold: (1) the South

China Sea is key to China’s ability to become a maritime great power, and (2) it will help fulfill China’s grand strategy, of achieving ‘National Rejuvenation.’3 These are closely interrelated, as China argues maritime great power status is a precondition to ‘National

Rejuvenation,’ but the South China Sea features in both of them for wholly different, non-related reasons. Fundamentally, maritime great power status requires legitimizing aggressive or revanchist actions to China’s neighbors, whereas ‘National Rejuvenation’ is

3 Numerous official documents state this. For example, see “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” from the State Council Information Office, April 2013.

2 contingent on legitimizing China’s actions to itself – the population of Chinese citizens and elites within China’s borders.

As research shows, China is legitimizing its actions in the South China Sea through numerous legal warfare tactics: advancing legal arguments that appeal to the international law community, advancing legal arguments to discredit the United Nations

Convention on the Law of the Sea using the language of anti-colonialism, and co-opting international fora. All of these tactics coincide with and benefit China’s effort to change facts on the ground through human habitation and resource exploration. These construct ever-higher stakes to justify an aggressive posture in the South China Sea to China’s neighbors and for China’s domestic audience.

First, some key parts of China’s grand strategy have to be explained.

NATIONAL REJUVENATION

China is simultaneously a rising power and geographically situated on the site of a former hegemonic empire whose traditions it lays claim to. Reconciling these two identities has been an ongoing project for the People’s Republic of China’s new leadership, as General-Secretary Xi Jinping articulates in his vision for National

Rejuvenation. This is the clearest blueprint for China’s grand strategy currently available.

Xi Jinping laid out the concept of National Rejuvenation in his October 18, 2017 speech at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China:

National rejuvenation has been the greatest dream of the Chinese people since

modern times began. At its founding, the Communist Party of China made

realizing Communism its highest ideal and its ultimate goal, and shouldered the

3 historic mission of national rejuvenation. In pursuing this goal, the Party has

united the Chinese people and led them through arduous struggles to epic

accomplishments…

Our Party was deeply aware that, to achieve national rejuvenation, it was critical

to topple the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-

capitalism that were oppressing the Chinese people, and realize China’s

independence, the people’s liberation, national reunification, and social stability.

Our Party united the people and led them in embarking on the right revolutionary

path, using rural areas to encircle the cities and seizing state power with military

force…

Maintaining lasting prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and Macao and

achieving China’s full reunification are essential to realizing national

rejuvenation. We must ensure both the central government’s overall jurisdiction

over the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and a high degree

of autonomy in the two regions. We should ensure that the principle of “one

country, two systems” remains unchanged, is unwaveringly upheld, and in

practice is not bent or distorted. We must uphold the one-China principle and the

1992 Consensus, promote the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations,

deepen economic cooperation and cultural exchange between the two sides of the

Straits, and encourage fellow Chinese on both sides to oppose all separatist

activities and work together to realize Chinese national rejuvenation.4

4 The full text of the speech can be found online here: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/2017-11/03/c_136725942.htm

4

The speech as a whole makes it clear the ‘China dream’ and National Rejuvenation are the same thing – a restoration of China’s great power status in the world after years of tumult and humiliation. According to Xi Jinping, the prerequisites for such a return requires the complete reunification of China with outlying territories, increased diplomatic ties with other major powers, a world-class military, economic prosperity, and ideological conformity.

Read differently, this speech is also a blueprint for achieving great power status.

The South China Sea plays prominently in this, as Xi Jinping laid out years prior in a work report on China’s ocean policy in 2013. In that document, the prototype of current state policy on the South China Sea can be found. Xi ties a number of aspects – marine scientific development, coastal defense, and marine ecology – to sovereignty, and furthermore clarifies that full control and sovereignty over China’s maritime claims is a requirement before it can become a ‘maritime power.’5 This wide-ranging definition of sovereignty – encompassing resources and human geography over maritime territory- put the South China Sea in the same realm as other ‘core interests’ of China whose autonomy is perceived to threaten territorial integrity, such as Taiwan and the Tibet region. There is plenty of evidence that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) picked up on this treatment of the South China Sea and planned accordingly, considering the defense of

South China Sea islets and waters as a paramount patriotic duty and a key part of China’s

5 Xi Jinping. “进一步关心海洋认识海洋经略海洋 推动海洋强国建设不断取得新成 就.” People’s Daily, August 1, 2013. http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2013/0801/c64094- 22402107.html

5 maritime strategy.6 ‘Full reunification,’ as Xi Jinping thus puts it in his 2017 speech, includes the parts of the South China Sea within the nine-dash line. This is contrary to how other states view maritime borders, and lends credence to Nicola di Cosmo’s theory that China does not distinguish significantly between its land and sea borders.7 Broadly,

PLAN officers and maritime strategists perceive the South China Sea’s bases to have strategic value for China’s armed forces and their ability to project power past the First

Island Chain in the Pacific. There is also a rhetorical focus on eliminating imperialism and treating China’s past disinterest in the South China Sea as the result of weakness, tied to foreign powers and China’s feudal system (with heavy emphasis on the Qing Dynasty, and not so much any other dynasty). Multiple sources show China views these territorial issues as a matter of correcting an injustice, reversing the ‘century of humiliation’ that loosened its grip on these areas in the first place.8 9

Other aspects of the speech focus on what Bukovansky would describe as sources of domestic legitimacy that enable political elites like Xi Jinping to carry out their mandates.10 In this speech’s case, Chinese Communist Party supremacy and ideological

6 Yi, Yan. “坚定不移地维护国家海洋权益,” China Ocean News, May 4, 2012. http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2012-07/02/content_25787513.htm 7 See: Di Cosmo, Nicola. Military Culture in Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009.

8 Zhao, Jiandong. “海监队员热议李克强总理政府工作报告.” China Ocean News, March 14, 2014. http://www.mnr.gov.cn/zt/hy/gylh/hyzy/201403/t20140314_2113003.html 9 “Interpreting the Concept of Ocean Defense.” People’s Liberation Army Navy Birthplace Memorial Foundation. July 21, 2018. http://www.hjdsd.com/news/Show.asp?id=362

10 Bukovansky, Mlada. Legitimacy and Power Politics the American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002., n.d.

6 rigidity are necessary for domestic legitimacy, as the Party’s method of governing and the justification of its actions abroad and at home can only be accepted if China’s domestic audience believes it to be appropriate under the guiding ideology of the state. This is a continuation of Xi Jinping’s 2013 speech which laid out the threat of insufficient ideology to future governance. This concept was later put into much briefer form with the infamous ‘Document No. 9’ spread among CCP cadres, which highlighted the threat of

Western values to China’s stability and the importance of crafting a state ideology based on Marxism that would be more resilient to influence from democratic countries and delegitimize domestic corruption.11

In the case of the 2017 speech, Xi lays out historical grievances that need to be compensated, and describes relentless capacity building in both the commercial, diplomatic, and military realms as an ‘aspiration’ for the Chinese people – a guiding ideology – that can only be overseen by the Party. References to territorial integrity abound, and ubiquitous mentions of the ‘century of humiliation’ China suffered at the hands of European countries makes it clear that China’s leadership has set its long-passed apogee of status as an benchmark to aim for.

The National Rejuvenation is thus heavily steeped in a sense of a long-lost historical China, and refers to the grandeur of the imperial Chinese dynasties without pining for their political systems. What the ‘old’ model of China looks like has less to do with the historical reality and more to do with a constructed idea of how China used to

11 Greer, Tanner. “Xi Jinping in Translation: China’s Guiding Ideology.” Palladium Magazine (blog), May 31, 2019. https://palladiummag.com/2019/05/31/xi-jinping-in- translation-chinas-guiding-ideology/.

7 function, and how a newly-founded state occupying the same geographic space as that

China should be able to function and interact with its neighborhood. In this case, National

Rejuvenation seeks to assert China as a hegemon.

Understanding how and why China filled the historical role of hegemon in East

Asia is difficult. There were substantial variations in the nature of China’s influence over time, but the contours of China’s ‘authoritative relationship’ with its neighbors is best qualified by the hierarchy that emerged when China was at its peak. The tributary relationship between China’s various dynasties such as the Ming and neighboring states involved overtly symbolic or substantive ‘gifts’ exchanged in an effort at either mutual recognition or a recognition that was decidedly more one-sided in favor of China.12 There is also the slightly more difficult-to-quantify idea of Chinese culture as a sought-after commodity in itself for China’s neighbors. In some cases the combination of a dynasty’s wealth and culture invited invasion by certain steppe groups like the Khitan Liao and the

Manchus, who then assimilated into eastern Han Chinese society as a purposeful governance strategy.13 According to some, China as a hegemonic great power should be understood not only as the centerpiece civilization of East Asia for centuries, but also the holder of the longest period of hegemonic influence in all of human history.14 This is a unique characteristic that no other civilization has or likely ever will hold. Conventional

12 Chong, Alan. “Premodern Southeast Asia as a Guide to International Relations Between Peoples: Prowess and Prestige in ‘Intersocietal Relations’ in the Sejarah Melayu.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37, no. 2 (May 2012): 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375412444809. 13 Wittfogel, Karl August, and Feng, Jiasheng. 1949. History of Chinese Society: Liao, 907-1125. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. 14 See, for an example of this argument: Jacques, M. 2009. When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane).

8 wisdom dictates China’s current rise would herald a reassertion of the traditional authoritative relationship from the early modern era and before.

However, expectation has not aligned with reality. China in the Asia-Pacific of today is notable for having few allies. Despite considerable effort on the part of China’s leadership to project a benevolent image, Asia-Pacific countries have an increasingly distrustful view of China. Territorial conflicts, Beijing’s use of ‘sharp’ power, and

Beijing’s intransigence toward multilateralism self-defeat those initiatives meant to sow goodwill and foster cooperation.15 While there is serious appreciation of China’s historical authoritative regional presence within China, Beijing is frustrated in trying to assert regional leadership where there are multiple contenders.16 Japan and South Korea are both rich countries with a strong diplomatic presence globally, as well as regionally in

Asia, to name a couple. The United States, unaccounted for throughout most of Chinese history, is an interlocutor in the Asia-Pacific that gives smaller countries a counterweight to counteract Chinese influence with. The United States, due to a combination of its economic influence and its alliances in the Asia-Pacific, most clearly competes with

China’s claim to leadership. Regardless of a perceived decline in U.S. influence, the multipolar nature of the Asia-Pacific region is evident. Rather than busying itself with reestablishing the hegemonic, tributary relationship of its golden age, China is instead

15 Fravel, M. Taylor “Things Fall Apart: Maritime Disputes and China’s Regional Diplomacy,” in Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, eds., China’s Challenges: The Road Ahead (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) 16 Beeson, Mark. “Multilateralism in East Asia: Less than the Sum of Its Parts?” Global Summitry 2, no. 1 (June 2016): 54–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/global/guw007.

9 preoccupied with heading off ‘encagement’ by the U.S. alliance system and preventing far weaker countries from hedging against it. 17

This is not a novel problem, as far as rising powers are concerned. The actual politics of a great state’s ‘rise’ entail striking the right balance of relations between neighbors that will force them or encourage them to accommodate a great power, rather than confront the great power. China currently faces this problem in East Asia, as it tries to legitimize its reassertion of its historical grandeur.

For traditional realists, legitimation of a great power’s actions does not matter, and legitimacy as a concept in international relations is discarded. However, constructivists have made compelling arguments for the salience of legitimacy in international politics, and China’s actions affirm this approach.18 Legitimacy is conferred from following--or setting--norms, and these norms can set limits on what one state can accomplish, or at least hamper it in its actions.19 Legitimizing one’s actions will cause other states to accommodate them more readily, as opposed to encouraging them to mobilize against a perceived rising threat. Legitimacy is primarily communicative, chiefly to those states that raise the risk of collective mobilization against the rising power.20 On the other hand, legitimacy also has to be conveyed to the rising power’s

17 Chen Zhimin. "Embracing the Complexities in China-ROK Relations: A View from China." Asian Perspective 36, no. 2 (2012): 195-218. 18 Goddard, Stacie E. 2018. When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. P16-46. 19 Finnemore, Martha. “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity.” World Politics 61, no. 01 (January 2009): 58–85. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109000082. 20 Krebs, Ronald R., and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. “Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric.” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (March 2007): 35–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066107074284.

10 domestic audience, and in doing so the legitimation strategy can change from what the rising power would prefer.21 Nonetheless, the basis of this communication emphasizes existing norms and rules in the international system, casting the rising power as trying to fix or otherwise correct something unnatural. This can take the form of claiming legitimacy for actions by upholding existing norms or by revising existing rules.22 The process of earning legitimacy for its actions gives a certain state authority in the international arena that complicates other states’ efforts to form a balancing coalition or contest emerging norms.23For example, although U.S. foreign policy has a complicated history, its stated goal of democratization and championing liberalism within other countries has conferred special privilege to its actions, even when the result of them appears contradictory to these aims.24 The power gained from shaping norms also means other states throughout history have consistently pursued international legitimacy for domestic priorities and foreign policy goals.25

Legitimacy is what China lacks in a lot of its near-abroad diplomacy. China’s use of the rhetorical phrases ‘peaceful rise’ and ‘peaceful development’ were sound legitimation strategies for a certain stretch of its modern history, but its increasing heft in

21 Goddard, Stacie E., and Ronald R. Krebs. “Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy.” Security Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.1001198. 22 Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. Civilizing the Enemy : German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006., n.d. 23 Hurd, Ian. “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics.” International Organization 53, no. 2 (April 1, 1999): 379–408. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081899550913. 24 Ikenberry, G. John. Liberal Leviathan : The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011., n.d. 25 Bukovansky, Mlada. Legitimacy and Power Politics the American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002., n.d.

11 international affairs is beginning to require a new legitimation strategy.26 Despite China’s historical role, the China of today has extreme difficulty in justifying its foreign policy decisions to its neighborhood. Nonetheless, it still tries. The South China Sea provides a relevant example: China’s territorial claims along the nine-dash line were struck down in a special tribunal on the Law of the Sea convened after a legal battle with the Philippines in 2016. China ignored the ruling and continued with its island-building and maritime harassment campaign in disputed waters. However, rather than giving up on putting any veneer of legitimacy on illegal actions, China has engaged in a blitz of legal arguments pushing back against the tribunal’s ruling, publishing articles non-stop in international law journals while seeking to dominate or replace international bodies and international fora, all the while pushing bilateral negotiations with South China Sea claimants.27

CHINA’S LEGITIMACY STRUGGLE

There may be a temptation to disregard any possibility of China setting new global norms at all. The eventuality of a Chinese rise that is perfectly within the existing set of rules, and challenges nothing, is doubtful but plausible. However, China’s historical role in shaping the hierarchy of East Asia cannot be ignored, as it demonstrates

China held a far more authoritative role in its regional system than it enjoys today, thus giving a benchmark for the modern People’s Republic of China to be compared. It also shows the fragility of theories on norms and legitimacy that only focus on a narrow,

26 Buzan, B. “China in International Society: Is ‘Peaceful Rise’ Possible?” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2010): 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pop014. 27 Roach, J. Ashley. “Offshore Archipelagos Enclosed by Straight Baselines: An Excessive Claim?” Ocean Development & International Law 49, no. 2 (April 3, 2018): 176–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2018.1443420.

12 Euro-centric view of the international order. There could be, and have been, other systems that emphasize authority among states that also have nothing to do with and no inspiration from Westphalian countries.28

In addition, perhaps the best argument for the importance of the United Nations in the modern era is the usefulness China’s current government sees in it, investing in leadership of everything from peacekeeping operations to the technical bodies such as

ICAO. The United Nations is a unique forum for legitimacy in great power politics: contrary to the prevailing idea that the UN gives weaker countries the ability to punch-up at great powers, the UN empowers great state actions by constantly justifying and legitimizing great state actions as well as urging them towards multilateralism, no matter how sincere.29 The United Nations is integral to creating and shaping international norms.

Therefore, China should see the value in legitimacy, and research by Chinese scholars supports the idea that China would like to be seen as the legitimate, rightful hegemon of East Asia.30 But China is struggling to ascend to leadership, largely because, as the South China Sea example shows, it cannot resist some revisionism, upsetting the status quo. Some of its legitimation strategies in the near-abroad are weak and can’t overcome neighborly suspicion. Other legitimation strategies are blatantly counter-

28 Kang, D. C. “Authority and Legitimacy in International Relations: Evidence from Korean and Japanese Relations in Pre-Modern East Asia.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pos002.

29 Hurd, Ian. 2007. After Anarchy Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council . Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. 30 Zhang Yunlin And Tang Shiping. 2005. “China’s Regional Strategy.” In David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China And Asia’s New Dynamics. Berkeley: University Of California Press, pp.48-70.

13 productive, misunderstanding other states’ feelings and positions. Luttwak ignobly calls this China’s ‘great state autism.’31

Regardless of the reason, a lack of legitimacy encourages counterbalancing coalitions and a reassessment that is not in any great power’s interest.32 The reason for this is simple, and aptly explained by Stacie Goddard and Ronald Krebs: legitimacy is first and foremost the method of explaining a state’s grand strategy to a foreign audience.

Without even the veneer of legitimacy, no other states will accommodate the great power’s goals and find them threatening by default. A second-order purpose is for political elites to legitimate their vision of ‘the national interest’ to a domestic audience.

Absent legitimacy, elites’ argument for the national interest come off as mere excuses for grabbing power.

This is a current, constructivist way of looking at China’s involvement in the

South China Sea: a vast maritime domain with numerous economic and military applications, that is simultaneously a maritime borderland bereft of anything useful and a

‘core interest’ of China and its territorial ambition.

In a similar vein to how the United States legitimized its place in the international order through encouraging or coercing other countries to adopt its own institutions and see it as a model, China is slowly pushing its re-interpretation of the Law of the Sea.33

Through legal strategies laced with ambiguity and the substitution or takeover of

31 Luttwak, Edward. The Rise of China Vs. the Logic of Strategy. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2012. 32 Reus-Smit, Christian. “International Crises of Legitimacy.” International Politics 44, no. 2–3 (March 2007): 157–74. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800182. 33 Reus-Smit, Christian. American Power and World Order . Cambridge, UK ;: Polity Press, 2004., n.d.

14 international fora, China is convincing Southeast Asia that the United Nations

Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is contrived and frail, and putting in its place a China-led maritime order in the region.

DOMESTIC SOURCES OF LEGITIMACY

So, I said in a single statement, ‘Because China has performed better than all the

other Asian countries combined over the past three decades. It’s as simple as

that.’ And I added, ‘Behind this, of course, is what I call the China model. Let’s

compare the China model and the US model and see which model works better…

…China is the largest trading nation, with a $4.3 trillion total annual trade

volume, while having lifted 700 million people out of poverty. China is the first

developing country to realize, to achieve the United Nations Millennium

Development Goal (MDG), which means to halve poverty by the year 2010. China

did that a long time ago. And China also has the world’s largest foreign exchange

reserves, which means that China’s foreign exchange reserves alone are now

larger than the combined economies of the former Socialist countries, including

Russia, the Central Asian Republics, and the Eastern and Central European

countries—larger than their GDP put together, the foreign exchange reserves

alone.34

This excerpt is from a speech given by Zhang Weiwei, author of the 2012 book

The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State. Despite the brusque tone, his remarks are

34 Zhang Weiwei. Remarks at the German Schiller Institute. August 18, 2017. https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/eirv44n33-20170818/07-18_4433.pdf

15 nonetheless read as a response to the success of China’s economy up to this point and a push-back on the negative predictions of the future. What is most pertinent is Weiwei’s thesis about China as a ‘Civilizational State.’ Another person may call this a concept of

‘Chinese exceptionalism.’ In this particular interview, he went on to discuss weaknesses not only in the American economy, but in the American political system, and unfavorably compared it with that of China.

China’s place in the world will be determined by intellectuals like Zhang Weiwei, who are increasingly influential in the Xi Jinping era. Commentary and even policy flow from the thoughts of public and party intellectuals, mostly due to the centralized nature of

Beijing’s foreign policy-making (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has only a small role in setting policy) and this makes them a distinct network or interest group.35 Weiwei is not isolated; he is one member of a rich host of public intellectuals, who can be summed up as follows: the New Left, the Liberals, and the New Confucians.

They can be professors at C-9 universities, but more than that they are academics tackling a question China hasn’t dealt with in a long time: is there a place in China for national ideology? In Mao’s time, revolutionary socialism was easy-to-follow and enforceable. Since then, Deng Xiaoping is credited with removing ideology from

Communist Party governance, even going so far as to sideline Communist Party cadres in favor of government working groups.36

35 Beeson, Mark and Fujian Li. 2014. China’s regional relations: evolving foreign policy dynamics. Boulder: Lynne Riener. p185-191. 36 For more information, see Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China, by Ezra Vogel.

16 The current government under Xi Jinping has focused on ideology in a number of ways.

Perhaps the best known is the enshrinement of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with

Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’ into the Chinese Communist Party constitution, alongside the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi Jinping, in defiance of norms that usually favor former provincial Party-Secretaries, elevated Wang Huning to the Politburo Standing

Committee, the top decision-making government of the Communist Party, at the 19th

Party Congress. The Standing Committee is normally reserved for those with administrative experience at the city or provincial level. Wang Huning is currently the only Standing Committee member without this. Wang Huning is a professor and political theorist, formerly the Director of the CCP Policy Research Office and currently holding that title along with being the Head of Propaganda and Secretary-General for the Central

Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform. His writings on ‘neo- authoritarianism’ and its virtues are available to even an English-reading public. Wang

Huning’s elevation is another sign that certain political theories can get elites to take notice.

In 2013, Xi Jinping outlined challenges to China’s Communist Party in an internal memo called ‘Document No.9.’37 It is an aggressively anti-Western prescription.

Supposedly universal, liberal values are a threat to the Communist Party; a free press is a threat to the Communist Party; civil society is a threat to the Communist Party.

Everything that originated in a Western or American context is deemed inappropriate for

China, and inapplicable.

37 http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation

17 The key line in Document No.9 concerns the ‘ideological battlefield.’ It supports harsher internet censorship, more robust propaganda, all in the name of resisting namely

Western ideology. The sincerity of this sub-section is unknown; Xi Jinping’s own past work in the Communist Party heavily involved running or assisting party organs devoted to propaganda.38

The New Left, Liberals, and New Confucians are thus incentivized to engage in debate with one another on what exactly the Chinese exceptionalism that will counteract

Western ideology is. These circles express their viewpoints as writing groups in propaganda outlets, on online blogs, or by catching the ear of CCP officials.39 Pinning down the belief systems of each group is difficult, but the differences have become starker as each movement has matured.

The New Left, at its inception, was primarily concerned with social welfare and redistribution, according to Wang Shaoguang.40 Other clear ideas emerged with the rise of China’s economy during the Hu-Wen era, and the downsides of rapid economic development. Chiefly, the New Left believes market reforms have gone too far, and turned exploitative of China’s citizens.41 There is a fundamental notion within the New

38 Shambaugh, David. “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy.” The China Journal 57, no. 57 (January 1, 2007): 25–58. https://doi.org/10.1086/tcj.57.20066240. 39 Tsai, Wen-Hsuan, and Kao, Peng-Hsiang. “Secret Codes of Political Propaganda: The Unknown System of Writing Teams.” The China Quarterly 214, no. 214 (June 1, 2013): 394–410. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741013000362.

40 See: Wang, Shaoguang. The Political Economy of Uneven Development: The Case of China. Asia and the Pacific. Armonk, N.Y: MESharpe, 1999. 41 Hook, Leslie. “The Rise of China’s New Left.” Far Eastern Economic Review 170, no. 3 (April 1, 2007): 8–14. http://search.proquest.com/docview/208262188/.

18 Left movement that a rising economy, and rising centralization of control by the government, should lead to greater social provisions for China’s most underprivileged.

Many New Left intellectuals sharpen their rhetoric by invoking the plight of lower-class

Chinese citizens when discussing ideas and policy.42 However, while the original New

Left movement came about from a question on who shapes policy for China, chiefly whether it should be a centralized state or Chinese society as a whole, the New Left has splintered on the subject of statism. The idea of a strong central state providing more equitable distribution of goods has turned into a flexible defense of authoritarianism. The

New Left is the most vocal faction for advocating recognition of a ‘China model’ abroad and at-home, insisting China’s development into its current state happened completely separate from outside traditional economic wisdom, and thus China ‘state capitalism’ is not only a unique concept but a superior one. These two strains, put together contribute to the New Left’s aggressive posture abroad.43 Perhaps this is best exemplified by the fiery

Wang Hui, who rails against neoliberalism while worshipping China’s ruling party.44

Most members of the New Left were reformists and free-market liberals from the Deng era, who moved more radically towards Maoism as inequality worsened, and subsequently to statism after the Hu-Wen era.

42 Li, He. “Debating China’s Economic Reform: New Leftists Vs. Liberals.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 15, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366- 009-9092-4. 43 Freeman, Charles W., and Yuan, Wen Jin. “The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left.” The Washington Quarterly 35, no. 1 (February 1, 2012): 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2012.642293. 44 Wang Hui. “The Economy of a Rising China.” https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wang-hui-the-economy-of-rising- china.html

19 Liberals, in the China context, pursue an approach akin to what Kishore

Mahbubani ascribes for China in his book Has the West Lost It? China’s development could not happen without the West; therefore, some concepts of the West are worth integrating into the Chinese context. Some political ideas, ergo, can also be integrated.

This is an essential justification for ideas that are otherwise detested by the New Left and

New Confucians. One of the most prolific Liberals is Xu Jilin, who grapples with China’s traditional concept of tianxia and old religions like Confucianism and updates them for modern context.45 Liberals, however, are increasingly under attack due to their perceived support for free market economics and Western ideas. The term ‘Liberal’ itself is something of a misnomer—most acknowledge a spectrum exists between capitalism and socialism, paternalism and fraternity, and China benefits from moving on it where appropriate.46 Multiple economically-liberal academics have been run out of Chinese universities, and China’s few Liberal think-tanks are under siege.47 As of this writing, notable liberal Chinese intellectual Xu Zhangrun has been expelled from his position at

Tsinghua University due to his criticism of the government.

New Confucianism is perhaps the most well-developed, but factional, intellectual movement, traceable to academics like Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) and Tang Junyi (-

45 Xu Jilin. “The New Tianxia.” https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin- the-new-tianxia.html 46 Mulvad, Andreas Møller. “China’s Ideological Spectrum: a Two-Dimensional Model of Elite Intellectuals’ Visions.” Theory and Society 47, no. 5 (October 15, 2018): 635–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9326-6. 47 Buckley, Chris. “In Beijing, Doors Shut on a Bastion of Independent Ideas.” New York times. July 11, 2018. Web: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/world/asia/china-unirule-institute.html

20 1978).48 Its most moderate voices treat Confucianism mostly as a historical, theoretical inquiry, while the most extreme voices advocate a modern-day return to a Confucian scholar-official rule that is virtually impossible to achieve. This vast spectrum is attributable to the split between so-called ‘Mainland New Confucians,’ operating under a restrictive academic setting with different incentives from the overseas New Confucian community. Some of the overseas New Confucians, like Li Minghui, fundamentally disagree that this separation exists or ought to.49 Regardless, actual Mainland Confucians make themselves known by portraying themselves as radical Chinese cultural conservatives, focusing on the lack of traditional Confucian values and institutions in modern society and excoriating overseas New Confucians for bending on the importance of such.50 The question of how much Confucian tradition to inject into modern society is debated, but with the rise of China economically and globally some New Confucians believe the revival of Confucianism will naturally coincide with this. For some,

Confucianism is a way to confer legitimacy when the gap between leadership and society grows.51 Chen Yun, a New Confucian at East China Normal University, advocates for

Confucianism as the marker of Chinese civilization, one that would propel China onto the international arena as a great power. Not coincidentally, he also finds issue with the idea

48 Stephen C. Angle (2018) The Adolescence of Mainland New Confucianism,Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, 83- 99, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1549352 49 Li Minghui (2018) I Disapprove of the Phrase “Mainland New Confucianism”,Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, 100- 112, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496648 50 Zeng Yi & Fang Xudong (2018) “Hong Kong/Taiwan New Confucianism Affirms Too Little of Traditional Chinese Politics.” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, 113- 118,DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496647 51 Tang Wenming (2018) Welcoming a New Stage of Confucian Revival, Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, 129-138, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496642

21 of incorporating democracy with Confucianism, as some overseas New Confucians had done before him.52 There is some agreement with the New Left here on an idea of

Chinese exceptionalism, although for New Confucians it is derived from Confucianism as a unique historical, political, social philosophy that can contend against a Eurocentric view that has dominated global discourse for too long. The New Left, in contrast, sees

Chinese exceptionalism in a narrow interpretation of China’s economic development model. It’s worth noting that New Confucianism is derided as being ‘Confucianist-

Legalist’ by other Chinese intellectuals, since it echoes the New Left in being so explicitly statist that it seems to only exist to endorse authoritarianism.53

Between Liberals, the New Left, and the New Confucians, only the latter two groups seek legitimacy from China’s uniqueness, and strike an anti-Western tone. The

Liberals’ influence within Chinese policy appears to be waning. Certain episodes, like that of the Bo Xilai debacle, imply the New Left are more coherently able to organize themselves into a special interest group and rally around certain political elites.54 Yet at the same time, the New Confucians are a far larger and coherent community than both.

52 Chen Yun (2018) The Mainland Confucian Revival and Its Problems as Seen from the Perspective of “Civilizational Theory”, Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, 139- 150,DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496655 53 Ge Zhaoguang, “If Horses Had Wings : The Political Demands of Mainland New Confucians in Recent Years” 葛兆光, “异想天开：近年来大陆新儒学的政治诉 求,”originally published in the Taiwanese journal 思想 [Thought], no. 33 (2017): 241- 285 54 Bo Xilai was a former CCP Party-Secretary of Chongqing brought down on corruption charges after his wife allegedly murdered a foreign national. He actively cultivated connections with New Left intellectuals and used some of their rhetoric. See: Xiang, Lanxin. “The Bo Xilai Affair and China’s Future.” Survival 54, no. 3 (2012): 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2012.690979.

22 The current literature on legitimacy in international relations stresses the ability to create and maintain norms. Among China’s intellectual groups, the Liberals urge for some norms to be respected, mostly in the economic and rights’ sphere. The New Left, when prodded to consider foreign policy, maintains a state capitalism model based off

China’s experience should be the new norm, and look for examples elsewhere to confirm this bias. The New Confucians have the most robust literature on legitimacy, owing to

Confucian ideas of legitimacy, hierarchy, and authority that long predate the other intellectual movements. The New Confucian view of counteracting Eurocentric international governance would actually serve China well as a legitimation strategy, and unusually echoes the ‘Bandung spirit’ of revolutionary China during the Cold War.

In ten years’ time, Western and European governments will need to acknowledge that aside from the typical American or European universities, politicians and entrepreneurs from the global south will have been trained and studied at Chinese universities.55

Returning to the subject of China’s political philosophers and their appraisal of the ‘China dream,’ the crackdown on Liberals has led to an empowering of the New Left and New Confucians over them, and thus the idea of a unique ‘China model’ and its superiority is beginning to survive criticism as well. More than anywhere else, African

55 Victoria Breeze and Nathan Moore. “China Has Overtaken the US and UK as the Top Destination for Anglophone African Students.” Quartz Africa. Accessed April 26, 2020. https://qz.com/africa/1017926/china-has-overtaken-the-us-and-uk-as-the-top-destination- for-anglophone-african-students/.

23 statesmen are beginning to take some aspects of the China model to heart, as Ethiopia already has (and failed).56

The current attitude among Chinese leadership and intellectuals is that Chinese civilization, the ‘Civilizational State’ is something to be emulated. Xu Jilin’s New

Tianxia claims that Han Chinese great plains culture shaped and nurtured surrounding groups throughout history. This historical diffusion is, in his essay, a case for open borders and relaxed citizenship. The idea being that much like the Chinese dynasties of the past, modern China offers so much enrichment to foreigners that they begin to emulate the authoritative ruler. This is not meant to be a matter of racial superiority, although some readings of Chinese history present such a view.57

Under Xu Jilin’s writing, this new tianxia should be benevolent. However, at its core this concept implies the spread of China’s institutions outside of its borders, and presents a legitimate historical and philosophical direction for global governance. China’s understanding of global governance, as this paper will discuss further on, takes New

Tianxia into a fairly different direction than Liberals intended.

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA IN CHINA’S GRAND STRATEGY

China is an aspiring maritime power. The movement of economic primacy from the advanced economies of Europe to East and Southeast Asia has, for China, clarified its interests amid competing visions of what ‘National Rejuvenation’ means. Specifically, increasing dependence on maritime trade and China’s own dominance in that sector has pulled China from a continental vision of great power status to that of a seafaring one,

56 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/ethiopia-has-new-prime-minister-while- china-style-economics-continue.html 57 History of the Liao, Introduction. 1946.

24 with some caveats. The common analogues here are between a Mackinder and Mahanian way of thinking about geopolitics and the national interest. This debate is played out in

China most clearly between the armed forces: the People’s Liberation Army versus its

Navy, as well as its newly-upgraded Marine Corps counterpart. The competition for resources between military branches is an established way of seeing where the national interest and notions of security lay for a state, and in the case of China’s defense spending the resources are disproportionately flowing to the sea-based armed services. In addition, the services are competing for public respect and recruits as well, and in this sphere the People’s Liberation Army Air Force finds itself threatened by China’s growing naval aviation wing.

Another way to quantify China’s vision towards the sea is through the dissection of General-Secretary Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road policy into multiple visions, notably the Maritime Silk Road and the New Silk Road. If sea power is the cornerstone of a great power’s expeditionary ability, seaborne commerce is the way a great power connects to the world and becomes indispensable to its actors. The Maritime Silk Road is a policy in pursuit of the latter, whereas overland trade routes remain relatively small and negligible to China’s overall trade. China is also a dominant player in global shipping; of the top 10 busiest ports in the world, 7 are in China, including the top port overall

(Shanghai). China accounts for over 40% of trade volume moved by the top 50 ports in the world – a substantial percentage, given the European Union accounts for nearly 15% and the U.S. accounts for only 3.9% of world trade volume.58

58 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/visualizing-the-world-s-busiest-ports

25 In the specific case of China, the debate has less to do with Mackinder and Mahan than it does China’s own historical precedents. Generally, the apogee of China’s early modern imperial history coincided with one approach or another: the continental, or the maritime. The Ming Dynasty was known for its ‘treasure fleets,’ helmed by the famous eunuch Zheng He, that articulated China as a great power far beyond its shores and irrevocably changed the perception of China among littoral states in Southeast Asia. The

Ming Dynasty’s treasure fleets actually provides one of the most salient cases in

‘symbolic capital,’ as Paul Musgrave and Dan Nexon wrote.59 In their analysis, the ultimately costly Zheng He expeditions were not a matter of military or economic competition with neighbors, but an attempt to restore legitimacy to the Ming Dynasty’s place atop the hierarchy of its self-constructed world order – the ‘Sinocentric’ order. This use of massive naval expeditions and experiments in symbolic capital is especially relevant to any analysis on P.R.C. legitimacy in the South China Sea. Chinese statesmen today point to the ‘inward turn’ of the Ming Dynasty after the treasure fleet expeditions ended in 1433 as the reason Chinese civilization declined and suffered humiliation at the hands of Western powers and Japan, even though, technically, the treasure expeditions did not qualitatively achieve anything.60

In contrast to the Ming, the Qing Dynasty continued a tradition of Central Asian peoples periodically conquering the Chinese state. The Qing subsequently spread its

59 Musgrave, Paul, and Daniel H. Nexon. “Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War.” International Organization 72, no. 3 (ed 2018): 591–626. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000139. 60 Barr, Michael. “How Chinese Identify Politics Shapes Its Depictions of Europe.” Review of European Studies 4, no. 3 (2012): 45–53.

26 reach far westward to those areas most familiar to the traditional Central Asian empires and actors pre-Qing China frequently interacted with. The Chinese empire reached its largest territorial extent under the Qing, and this influences P.R.C. ideas about what a

‘reconstituted’ Chinese state looks like today. But the Qing was a land power, first and foremost, and its ultimate downfall came via repeated invasions from its vulnerable coast.

The British Empire and Japan proved the importance of sea power in the modern era through a succession of wars – the ‘Opium Wars’ in the case of Britain, and the Sino-

Japanese War for Japan. Yet it is also important to note the case of Taiwan – the Qing

Dynasty had unfinished business even after conquering the majority of the mainland of

China, over the Ming loyalists holding out on Taiwan. The bastion kingdom on the island maintained a veritable ‘pirate navy’ that the Qing failed to subdue for years. Taiwan would later be colonized by Japan after the Sino-Japanese War, putting into focus the vulnerability China faced from the ‘First Island Chain’ for the first time in the modern era.

Figure 1. “Nine exits that Beijing is aware of.” Source: Sankei Shimbun

27 Most analyses of the Qing Dynasty’s downfall point out its lack of attention to sea power. The dissension of the merchant class at key ports of commerce also played a role

(the First Opium War was instigated by dissatisfied traders in modern-day Guangdong province). Either way, the threat clearly came from the sea.61

Returning to the subject of the Ming, the modern conception of Chinese decline after the end of the treasure fleets would indicate a preoccupation with what China, writ large, did ‘wrong.’ In the case of the Ming, a return to an insular worldview and an unwillingness to engage with the outside world presaged the troubles that brought down the Qing years later. This is a simplified view, but Chinese theorists explicitly say this.62

LEGAL ARGUMENTS ON THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

The purpose of this paper is not to focus on the nine-dash line, China’s most prominent claim to the South China Sea. The nine-dash line is a claim to maritime territory that has no basis or precedent in international law, and has been modified since its original incarnation from 1947 multiple times, most recently in 2013.63 The nine-dash line is not based on the 200 nautical mile limit specified under UNCLOS that extends from land features. It is also not based on an extended continental shelf claim, or any other provision under UNCLOS. The nine-dash line is a claim advanced by China on the vaguely-defined basis of ‘historic rights,’ but since the dimensions of the nine-dash line have never been specified with full clarity as to what falls inside its bounds, there is no

61 See: Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age. First edition. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2018. 62 See: Peng, Guangqian, and Youzhi Yao. Science of Military Strategy. Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2005.

63https://web.archive.org/web/20130929225126/http://www.rusi.org/publications/newsbri ef/ref%3AA5225D72CD72F8/

28 practical use for it for other claimants in the South China Sea, who have to assume it is a sign China claims all the land features, underwater features, and water in the South China

Sea.64

Figure 2. China’s nine dash line as proscribed in 1947 by the Republic of China. The claim has been slightly modified since then.

64 Hoang, Thi Ha. From Declaration to Code Continuity and Change in China’s Engagement with ASEAN on the South China Sea. Trends in Southeast Asia, 2019, No. 5. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2019.

29 The most recent significant decision of international law on the South China Sea would be the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). This decision struck down the nine-dash line entirely, calling it a concept with no basis in law. The

PCA was tasked with interpreting China’s claims in the South China Sea versus that of the Philippines under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The decision went further than many scholars anticipated, striking down virtually every aspect of China’s claims in the area. The tribunal was notable for the legal victory it gave the Philippines, but also for China’s noncompliance: China refused to attend the tribunal and did not show up as a party to its proceedings.

China has maintained the tribunal’s ruling is invalid, asserting international law as a whole has no enforceability. However, even though this sets the expectation that the legal dimension of the South China Sea does not matter to China, China’s State Council also published an exhaustive, point-by-point refutation of the PCA’s jurisdiction before the tribunal ruling.65 These points are still a mainstay of China’s stance on the PCA ruling, arguing for its invalidity via rhetorically-sound legal arguments. What has happened since 2016 is a flurry of more complicated legal arguments deployed in

Chinese and international academic journals, continuing to press claims in the South

China Sea and in most cases adopting the language of the legal profession and its perfectly valid (if flawed) legal arguments. Under a realist world-view, one would expect

China to just ignore the 2016 ruling outright. The building of artificial islands and militarization of those bases, in one interpretation, is pure power politics: China did it

65http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/press_briefing/2014/12/07/content_2814750204417 08.htm

30 because they could, and the constructed order of UNCLOS has no actual force to prevent it.

But that is not what is happening. China is trying to put a legal justification behind its extensive territory claims in the South China Sea , using state-run think tanks and universities, with arguments honed in the legal tradition of Western European countries and the U.S. Some of these arguments are exhaustingly comprehensive, showing an attention to detail in maritime law and the Law of the Sea in particular, but are almost always categorically refuted by other scholars later. The audience for these legal arguments is not just the non-Chinese speaking legal world, though: the same scholars writing them from the confines of Jilin or Haikou University are also blogging their arguments in a more digestible format to domestic audiences, and reiterating their arguments in international fora.

DISPUTING UNCLOS AND THE PERMANENT COURT OF ARBITRATION

A sample of legal arguments focuses on what counts as an ‘island’ under

UNCLOS, how China could draw exclusive economic zones out of the features in the

South China Sea it claims, and whether or not there is an ‘underwater cultural heritage’ for China in the South China Sea that allows it to claim the seabed – an argument with no precedence in UNCLOS.

These arguments come from legal scholars with perfectly acceptable credentials by international legal circle standards, and they are disseminated not only in academic law journals in China, but in international journals as well. Most of the prominent

Chinese legal scholars arguing for China’s claims in the South China Sea disseminate their work via micro-blogging sites, accruing a social media following that is unlike that

31 of international legal experts elsewhere in the world.66 The attention paid to these legal scholars could be chalked up to the nationalist nature of China’s social media scene, but is more likely tied into the veneration of the written word in educated Chinese circles, which is also responsible for China’s vibrant legal community. China maintains some 25 law schools – small compared to U.S. or European standards, but due to the nature of the

Chinese political system, most top-tier legal education is for the sake of trade law or international law, including treaty negotiations. Scholars championing China’s stance on the Law of the Sea or international law are mostly trained at European universities, completing a picture of a cosmopolitan legal sphere that acts more like a diplomatic profession.67 In the spirit of legitimacy, this would mean Chinese legal scholars have unique discursive power, able to use internationally-accepted arguments due to immersion and training even when advancing concepts wholly at odds with international law.

Furthermore, there are a number of state-run ‘think tanks’ that advance China’s arguments, even sending representatives to other policy institutions abroad to make the case for China’s claim to the entire South China Sea. These think tanks are modeled after

Western counterparts: the National Institute for South China Sea Studies at Hainan province publishes expert commentary explaining China’s position in a number of

66 Gou, Andrew. “南海案仲裁庭裁定‘白马非马’：基于‘划界例外’条款的分析.” WeChat Official Accounts Platform. Accessed April 21, 2020. 67 This is not to leave out regular lawyers working in criminal and administrative law in China. For an example of the path of an international law expert, see: Chen, Li. “A Network of Legal Transfer: The Public International Law Education of Zhu Qiwu under the Wings of Wang Tieya, Huang Zhengming and Humphrey Waldock.” Tijdschrift Voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d’Histoire Du Droit / The Legal History Review 86, no. 1–2 (June 27, 2018): 215–54.

32 outlets, and is run by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.68 China faced international pressure over its illegal activities in the South China Sea that had been monitored by a number of independent vessel-tracking outlets, and eventually Peking University created the South China Sea Probing Initiative, a vessel-tracking outlet focused mostly on exposing other claimant’s bad behavior, in 2019 as if to respond.69 China’s research bodies and scholars aimed at an international audience are ever-shifting, dynamic, and well-operated. There is significant overlap in the scholars between these institutions and those writing for a domestic audience, but the arguments shift in tone and adopt the veneer of work from U.S. or European research institutions in order to better communicate with counterparts. Nevertheless, arguments reserved for a Chinese- speaking audience are worth paying attention to.

One of China’s main contentions with the 2016 tribunal ruling is the lengths with which the tribunal’s panel went – it concretely defined the difference between islands and other features like low-tide elevations and rocks in the first, comprehensive treatment.

This had immense implications for territorial claims around the world, as an island generates a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (wherein a state has economic rights to that area), and other features do not. By harping on the tribunal’s ‘overreaching,’

China’s legal scholars and academics are actually appealing to other countries that would not wish to see the PCA’s ruling become enforceable law – Arctic countries, South Korea

68 One notable scholar at the NCSS is Wu Shicun: “Turbulence on the Horizon in the South China Sea?” East Asia Forum (blog), February 27, 2020. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/02/27/turbulence-on-the-horizon-in-the-south-china- sea/. 69 Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. “Prospects for the South China Sea in 2020,” February 14, 2020. https://amti.csis.org/prospects-for-the-south-china-sea-in-2020/.

33 and Japan, and virtually all Southeast Asian countries would lose out on their own

entitlements. The Chinese Society of International Law set the tone for this as soon as the

2016 ruling was out, and refined arguments further until there was a body of work

alleging excesses of the PCA’s ruling and the inadmissibility of its verdict.70 It is clear

large legal bodies and state white paper set out concepts that smaller legal scholars then

pick up on and elaborate.

The potential loss of entitlements explains, in part, why Southeast Asian states

have been reluctant to bring up the PCA ruling – although Vietnam, Malaysia, and the

Philippines did so in 2020. The three countries released a coordinated series of notes that

were, ostensibly, supposed to respond to Malaysia’s extended continental shelf claim that

same year to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

Instead, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines targeted their notes (which are usually

meant for the initial submitting state) at China’s territorial claims to the South China Sea.

Vietnam adopted the language of the 2016 PCA ruling quite clearly, noting that under

UNCLOS none of the low-tide elevations China claims should entitle an economic zone

despite China’s claims otherwise.

The path to making such an argument was perhaps made easier by the fact that

Vietnam does not occupy any low-tide elevations itself in the South China Sea. Still,

70雷筱璐. “评南海案历史性权利诉求的管辖权与可受理性裁决.” 江西社会科学 36, no. 03 (2016): 21–29.

34 legal arguments accusing the tribunal of overreach can resonate with other states

embroiled in disputes over otherwise unnoticeable features dotting the ocean.71

China has also continuously argued for new ways of measuring economic zones

that are entirely inconsistent with UNCLOS even while selectively adopting certain parts

of the body of legal work surrounding it. An example of this is the ‘straight baseline’

argument, wherein China tries to claim all the features in the South China Sea as

belonging to an archipelago. This would entitle it to draw a boundary between the

outermost points of each feature in the Paracels and Spratlys – not coincidentally, this

would encompass most of the South China Sea. However, the Paracels and Spratlys do

not count as archipelagos under international law. But the baseline provision in UNCLOS

was primarily a concession to archipelagic states like the Philippines and Indonesia

during the drafting of the convention– arguing too strongly against it may render those

states vulnerable to counter-arguments that endanger their claim to certain areas on their

periphery. Furthermore, the baseline standard was only concretely set in 2016 – in the

PCA tribunal’s ruling between China and the Philippines.

This is a savvy way of lifting parts of the tribunal’s ruling that could give China

more legal justification for its claims while appealing to other states that similarly want

legal evidence contradicting some of the PCA’s decisions – there are many potential

ways for states to claim basepoints and the baselines that connect them in ambiguous or

overreaching ways, all in an effort to maximize territory. China’s legal argument was for

71 See, for example, the maritime dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines: LENG, LEE YONG. “The Malaysian—Philippine Maritime Dispute.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 11, no. 1 (1989): 61–74.

35 the necessity of baselines enclosing ‘offshore archipelagos.’ Archipelagic states may claim baselines to connect their parts, but offshore archipelagos refer to continental states that may have groupings of islands off their coast. Legal evidence supports the idea that

China is not entitled to any offshore archipelagos in the South China Sea, but precedent has not been sufficiently set yet, and China could argue this point for years to come.72

This argument will need an entirely new legal treatment now that China has effectively

(unilaterally) grouped the Spratly and Paracel islands into two administrative districts.

DELEGITIMIZING UNCLOS

One other aspect of arguments like these is their call to ‘reinterpret’ or renegotiate

UNCLOS – this may seem bizarre when they argue on the basis of UNCLOS articles, but it’s actually calculated. Baseline enclosures create archipelagic seas, which, under

UNCLOS, can be transited unobstructed by civilian and military vessels operating continuously without stopping. China argues that this is a violation of sovereignty for maritime states, and paints it as a ‘Western’ intervention. This undermines the authenticity of the UNCLOS-led order in the Pacific.73

By ‘UNCLOS-led order,’ theorists point out the Pacific and Southeast Asia in particular is unique for how its maritime and littoral states depend on unobstructed trade for economic stability and political security. In the absence of a hegemon imposing order on the region, UNCLOS and its component concepts, even if certain states chafe at them,

72 Roach, J. Ashley. “Offshore Archipelagos Enclosed by Straight Baselines: An Excessive Claim?” Ocean Development & International Law 49, no. 2 (April 2018): 176–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2018.1443420. 73 匡增军, and 黄浩. “从南海仲裁案看‘南海行为准则’争端解决条款的制定——以《 联合国海洋法公约》第 281 条为视角.” 武大国际法评论 2, no. 01 (2018): 77–100.

36 are actually the most powerful ‘rule’ in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has a history of uniquely non-Western ‘worlds,’ constructed in ways that defy the European experience of pre-modern history.74 Geography plays a key role in this. For China, UNCLOS is incompatible with the previously stated approach to the South China Sea that China has, as it won’t accommodate the kind of territorial incorporation China believes is necessary to achieve its goals in the region. Tearing down UNCLOS is thus one desired end result of China’s strategy.75

Certain states would agree with China’s interpretation of UNCLOS as a Western- imposed idea, most notably the Philippines, which has expressed frustration at its inability to monitor all vessel traffic moving through its archipelagic seas.76 However, the basis for this claim, which wraps Chinese legal acuity up with a near-Maoist style rhetoric against perceived colonialism, is specious. Archipelagic seas were included into

UNCLOS only at the behest of Indonesia, who saw benefit in the concept for itself.77 It was not an easy concession to make on the behalf of other countries, who wanted to treat waterways between islands and islets as international waters.

74 For more on this, see: Acharya, Amitav. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds.” International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 4 (December 2014): 647–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12171. 75 For a longer explanation of how incompatible the established Law of the Sea is with China’s claims, see: Wu, Shicun, Mark J. Valencia, and Nong Hong. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the South China Sea. Contemporary Issues in the South China Sea. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2015. 76 Tordesillas, Ellen T. “Why the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Passage Bill Should Be Passed.” ABS-CBN News. Accessed April 21, 2020. https://news.abs- cbn.com/blogs/opinions/08/23/19/opinion-why-the-archipelagic-sea-lanes-passage-bill- should-be-passed. 77 Sodik, Dikdik Mohamad. “The Indonesian Legal Framework on Baselines, Archipelagic Passage, and Innocent Passage.” Ocean Development & International Law 43, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 330–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2012.726830.

37 UNCLOS has murkier parts within it that China exploits, including the untested approach to the seabed under the Convention’s terms. At the time UNCLOS was drafted, underwater features and landforms were impossible to map in a comprehensive enough way for states to make claims to them. The Commission on the Limits of the Continental

Shelf was established to provide technical guidance on these matters when technology allowed and a deadline for states to submit extended continental shelf claims was set for

2009.

China argues extended continental shelf claims are territorial claims akin to any other, despite the fact that UNCLOS is adamant that they are not.78 The seabed is not considered territory – a state has rights to economically exploit it if within 200 nautical miles of the coast or established through an uncontested, non-disputed extended continental shelf claim to the Commission. But China has repeatedly used arguments to

‘historic rights’ and underwater cultural heritage to claim it actually owns not just the land features above water that generate maritime economic zones, but also the waters of the South China Sea itself, and the seabed beneath the ocean.79

This does not have any backing in international law, but it is repeatedly advanced in legal arguments by China’s top legal scholars and the state itself, alongside other arguments more clearly adhering to UNCLOS’ text.80 China advances the argument to a

78 Shicun, Wu, and Nong Hong. “EXTENDED CONTINENTAL SHELF CLAIMS IN EAST ASIA: INTENSION FOR LEGAL CLARITY, POLITICAL DILEMMA IN REALITY.” The Journal of Defence and Security 3, no. 2 (2013): 151–II. 79 Jing, Yingying. “Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage in China: New Developments.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 25, no. 6 (2019): 756–764. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2017.1372753. 80 傅崐成, HUANG Yuxin, and ZENG Yan. “2016 南海仲裁案仲裁庭对中国南海历史 性权利的错误认定（上）.” 中华海洋法学评论, no. 03 (2019): 1–32.

38 right to the water and seabed by bringing up history: UNCLOS cannot accommodate the full spectrum of territorial claims, China says, because it does not respect historic rights and traditions. These traditions are unique to Asia (meaning East and Southeast Asia), and therefore there should be an Asian-led legal regime governing maritime territory in the region. Factually-dubious sources abound on how China administered the South

China Sea as an integral part of the Ming Dynasty during the early modern period.

Furthermore, the finding of relics dating back further on the ocean floor of the South

China Sea further justify China’s claims, in its own eyes, to having historical control of the area that must be respected.81

Into this mix of new types of claims, China periodically releases lists of names and locations of each feature in the South China Sea, trying to contextualize them in its history and founding goal of territorial unification. China released its last list of names for South China Sea features in 1983, and updated it in 2020. The names China picks for certain areas (‘Xisha’ for the Paracel Islands, ‘Zhongsha’ for Macclesfield Bank, and

‘Nansha’ for the Spratly Islands) are clearly attempts to add a ‘Chinese-ness’ quality to features that otherwise do not feature in Chinese history at all.82 Tremendous scholarship has shown that despite China’s claims to the South China Sea based on historical evidence, China’s dynasties did not consider features in the South China Sea to be a part of the empire, nor did they really know where or what all the features were. The modern- day claim to the South China Sea, as uncovered by Bill Hayton, is traceable to the

81 “Backgrounder: Archaeological Findings, Facts Prove Chinese People Owner of South China Sea Islands - China.Org.Cn.” Accessed April 21, 2020. http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2016-04/22/content_38306028.htm.

82 http://gi.mnr.gov.cn/202004/t20200419_2509115.html

39 Republican Period of rule in China – no earlier than 1934.83 Much of the names set out for various rocks and features in the sea during this period and repeated by China today are clearly phonetic transliterations of their English names – names that were mostly codified by European explorers passing through the area.

The most dangerous aspect of China’s newest claims is the focus on entirely submerged features in the South China Sea. By claiming exclusive economic zones and territorial waters around features that do not rise above the water even during low-tide,

China is signaling that it is beginning to treat the seabed functionally the same as land when it comes to territory. That has grave implications for marine research, stability in the South China Sea, and freedom of passage.

In summation, China’s legal arguments are almost always at odds with UNCLOS and the 2016 PCA ruling, but carefully designed to be unassailable by other claimants in the South China Sea. Fear of enforceable international law has made China’s complaints over the 2016 PCA ruling more legitimate in the eyes of countries like Malaysia and

Vietnam, who certainly don’t want to give up their own claims. However, those countries are beginning to advance elaborate, detailed legal arguments of their own that attack

China’s claims without endangering their own.84

China also advances arguments, like underwater cultural heritage and ‘historic rights,’ that invoke history and a sense of Asian exceptionalism. With little basis in

83 Hayton, Bill. “The Modern Creation of China’s South China Sea Claims.” Asian Affairs 49, no. 3 (July 3, 2018): 370–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2018.1487689. 84 Radio Free Asia. “Three ASEAN States Push Back on Beijing in South China Sea.” Accessed April 26, 2020. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/southchinasea- challenge-04152020152316.html.

40 international law, China resorts to calling the UNCLOS-led order ‘Western’ and incompatible with an Asian order, an argument that resonates with other states with a history of colonialism. If China were to reinterpret UNCLOS or renegotiate its terms on things like baseline enclosures and underwater rights, Southeast Asian states may actually find it within their interest, no matter how dubious, to go along just so their own arguments on the same grounds have more weight to them.

China is legitimizing its claims through weaponizing legal language, and calling out UNCLOS and the 2016 PCA ruling as illegitimate. TO advance these claims and expose other states to them, China has aggressively co-opted international fora.

CO-OPTING INTERNATIONAL FORA

China’s desire for friendlier forums to explain itself in is not a new foreign policy objective. As far back as the 1955 Bandung Conference, China’s diplomatic engagement with other countries has always been tinged with a yearning for a forum of its own to lead.85 In the modern day, China has gone to great lengths to show its presence at multilateral forums where the South China Sea issue inevitably comes up, including the

Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and at various meetings with ASEAN. The delegations are sizeable, and typically feature prominent elite officials in China’s Communist Party.

More importantly, China has significantly upped the number of international fora by creating its own – the Xiangshan Forum and Boao Forum stand out in particular. The former is explicitly designed to counter the dominance of the Shangri-La Dialogue as the

85 Gettig, Eric. “‘Trouble Ahead in Afro-Asia’: The United States, the Second Bandung Conference, and the Struggle for the Third World, 1964-1965.” Diplomatic History 39, no. 1 (2015): 126–56. https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dht133.

41 premier security summit in the Pacific. China frequently receives heavy criticism at the

Shangri-La Dialogue, whereas it is virtually feted at Xiangshan, and it has propagated major policy decisions to an international audience at Xiangshan that it would not be as confident stating elsewhere.86

Similarly, the Boao Forum is a ‘Davos of the Pacific,’ gathering together businessmen and politicians alike to discuss trade away from forums where China’s state- led capitalism comes under fire.

As mentioned previously in the paper, legitimacy requires discourse. An international forum and multilateral summits represent some of those most power methods for discourse a state has, as it lends the impression that small and large states can speak in equal measure. Relatedly, a state’s presence at international fora show it is communicative, with proves to other states it feels justified in its policy decisions and understands the need to justify them to other actors. This lessens the chance of being demonized or turned into a pariah state.87

For the South China Sea, the United Nations has always been a thorn in China’s side. The United Nations is a key generator of legitimacy, as middle powers especially confer great status on it, and the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, as

86 See Minister of National Defense Gen. Wei Fenghe’s speech at the opening of the 9th Xiangshan Forum in 2019: http://www.xiangshanforum.cn/speakingDetail_EN?code=gK1S2gSheg3DA708&session s=%E7%AC%AC%E4%B9%9D%E5%B1%8A%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E9%A6 %99%E5%B1%B1%E8%AE%BA%E5%9D%9B 87 Steffek, Jens. “The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach.” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 2 (June 2003): 249–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066103009002004.

42 well as the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) created to oversee it, keep striking down China’s claims in the region.88

China has countered this by controlling key functional agencies within the UN that deal with the South China Sea. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the

International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations Food and

Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) are just a few of the UN agencies where China holds immense sway, far more than other countries, and the latter two are controlled by Chinese secretaries China lobbied heavily for. The ISA is responsible for drafting the all- important Mining Code that will govern the highly destructive practice of strip-mining the seabed in the future. The ISA also controls the right to prospect for seabed minerals in international waters – it has granted 5 prospecting licenses to China, more than any other country.89 In addition, China is shaping the technical standards by which deep sea research and deep sea mining will be governed by, as Chinese state-owned enterprises train and make connections with other countries (and potential partners for exploration in their waters) through the ISA. The ISA itself does not have the capacity to educate and train developing countries on aspects of seabed governance, and so China has stepped in to fill the gap.90

ICAO, while unrelated to the seabed, has excluded Taiwan at China’s behest in recent years. This shows China’s influence in what is typically a functional agency with

88 “The South China Sea Arbitration | ASIL.” Accessed April 21, 2020. /insights/volume/20/issue/17/south-china-sea-arbitration. 89 “China Leads the Race to Exploit Deep Sea Minerals: U.N. Body.” Reuters, October 23, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mining-deepsea-idUSKBN1X213T. 90 China Metals Corporation is one such state-owned enterprise: https://www.isa.org.jm/training/china-minmetals-corporation-cmc-china

43 little political interference. Now, ICAO is caught between adhering to China’s wishes for a legitimately-recognized air identification zone over disputed areas and the ire of other countries ICAO ostensibly serves.91

China’s presence and interference in these fora could simply delegitimize them, turning these multilateral summits and agencies into vestigial limbs that other countries cease to acknowledge. That in itself strengthens China’s hand, though, as it is pursuing a dual-track approach to the South China Sea that entails delegitimizing international law as a whole if it cannot get its way using international law’s language. As UNCLOS is tied to the UN, steadily degrading the UN’s legitimacy in the eyes of other claimants would significantly bolster China’s case that an alternative to UNCLOS is necessary, or that

UNCLOS should be abolished entirely.

CONCLUSION

China believes in legitimacy.

Whether or not China believes its own actions as legitimate, it fully understands that at least in the South China Sea case there is a necessity of appearing legitimate. China considers the South China Sea central to its National Rejuvenation into a maritime great power, and especially to the country’s territorial integrity. This means China is caught between legitimacy-shattering irredentism and a nationalist posture urging on the armed forces, political elites, and citizenry to treat the South China Sea with a high amount of

91 Burke, Edmund J., and Astrid Stuth Cevallos. “In Line or Out of Order?: China’s Approach to ADIZ in Theory and Practice.” Product Page. RAND Corporation, 2017. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2055.html.

44 symbolic capital. Nevertheless, China has figured out three separate, yet related, legitimation tactics to help it achieve its goals.

The obscure legal arguments and ongoing lawfare over the South China Sea highlight just how much stock China puts into international law’s ability to justify actions. This is remarkable given China’s military heft – its coastguard easily outweighs most other South China Sea claimants’ navies. But legitimacy, as previously mentioned, is an asymmetric advantage. The threat of another lawsuit over the South China Sea keeps China’s bad behavior within low-risk parameters, simply because too many overt actions without a care for the UNCLOS-led order in the Pacific would make Southeast

Asia band against it. This is the ‘encagement’ China fears.

In such a scenario, legitimizing actions through international law and appeals to anti-imperial sentiment is rational. China advances scores of legal papers, opinions, amicus curiae, and research papers that underly its stance on the South China Sea, with the community of foreign policy professionals and legal scholars shifting dynamically to keep pace with policy papers put out by the government itself. This circle of South China

Sea ‘justifiers’ engage with international and regional audiences, putting forth legally sound arguments that nevertheless have to be rebutted time and time again.

At the same time as using UNCLOS and the 2016 PCA ruling to explain itself,

China advances arguments to discredit UNCLOS as well. Appealing to its deficiencies in areas like strict definitions of baselines, basepoints, and the meaning of archipelagic seas,

China can exploit other countries’ concerns over their dubious territorial claims – all other South China Sea claimants occupy or claim to occupy features that are not economically viable under the Law of the Sea. However, they press their cases less often.

45 Were China to be handed a decisive, binding loss on its territorial claims, that would also strike down the claims of states like Vietnam and Malaysia. This prevents a united front from forming among Southeast Asian states. Furthermore, China approaches the South

China Sea from a stance of territorial integrity and ‘historic rights,’ coded language that evokes anti-imperialism with regards to China’s recent history. These arguments are palatable to many Southeast Asian countries, themselves with revanchist ambitions or lingering issues from the brutal colonial period.

Finally, the chief communicative way China gets its points across is through international fora. By co-opting United Nations’ agencies and replacing a policy forum with its own alternative, China is placing itself at the center of global governance and the very order that created UNCLOS in the first place. This is a discursive approach that brings in other countries to China’s side, while sidelining other claimants and outside powers that would rebuke China’s arguments.

The effectiveness of all this is plain to see – China has avoided a nightmare hedging scenario. There is plenty of support by other states for China’s obstinate approach to the 2016 PCA ruling and the more stringent parts of UNCLOS.92 Southeast

Asian states remain committed to accepting China’s presence in the South China Sea, and are negotiating over a Code of Conduct with China even while it makes ever-expanding claims that threaten the peace and security of the region.

92 “Who Supports China in the South China Sea and Why.” Accessed April 26, 2020. https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/who-supports-china-in-the-south-china-sea-and-why/.

46 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acharya, Amitav. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds.” International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 4 (December 2014): 647–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12171. Angle, Stephen C. “The Adolescence of Mainland New Confucianism” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, (2018): 83-99, (2018) DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1549352 “Announcement of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Ministry of Civil Affairs on the Promulgation of Standard Names for Some Island Reefs and Seabed Geographic Entities in the South China Sea.” http://gi.mnr.gov.cn/202004/t20200419_2509115.html “Backgrounder: Archaeological Findings, Facts Prove Chinese People Owner of South China Sea Islands - China.Org.Cn.” Accessed April 21, 2020. http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2016-04/22/content_38306028.htm. Barr, Michael. “How Chinese Identity Politics Shapes Its Depictions of Europe.” Review of European Studies 4, no. 3 (2012): 45–53. Beeson, Mark. “Multilateralism in East Asia: Less than the Sum of Its Parts?” Global Summitry 2, no. 1 (June 2016): 54–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/global/guw007. Beeson, Mark and Fujian Li. 2014. China’s regional relations: evolving foreign policy dynamics. Boulder: Lynne Riener Buckley, Chris. “In Beijing, Doors Shut on a Bastion of Independent Ideas.” New York times. July 11, 2018. Web: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/world/asia/china-unirule-institute.html Bukovansky, Mlada. Legitimacy and Power Politics the American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002., n.d. Burke, Edmund J., and Astrid Stuth Cevallos. “In Line or Out of Order?: China’s Approach to ADIZ in Theory and Practice.” RAND Corporation, 2017. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2055.html. Buzan, B. “China in International Society: Is ‘Peaceful Rise’ Possible?” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2010): 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pop014. Chen, Li. “A Network of Legal Transfer: The Public International Law Education of Zhu Qiwu under the Wings of Wang Tieya, Huang Zhengming and Humphrey Waldock.” Tijdschrift Voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d’Histoire Du Droit / The Legal History Review 86, no. 1–2 (June 27, 2018): 215–54. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718190-08612P10. Chen, Yun. “The Mainland Confucian Revival and Its Problems as Seen from the Perspective of “Civilizational Theory,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, (2018): 139-150,DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496655 Chen, Zhimin. "Embracing the Complexities in China-ROK Relations: A View from China." Asian Perspective 36, no. 2 (2012): 195-218. ChinaFile. “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation,” November 8, 2013. https://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation.

47 “China Leads the Race to Exploit Deep Sea Minerals: U.N. Body.” Reuters, October 23, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mining-deepsea-idUSKBN1X213T. Chong, Alan. “Premodern Southeast Asia as a Guide to International Relations Between Peoples: Prowess and Prestige in ‘Intersocietal Relations’ in the Sejarah Melayu.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37, no. 2 (May 2012): 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0304375412444809. Clark, Ian. Legitimacy in International Society, n.d. Cooley, Alexander, and Daniel H. Nexon. “‘The Empire Will Compensate You’: The Structural Dynamics of the U.S. Overseas Basing Network.” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 04 (December 2013): 1034–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592713002818. Crabtree, Justina. “Ethiopia Has Just Seen ‘historic’ Political Change, While Its China- Inspired Economics Continue.” CNBC, April 6, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/ethiopia-has-new-prime-minister-while-china- style-economics-continue.html. Di Cosmo, Nicola. Military Culture in Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009. Finnemore, Martha. “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity.” World Politics 61, no. 01 (January 2009): 58–85. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109000082. Finnemore, Martha. The Purpose of Intervention Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003., n.d. Fravel, M. Taylor “Things Fall Apart: Maritime Disputes and China’s Regional Diplomacy,” in Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, eds., China’s Challenges: The Road Ahead (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) Freeman, Charles W., and Yuan, Wen Jin. “The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left.” The Washington Quarterly 35, no. 1 (February 1, 2012): 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2012.642293. Ge, Zhaoguang, “If Horses Had Wings : The Political Demands of Mainland New Confucians in Recent Years” 葛兆光, “异想天开：近年来大陆新儒学的政治诉 求,”originally published in the Taiwanese journal 思想 [Thought], no. 33 (2017): 241-285 Gelpi, Christopher. The Power of Legitimacy : Assessing the Role of Norms in Crisis Bargaining . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003., n.d. Gettig, Eric. “‘Trouble Ahead in Afro-Asia’: The United States, the Second Bandung Conference, and the Struggle for the Third World, 1964-1965.” Diplomatic History 39, no. 1 (2015): 126–56. https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dht133. Glaser, Daryl. “Does Hypocrisy Matter? The Case of US Foreign Policy.” Review of International Studies 32, no. 02 (April 2006): 251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210506007017. Goddard, Stacie E. 2018. When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order . Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Goddard, Stacie E., and Ronald R. Krebs. “Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy.” Security Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.1001198.

48 Goh, Evelyn. The Struggle for Order Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014., n.d. Gou, Andrew. “南海案仲裁庭裁定‘白马非马’：基于‘划界例外’条款的分析.” WeChat Official Accounts Platform. Accessed April 21, 2020. http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzAxOTM4OTYwNQ==&mid=400686007&i dx=1&sn=7ad05e870e044171eaeefe79d6106909&chksm=09d2967d3ea51f6b719 7a3e44d0a42680b3652a60467be5f87d9a8236c1b4b5f8a93883eb3b8#rd. Greer, Tanner. “Xi Jinping in Translation: China’s Guiding Ideology.” Palladium Magazine (blog), May 31, 2019. https://palladiummag.com/2019/05/31/xi- jinping-in-translation-chinas-guiding-ideology/. Hayton, Bill. “The Modern Creation of China’s South China Sea Claims.” Asian Affairs 49, no. 3 (July 3, 2018): 370-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2018.1487689. Hoang, Thi Ha. From Declaration to Code Continuity and Change in China’s Engagement with ASEAN on the South China Sea. Trends in Southeast Asia, 2019, No. 5. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2019. Hook, Leslie. “The Rise of China’s New Left.” Far Eastern Economic Review 170, no. 3 (April 1, 2007): 8–14. http://search.proquest.com/docview/208262188/. Hurd, Ian. “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics.” International Organization 53, no. 2 (April 1, 1999): 379–408. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081899550913. Ikenberry, G. John. Liberal Leviathan : The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011., n.d. “Interpreting the Concept of Ocean Defense.” People’s Liberation Army Navy Birthplace Memorial Foundation. July 21, 2018. http://www.hjdsd.com/news/Show.asp?id=362 Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. Civilizing the Enemy : German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006., n.d. Jacques, M. When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World. London: Allen Lane, 2009. Jing, Yingying. “Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage in China: New Developments.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 25, no. 6 (2019): 756– 764. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2017.1372753. Johnston, Alastair Iain. Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power. 1st ed. Routledge, 2005. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203979495. Kang, D. C. “Authority and Legitimacy in International Relations: Evidence from Korean and Japanese Relations in Pre-Modern East Asia.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pos002. Krebs, Ronald R., and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. “Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric.” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (March 2007): 35–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066107074284. Kydd, Andrew H. Trust and Mistrust in International Relations. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005., n.d. LENG, LEE YONG. “The Malaysian—Philippine Maritime Dispute.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 11, no. 1 (1989): 61–74.

49 Li, He. “Debating China’s Economic Reform: New Leftists Vs. Liberals.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 15, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-009-9092-4. Li Minghui. “I Disapprove of the Phrase “Mainland New Confucianism”, Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, (2018): 100-112, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496648 Luttwak, Edward. The Rise of China Vs. the Logic of Strategy. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2012. Mueller, John E. Peace, Prosperity, and Politics. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2000., n.d. Mulvad, Andreas Møller. “China’s Ideological Spectrum: a Two-Dimensional Model of Elite Intellectuals’ Visions.” Theory and Society 47, no. 5 (October 15, 2018): 635–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9326-6. Musgrave, Paul, and Daniel H. Nexon. “Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War.” International Organization 72, no. 3 (ed 2018): 591–626. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000139. Peng, Guangqian, and Youzhi Yao. Science of Military Strategy. Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2005. Pham, Mary. “Turbulence on the Horizon in the South China Sea?” East Asia Forum (blog), February 27, 2020. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/02/27/turbulence- on-the-horizon-in-the-south-china-sea/. Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age. First edition. New York: Alfred AKnopf, 2018. “Position Paper of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines.”http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/press_briefing/2014/12/07/content_2814 75020441708.htm Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. “Prospects for the South China Sea in 2020,” February 14, 2020. https://amti.csis.org/prospects-for-the-south-china-sea-in- 2020/. Reus-Smit, Christian. “International Crises of Legitimacy.” International Politics 44, no. 2–3 (March 2007): 157–74. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800182. Reus-Smit. Christian. American Power and World Order. Cambridge, UK ;: Polity Press, 2004., n.d. Reus-Smit, Christian. The Moral Purpose of the State : Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999., n.d. Roach, J. Ashley. “Offshore Archipelagos Enclosed by Straight Baselines: An Excessive Claim?” Ocean Development & International Law 49, no. 2 (April 2018): 176– 202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2018.1443420. Seabrooke, Leonard. “Legitimacy Gaps in the World Economy: Explaining the Sources of the IMF’s Legitimacy Crisis.” International Politics 44, no. 2–3 (March 2007): 250–68. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800187. Shambaugh, David. “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy.” The China Journal 57, no. 57 (January 1, 2007): 25–58. https://doi.org/10.1086/tcj.57.20066240.

50 Shicun, Wu, and Nong Hong. “EXTENDED CONTINENTAL SHELF CLAIMS IN EAST ASIA: INTENSION FOR LEGAL CLARITY, POLITICAL DILEMMA IN REALITY.” The Journal of Defence and Security 3, no. 2 (2013): 151–II. Sodik, Dikdik Mohamad. “The Indonesian Legal Framework on Baselines, Archipelagic Passage, and Innocent Passage.” Ocean Development & International Law 43, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 330–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2012.726830. Steffek, Jens. “The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach.” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 2 (June 2003): 249–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066103009002004. Stinchcombe, Arthur L. Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968. Tang Wenming. “Welcoming a New Stage of Confucian Revival,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, (2018): 129-138, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496642 “The South China Sea Arbitration | ASIL.” Accessed April 21, 2020. /insights/volume/20/issue/17/south-china-sea-arbitration. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Information Office. “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” April 2013. http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/08/23/content_2814749829 86506.htm. The Strategist. “China’s New Map: Just Another Dash?,” September 16, 2013. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/chinas-new-map-just-another-dash/. Tsai, Wen-Hsuan, and Kao, Peng-Hsiang. “Secret Codes of Political Propaganda: The Unknown System of Writing Teams.” The China Quarterly 214, no. 214 (June 1, 2013): 394–410. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741013000362. Radio Free Asia. “Three ASEAN States Push Back on Beijing in South China Sea.” Accessed April 26, 2020. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/southchinasea- challenge-04152020152316.html. Tordesillas, Ellen T. “OPINION: Why the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Passage Bill Should Be Passed.” ABS-CBN News. Accessed April 21, 2020. https://news.abs- cbn.com/blogs/opinions/08/23/19/opinion-why-the-archipelagic-sea-lanes- passage-bill-should-be-passed. Victoria Breeze and Nathan Moore. “China Has Overtaken the US and UK as the Top Destination for Anglophone African Students.” Quartz Africa. Accessed April 26, 2020. https://qz.com/africa/1017926/china-has-overtaken-the-us-and-uk-as-the- top-destination-for-anglophone-african-students/. Wang Hui. “The Economy of Rising China.” Accessed April 27, 2020. https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wang-hui-the-economy-of-rising- china.html. Wang, Shaoguang. The Political Economy of Uneven Development: The Case of China. Asia and the Pacific. Armonk, N.Y: MESharpe, 1999. Weldes, Jutta. “Constructing National Interests.” In Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Wei, Fenghe. Speech at the opening of the 9th Xiangshan Forum, 2019: http://www.xiangshanforum.cn/speakingDetail_EN?code=gK1S2gSheg3DA708

51 &sessions=%E7%AC%AC%E4%B9%9D%E5%B1%8A%E5%8C%97%E4%BA %AC%E9%A6%99%E5%B1%B1%E8%AE%BA%E5%9D%9B Wendt, Alexander. “Collective Identity Formation and the International State.” American Political Science Review 88, no. 02 (June 1994): 384–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/2944711. Wendt, Alexander E. “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory.” International Organization 41, no. 3 (1987): 335–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002081830002751X. “Who Supports China in the South China Sea and Why.” Accessed April 26, 2020. https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/who-supports-china-in-the-south-china-sea-and- why/. Wittfogel, Karl August, and Feng, Jiasheng. 1949. History of Chinese Society: Liao, 907- 1125. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. World Economic Forum. “Here Are the 20 Busiest Ports on the Planet.” Accessed April 27, 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/visualizing-the-world-s- busiest-ports/. Wu, Shicun, Mark J. Valencia, and Nong Hong. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the South China Sea. Contemporary Issues in the South China Sea. Farnham, Surrey, England ; Ashgate, 2015. Xiang, Lanxin. “The Bo Xilai Affair and China’s Future.” Survival 54, no. 3 (2012): 59– 68. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2012.690979. Xi, Jinping. “进一步关心海洋认识海洋经略海洋 推动海洋强国建设不断取得新成 就.” People’s Daily, August 1, 2013. http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2013/0801/c64094-22402107.html Xu, Jilin, “The New Tianxia.’” Accessed April 27, 2020. https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin-the-new-tianxia.html. Yi, Yan. “坚定不移地维护国家海洋权益,” China Ocean News, May 4, 2012. http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2012-07/02/content_25787513.htm Zeng Yi & Fang Xudong. “Hong Kong/Taiwan New Confucianism Affirms Too Little of Traditional Chinese Politics.” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 49:2, (2018): 113- 118, DOI: 10.1080/10971467.2018.1496647 Zhang, Weiwei. Remarks at the German Schiller Institute. August 18, 2017. https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/eirv44n33-20170818/07-18_4433.pdf Zhao, Jiandong. “海监队员热议李克强总理政府工作报告.” China Ocean News, March 14, 2014. http://www.mnr.gov.cn/zt/hy/gylh/hyzy/201403/t20140314_2113003.html 傅崐成, HUANG Yuxin, and ZENG Yan. “2016南海仲裁案仲裁庭对中国南海历史性 权利的错误认定（上）.” 中华海洋法学评论, no. 03 (2019): 1–32. 匡增军, and 黄浩. “从南海仲裁案看‘南海行为准则’争端解决条款的制定——以《联 合国海洋法公约》第281条为视角.” 武大国际法评论 2, no. 01 (2018): 77–100.

52 张祖兴, and Zhang Zuxing. “评南海仲裁案仲裁庭对历史性权利相关问题的处理 - South China Sea Arbitration：A Critical Review of the Rulings by the Tribunal Concerning Historic Rights Claim.” 东南亚研究, no. 06 (2016): 45–55. 雷筱璐. “评南海案历史性权利诉求的管辖权与可受理性裁决.” 江西社会科学 36, no. 03 (2016): 21–29.

53