This book offers an assessment of China’s assertive foreign policy behavior with a special focus on Chinese policies in the South China Sea (SCS). By providing a detailed account of the events in the SCS and by analyzing power dynamics in the region, it identifies the driving forces behind China’s assertive foreign policy. Considering China’s power on a domestic as well as an international level, it examines a number of different sources of hard and soft power, including military, economics, geopolitics, and domestic legitimacy. The author demonstrates that Chinese assertiveness in the SCS can be explained not only by increases in China’s power, but also by effective reactions to other actors’ foreign policy changes. The book will appeal to scholars in international relations, especially those interested in a better understanding of South China Sea developments, China’s political power and foreign policy, and East Asian international affairs.

This book analyzes two main trends of prevailing populism and nationalism in China and Southeast Asian nations and rising tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) by experts from China and Southeast Asia. The book involves the most recent developments and indicates future trends. This is the first book which goes deeply into the SCS dispute from the perspectives on populism and nationalism and thus highlighting their significance in Asian politics. The broad approach adopted in the book with focus on all important countries expands the scope of readership beyond specific academic community. The book interests academics, policy makers, journalists, general reader, and students of Asian politics. The main body of this book is divided into 8 parts, in which the first section briefly introduces the aims and scope of this book. The following 7 parts look at the new development of populism and nationalism in China and ASEAN claimant states and some important non-claimant states mainly including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, and its multiple effects on the SCS dispute.

The South China Sea has long been regarded as one of the most complex and challenging ocean-related maritime disputes in East Asia. Recently it has become the locus of disputes that have the potential of escalating into serious international conflicts. Historical mistrust, enduring territorial disputes, and competing maritime claims have combined to weaken an at least partially successful regional security structure. Issues of concern include territorial sovereignty; disputed claims to islands, rocks, and reefs; jurisdiction over territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, and the seabed; regional and international rights to use the seas for military purposes; maritime security; rapid economic development; and environmental degradation. The fear is that increasing competition for energy and other resources will exacerbate conflicts and further fuel nationalism and sovereignty issues in the region. The SCS has an integrated ecosystem and is one of the richest seas in the world in terms of marine flora and fauna: coral reefs, mangroves, sea-grass beds, fish, and plants. National economic security can be easily affected by conflicts occurring in major international trade routes like the SCS, or how such an unclear situation might even give rise to environmental challenges in the future. The book creates an understanding as to why this region is important not only to the claimants but to global powers like the United States and India. The book examines current and potential conflicts in the South China Sea, and also evaluates how conflicts have been “managed” to date and suggests as to how they might be better managed in the future. This book concludes with recommendations for improving the situation in the region by ensuring a strong economic relationships, using high-resolution observation satellites, and undertaking joint development, and resource exploration etc.

Located in the center of Asia with one of the largest land frontiers in the world and 14 neighbors whose dispositions could not easily be predicted, China has long been obsessed with security. In this handbook, an internationally renowned team of contributors provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of contemporary thinking about Chinese national security. Chapters cover the PRC's historical, ideological and doctrinal heritage related to security, its security arrangements and policies targeting key regions and nations of the world, the security aspects of the PRC's ground, air, sea, space and cyber forces, as well as the changing and expanding definition and scope of China's security theory and practice.

Security and Conflict in East Asia provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the sources and implications of conflict on the Korean peninsula and in the People’s Republic of China and Japan, the three biggest economies in the world. This analysis provides the building blocks for effective solutions to manage these tensions more effectively, and is a vital resource to those seeking a clearer understanding of conflict in the most pivotal region in the world. In the context of increasingly tense China-US strategic rivalry, the ever-present potential for conflict on the Korean peninsula and over Taiwan, the absence of effective regional institutions and regimes, the emerging arms race in the region, the rise in nationalism and the absence of crisis management mechanisms, there are many good reasons why the high potential exists for miscalculation and misperception sparking a regional conflict. Given the presence of nuclear-armed powers in East Asia, namely, China, North Korea and the USA, it is also possible that any regional conflict could escalate into a nuclear conflict involving the world’s three largest economies: the USA, China and Japan. The security of, and any conflict in, East Asia thus has tremendous implications for global security. The Handbook is divided into four parts. The introductory section includes chapters which set the context, explain the history of international relations in East Asia and examine the phenomenon of regional arms race. The second section is made up of a series of chapters focusing on China, examining China’s military modernization, its relationship with the USA and the various territorial disputes in which it has been involved. The third section focuses on Japan and North and South Korea, looking at the security challenges facing Japan and the Korean peninsula. A concluding section examines the future role of China and the USA in East Asia, as well as the prospects for managing security in the region. The contributing authors are all experts in their respective fields, and all share an abiding concern over developments in East Asia. Their contributions aim to assist in a better understanding of the issues, to suggest possible solutions, and draw attention to the need for diplomacy, confidence-building measures, crisis management mechanisms and other measures to prevent conflict. This volume will be of use to government institutions involved in foreign policy, intelligence and defence, reference libraries, universities, research institutes, and non-governmental organisations. It will also appeal to analysts, researchers, journalists, policy advisers, students, academics and the general reader. Scholarly analysis is yet to catch up and currently there are no other comprehensive works examining conflict in East Asia in the context of the current tensions.

The South China Sea is a major strategic waterway for trade and oil shipments to Japan, Korea as well as southern China. It has been the focus of a maritime dispute which has continued now for over six decades, with competing claims from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei. Recently China has become more assertive in pressing its claims – harassing Vietnamese fishing vessels and seizing reefs in the Philippine claim zone. China has insisted that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over the area and has threatened to enforce its claim. All of this is unsettling and draws in the United States which is concerned about freedom of navigation in the area. The US has been supporting the Philippines and has been developing security ties with Vietnam as a check upon China. This book examines the conflict potential of the current dispute, it discusses how the main claimants and the United States view the issue, and assesses the prospects for a resolution of the problem.

Zusammenfassung: This book investigates India-ASEAN partnership and their overlapping perspective on the Indo-Pacific region and big powers' contestation and competition in this region providing specific nuances and newer insights. It is policy-oriented and examines the confluence of ASEAN's Outlook for Indo-Pacific (AOIP) and India's Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI). It brings out various contemporary geopolitical drivers that highlight the hidden complementarities and gaps in India-ASEAN multi-sectoral connectivity and its future. The book provides a balanced assessment of evolving trends, undergirded by theoretical debates and empirical analyses with diverse sub-regional and country perspectives of the intersection between the potential for regional convergence, domestic capacity issues, and security interests. It is thus of immense use for thinktanks and media commentators, policy makers, and researchers of Indo-Pacific & Asian affairs, international relations, and China-US relations, interested in evolving contours of Indo-Pacific geopolitics. Swaran Singh is a professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). He is president of Association of Asia Scholars, director India for Washington-based The Millennium Project's South Asia Foresight Network, Fellow of Canadian Global Affairs Institute (Calgary), Member of Governing Body of Society of Indian Ocean Studies (New Delhi) and formerly visiting professor in department of political science, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Australian National University (Canberra), Science Po (Bordeaux), University of the Philippines (Manila) and several other universities across China and other parts of Asia. He has supervised 40 PhDs and 50 MPhil degrees and sits on various selection committee and editorial/advisory boards of prestigious journals. He is a well published author and regularly for CGTN and other radio and television discussion. Reena Marwah is a professor in Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University. She is the recipient of several national and international fellowships including the McNamara Fellowship of the World Bank, Asia fellowship of the Asian Scholarship Foundation and the ICSSR Senior Fellowship. She has been a Consultant for the World Bank and UN Women. She is the founding editor of Millennial Asia, a quarterly Scopus journal on Asian Studies of the Association of Asia Scholars. She has published over twenty books and several research papers and articles in national and international journals

This lucid assessment of the historical and contemporary determinants of Sino-American relations, now comprehensively updated, explains the conflicted engagement between the two governments. Offering a welcome richness of discussion and analysis, distinguished analyst Robert G. Sutter explores the twists and turns of the relationship over the past two hundred years. The mixed historical record convincingly shows that strong differences and mutual suspicions persist, only partly overridden by a mutual pragmatism that shifts with circumstances. As the only book on the subject that combines a unified assessment of the historical evolution, contemporary status, and likely prospects of U.S.-Chinese relations, this balanced and pragmatic study will be an essential resource for all concerned with the globe's most crucial bilateral partnership.

Science, Technology, and New Challenges to Ocean Law offers fresh perspectives on a set of vital issues in the field of ocean law and policy. Since the early period of the industrial revolution, successive waves of revolutionary scientific discoveries and technological innovations have intensified the global population’s exploitation of ocean and coastal resources. In this volume, several leading authorities in the field address major dimensions of the interface of science, technology and ocean law—both historically and in current-day perspective—and emergent challenges in legal ordering of ocean uses for sustainability and equitability. Among the topics that are analysed in these readable, accessible papers are ecosystem approaches to resource management, the historic interplay of science and military concerns, the place of science in dispute-settlement processes, the varied human uses of the seabed, the roles in ocean governance of indigenous peoples, legal issues in fisheries management and conservation, and special regional problems of the Arctic, the Bering Strait, the South China Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean. The urgent importance of the subjects addressed here, together with the variety of disciplinary approaches deployed by the authors, enhance the value of this book’s unique contribution to the literature of ocean studies.

This edited volume examines contemporary diplomatic, economic, and security competition between China and Japan in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on their respective foreign policies under President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and regional security dynamics within and between Asian states/institutions.