Sovereignty and Territory Project: The Cross-Taiwan Strait Sovereignty Dispute and the China Seas Territorial Disputes
Who is China, and where is it? Built on these basic questions, this project examines the interaction between the PRC-ROC sovereignty dispute and the East-South China Seas territorial disputes. One article in Territory, Politics, Governance argues that the China Seas claims have gained new importance in the twenty-first century, as both the PRC and the ROC evolve new imagined geographies of where their states are. This article answers two puzzles: 1) Why is China turning away from a millennia-old landward conception of itself? 2) Why does Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party embrace territorial claims that originate with its Kuomintang of China rival and that date to before the KMT even ruled Taiwan? Through an analysis of Beijing's and Taipei's respective South China Sea claims, I argue that China is using the SCS to justify an economy- and security-driven maritime focus, while the DPP is using the SCS to create a new maritime identity for a state divorced from mainland China.
A second, forthcoming piece examines the history of those territorial disputes and argues that both Beijing’s and Taipei’s actions in China Seas crises are not simply directed at third-party claimants, but are also actions influenced by and anticipatory of what the other “China” might do, even if the other side of the Taiwan Strait is not directly involved in the specific crisis. I argue that this connection between the cross-strait sovereignty dispute and the territorial disputes better explains Chinese and Taiwanese behavior in the East and South China Seas and should be explicitly factored in for future scenarios.
Philippine Coast Guard vessel observes passing Chinese counterpart in South China Sea, March 2022. Associated Press, via Philippine Coast Guard
“Security in the Asia-Pacific and Signaling at Sea,” with Hyun-Binn Cho
Presentations: International Studies Association (2017), The George Washington University (2018), and University of Pennsylvania (2018).
The center of 21st-century international politics is shifting to the Asia-Pacific, a largely maritime environment. Yet the theories and concepts that International Relations has relied upon since the discipline’s founding have largely derived from the experiences of continental (and European) powers. How do IR ideas long taken for granted fare in the Asia-Pacific’s maritime environment? Hyun-Binn Cho and I examine the dynamics of crisis escalation and argue for a fundamental rethink in IR of how crises play out at sea.