Sovereignty and Territory: How the Cross-Taiwan Strait Sovereignty Dispute and the China Seas Territorial Disputes Interact

“New Imagined Geographies into Old Geobodies: Problems and Prospects for China and Taiwan in the South China Sea,” in Territory, Politics, Governance (2024)

“Three’s a Crowd: The Impact of Two Chinas on the China Seas Territorial Disputes,” in Security, Development and Sustainability in Asia: A World Scientific Reference on Major Policy and Development Issues of 21st Century Asia, vol. 1: Geopolitics, Security and Foreign Policy (2023), edited by Zhiqun Zhu

Who is China, and where is it? This project examines the interaction between the PRC-ROC sovereignty dispute and the East-South China Seas territorial disputes. “Three’s a Crowd” examines the history of the China Seas territorial disputes and argues that both Beijing’s and Taipei’s actions in previous crises were not simply reacting to third-party claimants, but were also influenced by and anticipatory of what the other “China” might do, even if the other side of the Taiwan Strait was not directly involved in a 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 considered as these various disputes develop.

“New Imagined Geographies” 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 South China Sea to justify an economy- and security-driven maritime focus, while the DPP is using that body of water to create a new maritime identity for a state divorced from a continental China.

IR at Sea: How International-Security Concepts Fare in the Maritime Environment, with Hyun-Binn Cho

“Muddied Waters: Freedom-of-Navigation Operations as Signals in the South China Sea,“ in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2025)

“Security in the Asia-Pacific and Signaling at Sea," in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (2023)

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. In this project, Hyun-Binn Cho and I examine how international-security concepts and assumptions long taken for granted fare in the Asia-Pacific’s maritime environment.

“Security in the Asia-Pacific and Signaling at Sea” demonstrates our basic argument through a consideration of signaling restraint, signaling resolve, and engaging in limited conflicts. Through these examples, we show how security concepts related to crises and signaling could operate differently in maritime environments relative to terrestrial environments. “Muddied Waters” focuses specifically on US FONOPs in the South China Sea, and examines them through a political—as opposed to legal—lens, analyzing whether and how they function not simply as impartial assertions of international law, but as politically charged tools of coercion.