Event Details

Dr Andrew Chubb is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and International Relations in PPR, and a Fellow of the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society. His research examines the intersection of China’s domestic politics and international relations, with a focus on public opinion and maritime and territorial disputes.

This talk offers a counterintuitive explanation for why tensions in the South China Sea have risen, not declined, in the UNCLOS era. The new international regime reconstituted China and its neighbours’ interests in jurisdiction at sea to produce harder, yet also more ambiguous claim. Tracing four representative cases of China’s new and assertive patterns of behaviour in the South China Sea in 2007–2008, it shows that, intertwined with rising material capabilities and resource insecurity, the new challenges and opportunities presented by the implementation of the legal regime were crucial drivers of Beijing’s policy shift on its maritime periphery. International law not only constrains confrontational state actions, but can also authorise, enable, and catalyse them.