Min Gyo Koo is an assistant professor at Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University.

The Troubled Waters of East Asia

East Asia is home to many of the world’s most vexing maritime disputes. The diplomatic spat in fall 2010 between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea proves the point that any mishandling of maritime issues can hijack the subtle balance of power and interests in the region. Equally divisive are matters in the South China Sea, where China’s growing assertiveness provokes not only its Southeast Asian neighbors but also the United States, which has thus far provided maritime stability for East Asia, but is increasingly challenged by China. Other examples of unresolved island disputes include competing sovereignty claims to the Dokdo Islands in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, the Northern Territories/Kurile Islands in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, and the islands of Sipadan, Sebatik, and Ligitan in the Celebes Sea, all of which have served as the most persistent and explosive bones of contention among littoral states in the region.

The complex balance of power and interests in this region does not allow for a single pacesetter. South Korea has longed for a balancer role among its giant neighbors with only limited success. Despite a certain degree of institutional resilience and adaptability, the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has shown structural limitations in dealing with maritime challenges. Japan has been seeking greater room for maneuver while relying on U.S. leaders to check China as a potential rival for regional hegemony. China’s increasingly assertive maritime policy has greatly alarmed many in the region. To make matters even more complicated, the United States has recently shown signs of reengagement in maritime Asia, departing from its earlier hands-off approach. As such, many analysts have warned that the volatile links between contested resource-rich maritime areas, high energy demand, and competing national identities could create a perfect storm for conflict in Asia.

China has feared being trapped in institutions not of its own making while seeking new terms of regional maritime order. China’s navy seems to be well prepared to go beyond its traditional role of coastal defense and engage in far-sea defense to protect its economic and strategic interests. After years of denials, Chinese officials have confirmed that they are close to deploying an aircraft carrier group within a few years. China is also developing a sophisticated submarine fleet that could be used to prevent foreign naval vessels from entering its strategic waters if a conflict took place in the region. Reportedly, the Chinese navy gets more than one-third of the overall Chinese military budget, reflecting the priority Beijing currently places on the navy as a backbone of national security.

Will the rise of China, combined with an altered U.S. engagement policy toward maritime Asia, further strain East Asian maritime stability, making any regional level of cooperation extremely difficult, if not impossible? To answer this question, recent maritime flare-ups can be analyzed in light of three major obstacles at sea. The rising maritime rivalry between the United States and China and its implications for the maritime stability of East Asia must also be considered. After that, a critical assessment of the future of the East Asian maritime order, which is currently caught between a rock and a hard place, will be possible.

Three Bones of Contention

East Asian maritime issue networks are multilayered and have stemmed from the three most prominent bones of contention: contested sovereignty over offshore islands, overlapping claims to exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and continental shelf boundaries, and resource development, particularly since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) came into force in 1994.

First, sovereignty disputes raise questions of national identity and pride, thereby feeding territorial nationalism. The enduring sovereignty disputes in East Asia can be characterized in various ways, but four features are particularly important: (1) despite the frequent resort to the past to justify contemporary claims to contested territory, most disputes originated in colonial times during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often exacerbated by the arbitrary map-making of colonial powers and exploited by postcolonial nationalists; (2) in contrast to other parts of the world, few disputes have been formally resolved, and very few target states, whose territorial claim is challenged by revisionist states, recognize the existence of disputes at all, preventing claimant countries from engaging in negotiations; (3) a periodic pattern exists in the iteration of disputes, repeating between initiation, escalation, and de-escalation, if not termination; and (4) nevertheless, recurring crises have rarely increased the levels of escalation and hostility beyond control.

Turning to the second parallel, the already complex maritime space has become much more complicated as the claimant states began ratifying the UNCLOS in the mid-1990s. Along with the widespread adoption of the UNCLOS, East Asian coastal states recognized that disputes that had once been limited to the sovereignty of disputed islands now included overlapping maritime jurisdictional claims over EEZs and continental shelves. In addition, the adoption of straight baselines for territorial seas and other maritime zones has made the already daunting task of delimiting maritime boundaries much more difficult. On top of this, there has been a constant tension between the “equidistance” approach and the “equitable” principle in the history of the law of the sea. The UNCLOS chose to avoid any clear reference to either principle, thus providing insufficient guidance for delimiting maritime boundaries. Indeed, boundary delimitation disputes may become as intractable as sovereignty disputes, because state elites are equally constrained by domestic players who hold veto power if the state elites pursue cooperative approaches to the former issues.

Finally, the existence of islands in the disputed areas complicates not only the task of delimiting maritime boundaries but also the issue of marine resource development, because “sovereignty” over disputed islands, if granted to the challenger state, would possibly enable the challenger state to claim “sovereign rights” over the continental shelves and EEZs near disputed islands. The energy-hungry coastal states in the region all eye the high potential for oil and gas deposits near disputed islands. They also rely on contested offshore areas to provide a large portion of their marine diets. It is notable that East Asian countries have been able (albeit sometimes only occasionally) to cooperate on maritime jurisdictional issues as well as joint development of resources by overcoming nationalist pressures. Yet the danger of conflict escalation looms particularly large during a global shortage of energy and marine resources.

Against the backdrop of fluid geopolitics and geoeconomics, a confluence of issues, including sovereignty disputes, undelimited maritime zones, fisheries, and offshore gas development in the region, has caused and escalated the latest maritime confrontations between China and its neighbors, including the Unites States. As popular sentiment between China and Japan has become more hostile, mutual grievances have been aired not only with regard to the disputed islands, but also against the exercise of sovereign rights in EEZs and continental shelves including China’s unilateral development of the Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea. China and Japan differ fundamentally on basic principles of boundary delimitation. Although there is no explicit mention of the Japanese median line concept in the UNCLOS, International Court of Justice delimitation decisions increasingly favor an equidistance line based on “relevant factors” such as the comparative lengths of the coastlines. In contrast, China points to the 1969 North Sea case, which argued that length of coastline and continental shelf are the most important factors in delimitation. Thus, in the Chinese view, in light of the UNCLOS’s emphasis on “justice,” delimitation should consider factors such as the length of the Chinese coastline and the natural prolongation of the continental shelf. China indeed views Japan’s median line as against the spirit of the UNCLOS because it was not only declared “unilaterally” but also divides the East China Sea in half.

In effect, the median line presented the most significant barrier to concluding the Consensus on Resource Development reached in June 2008 between China and Japan. Neither party could agree on where to locate the joint development zone (JDZ). From the Chinese perspective, it needed to be located beyond the median line, in the area of overlap. From the Japanese perspective, a JDZ should bisect the median line, since it represented the equidistance point between the two coastlines. In the end, China agreed to a JDZ that includes space on the Chinese side of the median line. While there is no doubt that this was integral to concluding the agreement, this concession drew severe criticism from hardliners within China and explains Beijing’s ambivalence in implementing the agreement...(Continued)

Acknowledgement

I appreciate helpful comments from Chaesung Chun, Seong-Ho Sheen, Ha-Jeong Kim, and Jina Kim.