A (Critical) Geopolitical Analysis

A (Critical) Geopolitical Analysis

of the Discourse of the People’s Republic of China Regarding the South China Sea

Dispute University of Amsterdam BSc Human Geography & Urban & Regional Planning Thesis Project Critical/Political/Cultural Geography Tim De Boer – 11057424 – [email protected] Dr. Patrick Weir / Dr. Aslan Zorlu 18 June 2018 / 16796 words

2

Table of Contents Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................................3

Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................4

Theoretical Framework...................................................................................................................................5 Critical Geopolitics as an Academic (sub)-Discipline ....................................................................................5

Political Geography ..................................................................................................................................5 The rise of Geopolitics .............................................................................................................................6 The fall of Classical Geopolitics ...............................................................................................................8 Towards Critical Geopolitics ....................................................................................................................9 Critical Geopolitics ................................................................................................................................ 12 Conceptualisation and Perspectives ........................................................................................................ 12 Criticism ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Towards the Context: the PRC and the SCS Dispute .................................................................................... 14 The PRC: The ‘new’ Hegemonic State? .................................................................................................. 14 Economy and Finance ............................................................................................................................ 14 Domestic Politics ................................................................................................................................... 15 Economics and Foreign Politics .............................................................................................................. 15 Military .................................................................................................................................................. 17 The PRC’s Geopolitical Challenge ......................................................................................................... 17 Of continued relevance: Classical Geopolitical Theory............................................................................ 18 The SCS dispute ..................................................................................................................................... 19 The Paracel- and Spratly Islands ............................................................................................................. 21 The ‘Xi Era’: From Arbitration to Artificial Islands ................................................................................ 22

Methodology .................................................................................................................................................. 24 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 24 Research Question.................................................................................................................................. 24 Discourse Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 24 Operationalization .................................................................................................................................. 24 Limitations ............................................................................................................................................. 27

Analysis.......................................................................................................................................................... 28 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 28 Sub-Question 1: The Formal Dimension ................................................................................................. 28 Sub-Question 2: The Practical Dimension ............................................................................................... 31 Sub-Question 3: The Popular Dimension ................................................................................................ 33

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 35

Literature ...................................................................................................................................................... 36 *Picture on front-page: (Hindustantimes, 2016).

3

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has undergone rapid development in recent years. Part of its development strategy is expanding into the South China Sea under a discourse where peaceful development prevails. The expansion into the South China Sea causes a dispute with the other littoral states however, and

this study seeks to examine the PRC’s policies through both classical geopolitical theory as well as critical geopolitical theory.

4

Introduction On 18 June 2018, Paul Maley published an opinion article in The Australian. The Defence and National Security editor argued that “Australia cannot make the same mistakes in the Pacific that it made in the South China Sea, where Beijing militarised the area quickly and without serious challenge” (Maley, 2018). To understand what Maley means, when he argues that Beijing militarised the South China Sea (SCS) without serious challenge, this thesis will develop an Analysis of what is known as the SCS dispute, which is commonly understood as one of most complex maritime disputes in the world. It will do so, through the perspective of Beijing and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is therefore studied. The PRC is currently also in a stage of rapid transitions on multiple fronts and gained a lot of international attention when Xi Jinping’s (Xi), who is the country’s 10th president and officially assumed office on 14 March 2013, power was extended on 11 March 2018. On that day, nearly 3000 members of the PRC’s parliament voted almost unanimously in favour of a Constitutional amendment that abolished the presidential term limit, meaning that Xi does not have to step down when his second term ends in March 2023 (Buckley & Meyers, 2018; Buckley & Wu, 2018; Osborne, 2018). Both Maley’s alarming statement and the abolishment of the presidential term limit trigger a tendency to speculate on the PRC’s future course. Instead of doing that, this thesis sets out an analysis to develop an understanding of why the PRC militarised the SCS in the light of one of the most complex maritime disputes of this moment. To develop that knowledge, which can in turn contribute to a better scholarly understanding of the events that reached the news recently, the PRC’s perspective on the SCS dispute is studied through both classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics. As both schools of geopolitics evolved from the fundaments of Political Geography itself, the Theoretical Framework will create an understanding of both schools of thought to show how they developed and will be used in the Analysis. Moreover, it is argued that both schools are necessary when a comprehensive understanding of the SCS dispute is to be developed. Although critical geopolitics claims to be against classical geopolitics, it studies an issue here that is fundamentally linked to classical geopolitics (Haverluk et al., 2014). Thus, the SCS dispute will be studied in this thesis and it will be done by first establishing a Theoretical Framework that introduces Political Geography itself and accordingly shows how that evolved into classical geopolitics, and gradually works towards an understanding of critical geopolitics. Having set out the theory, it is then time to describe the context. The case of the PRC will first be introduced, and the framework will do so by applying the classical geopolitical theory to the PRC’s policies after which the SCS dispute is introduced, as it gets embedded in the classical framework. After the Theoretical Framework is completed, the Methodology follows, and the method of the critical geopolitical analysis will take shape in this section. Doing so the following Research Question will be answered:

What was the discourse of the institutions from the PRC in the formal, practical and popular

dimension on the case of the position of the PRC regarding the South China Sea dispute during the period of Xi’s first term?

Finally, the Analysis conducts a study of the Research Question, and summarizes the findings briefly in the Conclusion, where a brief discussion and a further suggestion follows.

5

Theoretical Framework

Critical Geopolitics as an Academic (sub)-Discipline Political Geography As the Analysis focuses on the discipline of critical geopolitics, its foundations must be considered first to develop an understanding of the theoretical implications of the Analysis. Storey (2009) traces the roots of critical geopolitics to the early works of Political Geography itself, and therefore Political Geography should be studied first. While a number of scholars identify Aristotle to be the first writer on the combination of political and geographical issues, the real rise of Political Geography stems from late nineteenth-century Germany (Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015). Friedrich Ratzel, who is sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Political Geography’, wrote Politische Geografie, oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges in 1897 in which he developed a study of states (Jones et al., 2004; Lossau, 2009; Murphy, 2015; Ratzel, 1897; Storey, 2009). Ratzel elaborated on the works of Carl Ritter and more specifically on the contributions of Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarcke (Doevenspeck, 2009; Jones et al., 2004; Storey, 2009). Being Ratzel’s academic predecessor, Ritter developed a new scientific geography that contrasted with the former dominant geographical method of describing and inventorying Earth’s processes and objects. Instead, Ritter aimed to understand the interdependencies between these and was supported in this vision by his contemporary and fellow geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Ritter distinguished himself from Humboldt by arguing that a place needs to be studied through different historical eras instead of different places at the same time (Doevenspeck, 2009). Thus, Ritter and Humboldt paved the path towards a new geographical approach. Ratzel also expanded his study with concepts from the newly developing evolution theory. While the theory has become largely synonymous with Charles Darwin’s notion of natural selection as described in On the Origin of Species (1859), evolution theory is actually more complex and diverse (Winlow, 2009). With regard to Ratzel’s work, two strands of evolution theory are being considered. Firstly, Darwin’s own natural selection theory, which is mostly simply referred to as Darwinism, argues that the strongest of species survive and thereby pass on their favourable characteristics (Bowler, 2001; Winlow, 2009). Lamarcke argued however that this process occurs during the lifetime of an organism itself. While Lamarcke’s arguments have been disproved by modern biology, both visions were popular in Ratzel’s era and spread across disciplines (Bowler, 2001). A notorious example is found in social Darwinism and neo-Lamarckism. These schools developed in parallel to their biological variants and applied their insights to society. Doing this, scholars were able to explain processes in human society, and justify them (Winlow, 2009). While both social evolutionary schools were utilized to legitimize and study social inequalities such as racial hierarchies and class differences, Ratzel applied it to the sphere of politics and geography (Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015). In his attempts to intellectually justify Germany’s territorial expansion, he compared the German state with an organism in search for survival. Like organisms, Ratzel argued that states are engaged in a process of (population) growth and will therefore inevitably reach a point where they need territorial expansion to maintain sustenance (Ernste & Philo, 2009; Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015; Storey, 2009; Winlow, 2009).

6

Thus, Ratzel’s version of the in German academia already existing organic state theory gave rise to the notorious concept of ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) (Holdar, 1992). From Ratzel’s perspective, each ‘living’ political entity in the world system competes for control over a part of Earth’s surface to eventually reach ‘Grossraum’ (large space) (Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015; Winlow, 2009). While Ratzel mostly aimed at German colonial expansion in Africa, some of his nationalist followers and academic successors took a way more aggressive stance and focused on the development of Lebensraum in Continental Europe (Jones et al., 2004; Winlow, 2009). This expansion, which deals directly with other European political entities, paved the way for scholars of geopolitics to which the discussion will now turn. The rise of Geopolitics Rudolf Kjellén was the first academic to coin the term geopolitics in an article in 1899 (Fettweis, 2015; Holdar, 1992; Kjellen, 1899). While Sicker (2010) and Palacio (2013) argue that the earliest conceptual development of geopolitics should actually be ascribed to the German nationalist economist Friedrich List, this framework still departs from the popular insight that Kjellén first developed it. List did indeed contribute to the academic literature by studying how geography and foreign politics affect the development of states, but he was not the first to call that study geopolitics (Palacio, 2013; Sicker, 2010). Like Ratzel, Kjellén compared states to organisms and studied their behaviour. The Swedish political scientist categorized its characters into: 1) Geopolitik; 2) Demopolitik; 3) Ekopolitik; 4) Sociopolitik and 5) Kratopolitik (Holdar, 1992, p. 311). For Kjellén, the word politik does not mean politics but rather theory of the state (Holdar, 1992; Kjellén, 1918). It follows that Geopolitik studies a state’s territory, Demopolitik its population, Ekopolitik its economy, Sociopolitik its society and Kratopolitik its institutional arrangements (Holdar, 1992). Kjelléns attributes of the state are useful to create an understanding of his definition of the state as a concept, but this analysis will focus on his notion of Geopolitik. Following Holdar’s (1992) interpretation of Kjellén’s original works, Kjellén regarded Geopolitik to be ‘the study of a geographical organism in space’. The territory of a state was therefore seen as the body of the organism. As Kjellén argued that all states finally strive to become geographical individuals, it meant for Kjellén that Geopolitik ultimately is about the way in which states fill their bodies with an organic area of land (Holdar, 1992; Kjellén, 1916). To protect the territory, Kjellén argued that natural boundaries such as seas, mountains, deserts and rivers were highly necessary for a state while the internal area between the boundaries needed rivers, lakes and seas to improve communication and transport within the state (Holdar, 1992). Kjellén’s views have therefore also been classified as deterministic (Marklund, 2015). While Ratzel and Kjellén were both interested in individual states as unit of analysis, another famous geographer highlighted the aspect of grand strategies in geopolitics (Jones et al., 2004). On 25 January 1904 Sir Halford Mackinder delivered his world-famous address to the Royal Geographical Society in London. In “The Geographical Pivot of History”, and his other works, Mackinder presented an argument opposite to the works of the American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan (Murphy, 2015; Ó Tuathail, 1996). While Mahan and Mackinder both followed the deterministic geopolitical view of Kjellén, Mahan argued that states needed to concentrate on the control of the seas when they were striving for world domination (Dodds et al., 2013; Fettweis, 2015; Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015).

7

Sumida (1999) has provided a simplified overview of Mahan’s argument. Most importantly, Mahan argued that states needed to control sea-lanes since they facilitate maritime commerce which is essential to a state’s economy. To protect that trade, and undermine the enemy, Mahan argued that states needed to develop a capable and powerful navy with a fleet of battleships (Sharp, 2009; Sumida, 1999). While Sumida (1999) argues that Mahan’s works were in fact very advanced and underappreciated, his role in history was overshadowed by Mackinder’s works. In contrast to Mahan, Mackinder (1904) argued that world domination was to be achieved through the conquest of land. As the age of exploration finally came to an end after 400 years, Mackinder (1904) argued that the new fast land traveling technologies such as railways in the post-Columbian era would swing back power to continental states (Jones et al., 2004; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Mackinder’s theory was applied to geography by his development of an ordered world map, which divided the world into three political regions. Firstly, Mackinder identified the ‘outer crescent’ which consisted of both the Americas, Africa, Oceania and the oceans. Secondly, an ‘inner crescent’ was identified which embodied Europe and southern Asia and finally, and most importantly, the ‘pivot area’ which is the central Eurasian landmass (Jones et al., 2004, p. 6; Mackinder, 1904). Following this division, Mackinder argued that the state which controlled the pivot area, would become a major world power, and so the Heartland Thesis was born (Dodds et al., 2013; Dodds & Woon, 2015; Jones et al., 2004; Knutsen, 2014; Murphy, 2015; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Reuber, 2009; Sempa, 2015; Storey, 2009). Figure 1 shows an edited edition of the map of the Heartland Thesis:

Figure 1: Map of the Heartland Thesis. The ‘Heartland’ is located in the centre of the Eurasian landmass, the map has been taken from a blog of Andrew Lynch (Lynch, 2017;

Mackinder, 1904).

Besides the generated knowledge from their academic studies, geopoliticians have also impacted actual politics. Mackinder promoted geography as aid to statecraft, and succeeded like his fellow academics to transform theories into policy and political ideology (Kearns, 2009; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Sharp, 2009; Teggart & Mackinder, 1919).

8

Mackinder’s theory has for example been expanded on by Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943), who was a Dutch-American professor of International Relations at Yale University. Instead of focusing on the Eurasian Heartland, Spykman argued that the focus should be on the Rimland areas of Western-Europe and Southeast Asia (Ó Tuathail, 1996). To prevent any state from conquering the Heartland and hence achieve world domination, Spykman stressed the importance of the United States (U.S.) military intervention to keep the Rimlands away from the would-be imperialist power (Fettweis, 2015; Murphy, 2015; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Reuber, 2009). Figure 2 shows a visualisation of Spykman’s model:

Figure 2: Spykman’s ‘Rimland’ model. The Rimland is marked in red, and completely

surrounds the Heartland. The arrows symbolise the suggested direction of U.S. intervention, map taken from the blog of Andrew Lynch (Lynch, 2017; Spykman, 1942).

While it is rightly argued that Spykman’s and other geopolitical theories became unpopular after the Second World War (WW2), his argument ironically still became a reality during the Cold War (Knutsen, 2014; Reuber, 2009). To understand why geopolics faded after WW2, the discussion will now turn to the works of Karl Haushofer. The fall of Classical Geopolitics While Mackinder, Mahan and Spykman contributed to geopolitics from the Anglo-American perspective, Karl Haushofer developed a German school of geopolitics. Having obtained a Ph.D. in geography, geology and history at the University of Munich, Haushofer joined the German army in the First World War (WW1) and rose to rank of major general (Ó Tuathail, 1996). After his time in the army, Haushofer began his career in the academic world as a professor in geography at the University of Munich where he held his position from 1921 until 1939 (Ó Tuathail, 1996; Reuber, 2009). Professor Haushofer was a follower of Ratzel and Kjellén, and developed the latter’s concept of Geopolitik into a spatialisation of an approach to turn Germany into a great power again (Herwig, 2016; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Like Ratzel, Haushofer saw Germany as an organism and even referred to Mackinder’s works as ‘the greatest of all geographical worldviews’ (Knutsen, 2014). It follows that Haushofer’s position as professor and editor of the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, the German journal of geopolitics, made him an influential geopolitical academic (Reuber, 2009).

9

Haushofer has become most known however for his notorious relationship with members of the German Nazi party. One of them was Rudolf Hess, who was Haushofer’s aide-de-camp during WW1 and went to study political geography at the University of Munich after the war. In 1922 Hess introduced Haushofer to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. After the failed Bierkellerputsch in 1923, Hitler and Hess were imprisoned in the Landsberg prison and it was there were Haushofer visited them. Haushofer gave Hitler copies of the works of German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and Ratzel and discussed geopolitics with them (Knutsen, 2014; Ó Tuathail, 1996). While Haushofer was sympathetic to many aims of the Nazi party, delivered speeches to Nazi meetings and got some of his arguments into Mein Kampf (1925) and Nazi ideology, he never was a Nazi himself (Knutsen, 2014; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Reuber, 2009). Rather, Haushofer appeared to have to gone along with Nazis to realise his theories and desires (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Part of Haushofer’s realisation came through his role with regards to the establishment of the German Academy which was opened in May 1925. The official aim of the Academy was to “strengthen and bring together the unofficial cultural relations of Germany with areas and Germans abroad the homeland, in service of German-folk-consciousness” (Herwig, 2016; Ó Tuathail, 1996, p. 46). Haushofer first headed the Academy’s Practical Department and became its president in 1934 after the Nazi party came to power. In the five years leading up to WW2, the institute increasingly came under Nazi influence and started to serve their goals (Ó Tuathail, 1996). While the institute was a success for Haushofer, it became the inspiration of the widely circulated myth of the Geopolitical Institute. Fostered by sensational stories in the allied press, Haushofer and his Academy were described as the scientific brain behind Hitler. In the short Hollywood movie Plan for Destruction which was produced in 1943, Haushofer was depicted as the evil academic who headed an entire institute of hundreds of geopolitical scientists who were working on Nazi expansion (Ó Tuathail, 1996; Reuber, 2009). While the myth persisted and framed (German) geopolitics as pure evil headed by professor Haushofer, reality was quite different. It is undeniable that Haushofer’s views affected Hitler and the Nazi party, but it never did to the claimed extents. In fact, Haushofer’s career came to an abrupt end in 1941 when he criticised Hitler for breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Knutsen, 2014; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Thus, geopolitics as forwarded by the classical scholars faded in popularity after WW2, and was replaced by new forms which dealt with the new order that was set in motion by the end of WW2 (Reuber, 2009). Towards Critical Geopolitics Two decades after Richard Hartshorne famously remarked in 1954 that “perhaps no other branch in geography has the attempt to teach others gone so far ahead of the pursuit of the teachers”, Muir (1976) found from a survey held with the heads of geography departments that political geography should increase in importance once again (Hartshorne, 1954 in: Jones et al., 2004, p. 8; Muir, 1976). To understand why Muir (1976) witnessed a shifting opinion in the political geographic and hence the geopolitical field, a couple of broader social and academic trends need to be examined. Thus, the discussion will analyse how the paradigm in political geography, what Kuhn defines as the dominant scientific frame of reference, shifted to facilitate the gradual development of critical geopolitics (Couper, 2014; Kuhn, 1962).

10

Firstly, the contributions of Hartshorne in the early 1950s brought political geography in a new era. Aware of a notorious past, he promoted the ‘functional approach’. To depoliticize political geography, Hartshorne argued the discipline should not focus on political strategies but rather on the analysis of states themselves (Hartshorne, 1950; Jones et al., 2004). This approach had severe consequences for the discipline however, as it became dominant during the 1950s and 1960s. It implied that scholars mainly conducted descriptive and empirical research and thereby missed out on the theoretical developments in the other branches of geography (Jones et al., 2004). Missing out on important new methodological events such as the ‘quantitative revolution’ in the late 1960s, the discipline became even more unpopular and started to disappear from the academic geographic landscape (Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015). Another issue which caused the rise of a counter movement, was the fact that early Cold War geopolitical scholars in the U.S., the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany did not question the broader social and political culture of the era (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Therefore, starting from the 1960s, a new wave of dissident academics started to question the established notions of (political) geography. Driven by the decolonization process of former European empires which started in the 1950s, the new wave of radical geographers no longer accepted the imperialist ideals of the founding fathers such as Ratzel, Ritter and Kjellén (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Thus, it can be argued that the end of the 1960s witnessed the beginning of a paradigm shift towards a more theoretical approach in (political) geography that challenged the existing functionalist paradigm (Castro, 2009; Jones et al., 2004; Storey, 2009). Most notably, radical scholars in the U.S. and France contributed to a background which was dominated in the American context by the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the American urban crisis while the French were concerned with the enduring French presence in Algeria and the broader social cultural event of global protest in 1968 (Ó Tuathail, 1996; Storey, 2009). The Anglo-American group of scholars focused on Marxist theory which was taken from political economy and accordingly applied to geography. David Harvey’s work on urban systems, which he saw as being embedded in capitalism, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s contribution of the World Systems Theory which holds that the world economy should be regarded as one coherent capitalist system, can be seen as important contributions which were slowly but gradually taken over by political geographers (Harvey, 1973; Jones et al., 2004; Wallerstein, 1974; Woodward et al., 2009). The contribution of the French academics was of greater importance for the development of critical political geography however. In 1969, the journal of Antipode was established in which radical geographers could voice their vision and where they contributed to the growing insight of space as social construct (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Especially Lacoste’s publication of La Géographie, ça sert d’abord, â faire la guerre in 1976, in which Lacoste argued that geography as a discipline supported both a colonial order abroad, and a capitalist order at home, signed the beginning of a critical post-structuralist approach in geography itself (Lacoste, 1976; Murphy, 2015; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Post-structuralism, which developed in parallel to radical geography in France, is the concept which refers to a loose cluster of philosophical theories that have been largely developed by scholars such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and some notable others such as Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard (Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004; Scruton, 2007; Woodward et al., 2009).

11

Generally speaking, post-structuralists hold the view that an objective truth cannot exist, since they argue that the truth is being generated through power relations (Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004). Thus, post-structural philosophers contributed to the metaphysical study of ontology, which is being defined as the study of existence, through works which found that there is not necessarily a fixed reality but that there are rather multiple realities at the same time (Berg, 2009; Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004). To understand how these realities arise, post-structural epistemology, which is defined as the study of knowledge creation, focuses on relations between actors and holds that the strongest actor usually starts to own the truth (Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004). Derrida and Foucault are of specific interest when considering the development of critical geopolitics since their methods form a fundament in the discipline (Dodds et al., 2013; Murphy, 2015; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Firstly, Derrida’s notion of deconstruction will be examined. While Derrida himself did not want his work to be summarized and labelled under the methodological concept of deconstruction since it was quite complex in form, it has in contrast to his intentions become a verb for the critical dismantling of text (Barnett, 2009; Couper, 2014). Text is understood here as anything which can be ‘read’ and therefore dismantled. Thus, not only literature is regarded as text, but works of art, videos, music, maps and political scenarios also constitute it (Butler, 2004; Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004). By dismantling these texts, Derrida’s method aims to analyse how claims to truth are made since he assumes that texts are different in how they signify and therefore describe reality (Barnett, 2009; Couper, 2014; Jones et al., 2004; Woodward et al., 2009). In addition to Derrida, Foucault contributed to post-structuralism by insisting that knowledge and power cannot be separated from each other (Couper, 2014; Dodds et al., 2013; Sharp, 2009). Thus, Foucault holds the epistemological view that knowledge is being determined by the outcomes of a power play between various actors such as scientists, religions, political parties, the media and governments for example (Berg, 2009; Couper, 2014; Foucault, 1969, 1966; Jones et al., 2004). This process results in the development of the concept of discourse. Although discourse has been attributed various definitions, it can be argued in this post-structural geographic case that discourse represents a set of underlying ideas and practices which give ‘text’ a particular kind of meaning and therefore constitute a framework through which reality is seen (Berg, 2009; Couper, 2014; Dodds & Atkinson, 2000; Gregory, 2009; Huxley, 2009; Jones et al., 2004; Reuber, 2009; Sharp, 2009). It follows that discourses can be constructed by multiple actors simultaneously, and that each produced discourse can be challenged and renegotiated through the earlier identified power relations. Following Antonio Gramsci’s contributions, who is famous for his work on the concept of hegemony, there is usually one discourse hegemonic in a society and discourse therefore results in a dominant worldview through which most members of a society view reality (Berg, 2009; Daldal, 2014; Dittmer, 2010). Human geographers have also contributed to Foucault’s work by adding that discourses are not only created through power, but also through historical practices and the geographical location of the actors, thereby turning discourse into a form of situated knowledge (Gregory, 2009). Thus, discourse creates a taken for granted reality where the actor places itself and others in (Gregory, 2009; Jones et al., 2004). As discourse and deconstruction theory became increasingly influential, the Cultural Turn in human geography in the late 1980s, which saw culture as a product of discourse and led to the insight that post-structural theory influences the spatial dimensions of politics, finally led to the establishment of critical geopolitics (Jones et al., 2004; Murphy, 2015).

12

Critical Geopolitics While a body of relatively isolated literature on geopolitical representation emerged during the Cultural Turn in the 1980s, the official recognition of the rise of a new geographical discipline came from a set of publications which focused on the concept of geopolitics itself (Agnew, 2013; Dodds & Atkinson, 2000; Ó Tuathail, 1996). Initially, Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew wrote a paper in 1987 which was later published as ‘Geopolitics and discourse’ in 1992, in which they developed the theoretical foundations of the not yet labelled discipline of critical geopolitics (Agnew, 2013; Ó Tuathail, 1996). According to both, geopolitics should be seen as a form of storytelling, in which the protagonists tell about the world out there as a way of securing their interests over there (Agnew, 2013; Ó Tuathail & Agnew, 1992). Therefore, Foucault’s discourse was applied to geopolitics to illustrate how ‘intellectuals of statecraft’ spatialize international politics to represent a world which is filled with ‘places, peoples and dramas’ (Agnew, 2013; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Ó Tuathail and Agnew, 1992). Thus, according to the early analysis, actors in the field of geopolitics produce a representation of reality, and the process of producing that reality should therefore be studied (Agnew, 2013). As Agnew (2013) illustrates how various pioneering scholars such as Ó Tuathail and himself went different theoretical paths afterwards, this framework will develop an ecletic version of the concept of critical geopolitics that was first ever coined in Ó Tuathail’s dissertation at Syracuse University (Agnew, 2013; Ó Tuathail, 1989). Conceptualisation and Perspectives As critical geopolitics examines the process behind the development of representations of reality, the concept can theoretically be further understood when speech act theory and materialism are considered (Sharp, 2009). Having been developed by J.L. Austin in a series of lectures at Harvard University in 1955, speech act theory holds in its broadest sense that language is being used as an action in the material world (Austin, 1962; Emery, 2011; Oishi and Fetzer, 2016). Thus, very generally argued, language is regarded as a tool which refers to actions that take place in the real world. Like speech act theory does with language, materialism constitutes a philosophical strand of critical geopolitics which is gaining increasing attention since the materialist turn of the late 1990s and holds very generally that the ‘material’ world has agency in the ‘social’ world (Couper, 2014; Jazeel, 2014; Sharp, 2009; Squire, 2015; Wegge & Keil, 2018). Therefore, materialism often refers to a more-than-human approach which argues that human activities in the social world intra-act with the physical and therefore material environment (Squire, 2015; Wegge & Keil, 2018). Without entering a deeper discussion on materialism, this framework combines speech act theory with materialism and uses the notions of discourse and deconstruction to form the ontological and epistemological foundation of the Analysis. In doing so, the Analysis builds on a theoretical background that lends concepts from multiple scholars and continues like in the case of Simon Dalby’s work, with combining them via a specific filter (Agnew, 2013). In epistemological terms, the framework holds that reality is being formed by discourses which are in turn influenced by material and do so through language, meaning that this process which leads to the ontology of reality can be studied through deconstruction of discourse in texts. To crystallize the definition, the discussion will now turn to three common perspectives of critical geopolitics. During their initial conceptualisation of the discipline, Ó Tuathail and Agnew (1992) established the perspectives of practical geopolitics and formal geopolitics. Firstly, practical geopolitics is understood as the perspective of everyday statecraft. Thus, the practical perspective focuses on the direct practitioners of foreign policy such as politicians,

13

statespersons and military personnel as these actors underpin their narrative with terms as danger, threat and safety (Dodds & Atkinson, 2000, p. 10; Ó Tuathail & Agnew, 1992). Secondly, formal geopolitics contrasts the practical perspective since this is being practiced by security intellectuals like strategic thinkers and classical geopolitical scholars who publish their work in civil society and thereby produce theories and strategies which justify practical geopolitics (Dodds & Atkinson, 2000; Ó Tuathail & Agnew, 1992).

Thus, practical and formal geopolitics support each other but also differ in style. While practical geopoliticians utilize a common-sense narrative, which relies on binaries such as good and bad, formal geopoliticians rely on a highly formalized jargon instead (Ó Tuathail & Agnew, 1992, p. 194). In addition to the conceptualisation, both scholars theorized that most geopolitical reasoning is of practical type but Ó Tuathail (2002) signalled ten years later that “there are very few detailed studies of practical geopolitics” (Ó Tuathail, 2002; Ó Tuathail & Agnew, 1992). Instead, the third perspective of popular geopolitics, which was effectively developed by Joanne Sharp in her research on Reader’s Digest, became more influential (Agnew, 2013; Sharp, 2000, 1993). Thus, popular geopolitics can be understood as the realm of critical geopolitics which deals with the production of realities through popular culture instead of political elites (Dodds & Atkinson, 2000; Ó Tuathail & Dalby, 1998; Sharp, 2009). As Sharp argues that there is no trickle-down effect between elite representations and popular representations but rather an interplay between them where the elite is influenced by popular texts to assert and justify its authority, many studies started studying popular texts (Mueller, 2013; Ó Tuathail, 2002; Sharp, 2009, 2000, 1993). Therefore, newspapers, magazines, cartoons, films, evangelical texts, comic books, maps and images have all become popular geopolitical units of analysis (Dittmer, 2007; Mueller, 2013). Criticism It has now been identified what critical geopolitics aims to study and what the dominant perspectives of the discipline are. However, it would be erroneous to assume that the established conceptualisation of critical geopolitics provides a definitive contribution. Sharp once argued that “the work of critical geopolitics is never done”, since the discipline is intrinsically critical in nature, her argument holds that any representation of reality can always be closely examined to find the interests behind it (Sharp, 2009, p. 361). Agnew (2013) argues however that while this is indeed the case, the discipline’s methodology should be critically examined as well. As he makes the case that the discipline has always been open-ended, it is justifiable to critically consider the critique on critical geopolitics in order to establish a sound understanding of its implications on the Analysis (Agnew, 2013, p. 36). The discipline has received critique from scholars who argue that critical geopolitics is obsessed with countering classical geopolitics and thereby implicitly copies the focus its classical variant has (Agnew, 2013). Thus, not only does critical geopolitics mirror itself with old school geopolitics and thereby prevents the development of a more open-ended analytic direction, it ironically also reproduces the often Western lens of classical geopolitics in which the U.S. or the West play the central or imperial role (Agnew, 2013; Kelly, 2006; Sharp, 2011a, 2013). Agnew (2013) illustrates for example how the critical tendency to support the anti-imperial leads to unclear situations as to what is right or wrong and gives the example of the support for dictatorial regimes who claim to be against the dominance of global imperialism, but actively oppress their own population.

14

Therefore, critical geopolitics is regarded as being normative when looking at world politics and does so through the Western and anti-imperial lens (Agnew, 2013; Sharp, 2011a). While critical geopolitics has widely studied this approach, scholars of subaltern geopolitics argue that its methodology does not allow for developing a sound understanding of how marginalised groups represent their reality (Ayoob, 2002; McEwan, 2009; Sharp, 2011a, 2011b). A special point of subaltern concern is the (critical) geopolitical foundation in realist international relations theory. This school of international relations holds that the state has the only genuine form of agency in world politics, and Kenneth Waltz once polemically expanded this argument by arguing that small powers like Denmark do not matter (Ayoob, 2002; Bilgin, 2008; Glassman, 2009; Sharp, 2011b, 2009; Stein, 2001). While taking the subaltern critique of Sharp and Ayoob into consideration, the Analysis will unavoidably apply a realist lens that studies the PRC, a power that matters.

Towards the Context: the PRC and the SCS Dispute

The PRC: The ‘new’ Hegemonic State? There exists an extensive debate in the academic literature regarding the issue of the development of the next hegemonic power in the world system (Karatasli & Kumral, 2017). Hegemony is understood here in the Gramscian sense, meaning that a hegemonic state combines economic, financial, political and military superiority to temporarily dominate the world-system (Glassman, 2009; O’Loughlin, 2009; Terlouw, 2009). Therefore, many scholars now question the position of the U.S. as the present hegemonic state in the world-system, and are assessing the PRC’s ascendancy to the status (Cha, 2017; Karatasli & Kumral, 2017; Mingran, 2015; O’Loughlin, 2009). Karatasli & Kumral (2017) identify however that most studies on the PRC’s rise focus on the economic dimension and thereby ignore the (macro-)political dimension of hegemonic development. To understand the PRC’s relative position in the world and the East-Asian region in particular, the discussion will briefly consider the identified dimensions of hegemony and accordingly interpret the outcomes to understand China’s stance in the SCS dispute. Economy and Finance While the economic dimension received most attention from scholars in the past years and multiple studies point towards the broader importance of this dimension, the PRC’s economy must be studied first (Barth, 2014; Ross, 2018; Xiaotong & Keith, 2017). While many studies of the PRC’s rise depart from December 1978 when the country initiated economic reforms that marked the beginning of the post-Mao era, it must be argued that this rise should rather be understood as a re-emergence (Barth, 2014; Hobson, 2004; Nye, 1997, p. 67; Petras, 2012; Ross, 2018; Wang & Hu, 2007). As Petras (2012) argues, who bases his article on the work of Hobson (2004), China (in its historical geographic and institutional form) was superior to the Western civilisation from roughly 1100 until the beginning of the Western and especially British conquest of the East- and Southeast Asian region in the 1800s. The author goes even further to state that most Western and neo-liberal Chinese economists and academics are wrong when they argue that China’s growth started in the 1980s. Instead, Petras (2012) stresses that China’s re-emergence began on 1 October 1949 when Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the PRC. From that point in history, the Communists took over and established agrarian reforms in the 1950s which empowered hundreds of millions of peasants and rural workers, and more importantly mobilized the PRC’s enormous human capital to build the infrastructure needed for a modern economy (Petras, 2012). The Great Leap Forward was not only a success however, as it

15

caused a disastrous famine with persistent consequences for future generations (Kim et al., 2014; Wemheuer and Manning, 2011). As Petras (2012) gives a valid critique on the dominant Western and neo-liberal narrative, it can hardly be denied that the PRC’s economic re-emergence skyrocketed since the beginning of the 1980s. Since that period, the PRC’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at approximately 10 percent per year, and it was only since 2011 that growth slowed down towards 7 percent per year (Bradsher, 2018; Ross, 2018; Wang & Hu, 2007). While the accuracy of these numbers is a reason for debate, the growth can still largely be ascribed to the success of the PRC’s export oriented economy (Bradsher, 2018). Export is however not the only growth model for the PRC, and the second hegemonic dimension of finance must therefore be examined too (Burdekin & Willett, 2015). After having conducted a statistical analysis of the relative share of the financial sector in the PRC’s economic growth, Ljungwall & Gustavsson Tingval (2013) found that finance does not play a significant role. This finding does however not imply that the PRC is not playing an increasingly important role in the global financial network. Instead, the cities of Shanghai, Beijing and Honk Kong are identified as being mutually supportive in the development of the growing presence of the PRC in the global financial network (Burdekin & Willett, 2015; Lai, 2012; Ljungwall & Tingvall, 2013). The three cities are also identified as Global City Regions, and can following this concept be regarded as metropolitan regions which play a command and control role in the global economy (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991; Scott et al., 2001). Global City Regions are annually ranked on their relative importance in the World System and it follows that in the 2017 ranking Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong respectively placed 15th, 13th and 9th (Takenaka et al., 2017). Domestic Politics Being the second largest economic power after the U.S. nowadays, the PRC’s influence on the dimension of (foreign) politics is widely studied (Mingran, 2015). Before entering the international realm of politics however, the PRC in its current domestic political arrangement must be understood. Broadly defined, the PRC’s form of government can be labelled as new totalitarianism, in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the only party and its governance is embedded in a strong omnipresent institutional setting (Liu, 2018). It would therefore be erroneous to view the PRC and Xi in the light of typical strongmen politics. Although it might appear as if Xi is gaining more power by altering institutional arrangements, it should rather be understood in a context where the CCP’s top leadership has reached a consensus to do so (Acharya, 2018; Buckley, 2018; Buckley and Meyers, 2018; Frantz et al., 2018; Geddes et al., 2018; Liu, 2018; Shirk, 2018). Thus, the policies of the PRC arise from a complex set of CCP led institutions instead of the sometimes popular held strongman notion of some Western scholars (Acharya, 2018). Economics and Foreign Politics As Xiaotong & Keith (2017) identify that the PRC’s leaders try to convert the national wealth into an international economic exercise of power in the PRC’s near- and far abroad, the PRC’s economic politics must be understood. This dimension of the PRC’s foreign politics is being characterized by a couple of trends and developments. The PRC’s aim can be broadly defined here as trying to establish a new configuration in world politics which seeks to “represent the interests of newly emerging economies and developing countries” but does so from within the existing system and in order of the PRC’s longstanding goal of establishing a multipolar World System where there is no single hegemonic state (Cha, 2017; Economy,

16

2018; Mingran, 2015; Xiaotong & Keith, 2017). Thus, it is argued here that it is not in the PRC’s interest to fully overthrow the current economic world order which is led by the U.S. (Karatasli & Kumral, 2017). Instead, the PRC promotes the Beijing Consensus. This development model differs from the neo-liberal Washington Consensus, a concept that was invented in 1989 by John Williamson (1937-present) and holds that democratic political reforms and market liberalization are a prerequisite for economic growth, by supporting a growth model which features “1) incremental reform; 2) innovation and experimentation; 3) export-led growth; 4) state capitalism and 5) authoritarianism” (Acharya, 2018; Guan, 2017, p. 127-128; Mingran, 2015; Williamson, 2012, 1990). Although academic views vary on the exact definition and importance of the concept, it can still be argued that the PRC promotes an alternative development model to the Washington Consensus and spreads its ideology through multiple foreign policy projects (Guan, 2017; Xiaotong and Keith, 2017). Xi announced the perhaps most ambitious project during his speeches at the Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan on 7 September 2013, and the Indonesian Parliament on 2 October 2013. During the visits, Xi respectively coined the terms of Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and Maritime Silk Road (MSR) (Jacob, 2017; Tekdal, 2018). Both labels describe what has now been established as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which, in its broadest sense, aims to develop a regional PRC-based economic order (Holslag, 2017; Hu, 2017; Jacob, 2017; Le Thu, 2018; Ross, 2018; Tekdal, 2018; Xiaotong and Keith, 2017). While a lot of scholars focused their attention on the BRI in recent years, Blanchard (2018) argues that a substantial proportion of the commentaries are sensationalist. Moreover, academics tend to merge the land based SREB, and the naval MSR initiative. Thereby, they produce problematic contributions which are overly broad and fail to nuance the projects with regards to the specific countries who participate (see Figure 3) (Blanchard, 2018). Therefore, Branchard (2018) studies the MSRI specifically and makes the remark that its success in the South-East Asian maritime region will partly depend on the outcomes of the maritime and regional SCS dispute.

Figure 3: Map of the economic corridors the BRI is aiming to establish. The MSR is represented by the blue arrows and runs through sea lanes in South-East Asia towards South Africa and Europe via the Suez Canal. The SREB runs through Central and South Asia towards Europe and the map also

shows the PRC-Pakistan corridor in orange. If successful, the three BRI branches will connect over 60 countries to the PRC. The map was been taken from the Stockholm Environment Institute (Hallding,

2017; Hu, 2017).

17

Military Blanchard’s (2018) remark is in line with the work of Ross (2018) who argues that the PRC’s economic power politics is not fungible regarding the East-Asian security order. Although there exists an extensive academic debate on the meaning of fungibility, it is understood here as the capability of the PRC to turn its market power into a strategic tool which determines the decision making of smaller states (Art, 1996; Baldwin, 1979; Ross, 2018, p. 3). In other words, Ross (2018) argues that the PRC cannot become superior to the U.S. through the BRI via the economic dimension only. Therefore, Ross (2018) stresses that the military dimension will play a larger role when it comes to the establishment of a PRC led sphere of influence in the BRI region. The final hegemonic dimension will therefore be examined in this section. Robertson & Sin (2017) show how assessments of the PRC’s military capacity have shown some sharp discrepancies in the literature. While the practical geopolitician Robert Kaplan and the political scientist and Foreign Affairs editor John Mearsheimer developed disquieting analyses of the PRC’s military role regarding the East-Asian region and the SCS dispute, other scholars tended to be more restrained (Kaplan, 2014; Li, 2016; Mearsheimer, 2006; Robertson and Sin, 2017). Thus, with multiple scholars theorizing on the PRC’s military strength, the authors tried to establish a better understanding of the widely circulated notion that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) budget has rapidly expanded over the last two decades, and therefore conducted an analysis of government budgets (Kim, 2013, 2017; Liff, 2018; Robertson and Sin, 2017; Schreer, 2017; Thornton and Thornton, 2018). In doing so, the authors found that while there is indeed an increase of military budget, it should largely be ascribed to the PRC’s economic growth which causes wages to increase and makes maintenance of military services more expensive. The outcomes must be interpreted with caution however, as the PRC’s government might understate reality (Robertson and Sin, 2017). A similar concern is raised by scholars of the BRI. Tekdal (2018) does for example identify how scholars of the PRC’s military strategy noted that the PRC’s government stresses that the BRI, and especially the MSR, should not be regarded as tools which aim to achieve strategic geopolitical goals (Li, 2016; Tekdal, 2018; Zhao and Qi, 2016). However, despite the narrative in the speeches of the PRC’s leaders, it is argued that the MSR is intertwined with territorial claims in the SCS which feature as one of the core interests of the PRC (Tekdal, 2018; Wenjuan, 2018). The PRC’s Geopolitical Challenge To understand why territorial claims in the SCS are a core interest, the discussion turns to the work of Jonathan Holslag who conducted an analysis of ‘Beijing’s Map’. The map is another word for the strategic perception of the PRC’s surroundings in the East- and South-East Asian region. According to the author, the PRC perceives its map in three layers: the Heartland, the Frontier Land and the Belt of Uncertainty (Holslag, 2010, p. 19). The Heartland can be understood as the geographical region on the PRC’s eastern coast where about 90 percent of the population lives, 75 percent of production finds place and where the three Global City Regions are located. Holslag (2010) therefore argues that all governments since Mao Zedong have prioritized the maintenance of security and prosperity of this region. To do so, Beijing actively intervenes and controls the Frontier Land which surrounds the Heartland and is bordering many Asian countries and Russia.

18

More important regarding this discussion however, is the maritime corridor east of the Heartland consisting of the SCS, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. These seas around the Heartland have historically been the transit zones of colonial powers and are therefore regarded with great caution as many Chinese still believe the Heartland is in danger (Holslag, 2010). The Belt of Uncertainty is the final layer of Beijing’s Map. This geographical area is beyond the PRC’s direct control and consists of most neighbouring countries. The author identifies however that while this area is outside Beijing’s direct sphere of influence, it harbours plenty of economic opportunities such as natural resources and therefore makes it a key target for economic cooperation (Holslag, 2010, p. 21). Figure 4 provides an illustration of Beijing’s Map:

Figure 4: ‘Being’s Map’. The map illustrates the three security layers of the PRC and shows the

presence of the naval fleets of its contenders such as Japan, the U.S. and India. Also, the map shows U.S. military bases in the region, the ‘corridors of peril’ which are understood which pose a threat to the Frontier Land and finally the strategic sea-straits in the region are identified (Holslag, 2010, p.

20). Of continued relevance: Classical Geopolitical Theory Having been produced in 2010, Beijing’s Map outlines notions which have actually been translated into later foreign PRC policy. The Belt of Uncertainty does for example constitute the area of the BRI as the BRI does indeed search for economic opportunity and increasing political control in the region (Chung, 2018; Humphreys, 2018). Moreover, scholars have identified similarities between the classical theories of Mackinder and the naval theories of Mahan and Spykman with regard to the BRI. As the SREB project focuses on the Belt of Uncertainty and thereby simultaneously on Mackinder’s unit of analysis, it has been theorized that the PRC’s policies might coincidentally lead to the hegemonic outcome of Mackinder’s theory (Harper, 2017). Harper (2017) is careful to note however that this is largely speculative and will depend on multiple factors including the naval dimension where the MSR comes in to play.

19

To understand why this is the case, the classical naval theories must be considered. Firstly, the PRC’s Heartland is positioned in the geographical region of Spykman’s rimland. Therefore, the naval strategy of the U.S. regarding the PRC has been in line with Mahanian thinking as the U.S. developed a policy in the Cold War which aimed to contest the rimland through the establishment of military alliances with East Asian states, and the development of naval bases in the region (Schreer, 2017). Since the mid-1980s, when the Cold War was coming to an end, the U.S. has become more aggressive in this strategy by forwarding its defensive line towards the PRC’s notion of near and far seas (Schreer, 2017). Acknowledging the Mahanian strategy of its challenger, the PRC’s strategists developed the concepts of near and far seas. In the PRC’s discourse, near seas constitute the geographical regions of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the SCS, while the far seas extend from northern Japan to the northern Mariana Islands and extend even southwards of Guam (Li, 2009; Schreer, 2017). Thus, as the near seas coincide with the Frontier Land, the PRC maintains a discourse of near seas active defence (Li, 2009). It would be erroneous however to view the PRC’s interest in the far seas and the MSR development which coincides with the String of Pearls theory, that describes the PRC’s efforts to cement its influence in the Indian Ocean by increasing its naval capabilities, as classical Mahanian hegemonial thought (Connolly, 2017; Dixon, 2014; Li, 2009). While the American strategy is certainly comparable to Mahan, the PRC reacts to it and has no similar hegemonic objectives (Connolly, 2017; Ferdinand, 2016; Harper, 2017; Liff, 2018). The SCS dispute Figure 5 shows the geographical area that constitutes the SCS, and thereby shows the region which has a surface of 3.5 million square kilometres (Curtis, 2016):

Figure 5: The area of the SCS. The map was created using GIS technology and relies on data of the International Hydrographic Organization (De Hauwere, 2017).

The map also illustrates how the PRC, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan border the SCS. As all these countries pursue their own geopolitical strategy, and the SCS has been identified to be resource rich, by containing vast amounts of oil and natural gas, in addition to rich fishing grounds, the region is prone to territorial conflict (Curtis, 2016; Kao, 2015; Zhao, 2018).

20

While there are at least eight separate territorial disputes in the SCS, the PRC’s claim of more than 80 percent of the surface is undoubtedly the largest and most consistent (Curtis, 2016; Guo et al., 2017). Already since at least 1914, Chinese mapmakers have created maps that identify the nine-dash line (NDL). The claim is historically based on evidence of Chinese activities undertaken since the 15th century, and include surveying expeditions, fishing, and naval patrols carried out by China at the time (Curtis, 2016; Hong, 2013). The geographical area of the claim expanded over the years and started to include 132 geographical features in the SCS which have become part of official government maps since 1947 (Chung, 2018; Curtis, 2016; Hong, 2013; Zhen, 2016). Figure 6 provides a map of the NDL:

Figure 6: Map of the nine-dash line, and the island groups within it. The map was taken from an article on the website of Radio Free Asia (Pu, 2015).

As the NDL coincides with the geopolitical aspirations of the other countries, the map in Figure 7 illustrates the other territorial claims:

Figure 7: Map of the conflicting territorial claims in the SCS (Hong, 2013, p. 29).

21

The Paracel- and Spratly Islands By looking at both maps, it can be quickly seen that the Paracel- and especially the Spratly islands are heavily disputed. To understand the discourse of the PRC on the issues, the situation with both island groups must be considered. The Paracel island group, which is located 350 kilometres southeast of the coast of the Hainan province and consists of approximately 130 coral islands and reefs that have a total surface of about 8 square kilometres spanning an approximate total area of 15,000 square kilometres has been occupied by the PRC’s military since January 1974 when it expelled the South-Vietnamese forces from the islands (Chung, 2018; Hong, 2013; N.N., 2018a, 2013a; Zhen, 2016). Thus, when the South-Vietnamese forces occupied a part of the Spratly islands in September 1973, the PRC reacted by gaining control over a vital island group in its Frontier Land as the U.S. Seventh Fleet refused to support the South-Vietnamese, while North-Vietnam supported the PRC (Chung, 2018; N.N., 2018a). A more complex situation arises when the Spratly island group is considered. Being further away from Hainan’s southern coast on an approximate distance of around 950 kilometres, the estimated group of 100 islands, rocks and atolls with a combined land area of less than 5 square kilometres that stretch a sea area of 410,000 square kilometres, is occupied by multiple states (Mortensgaard, 2015; N.N., 2018b; Vuving, 2016). South-Vietnamese forces occupied a part of the island group in September 1973 but were not the first, as Taiwan and the Philippines already occupied some islands in the region (Hunt, 2016; Vuving, 2016; Watson and Phillips, 2016). Malaysia followed the given example and also started an occupation campaign in the 1980s (Vuving, 2016). The PRC finally reacted to the activities within the NDL in March 1988, when the PRC’s navy clashed with the Vietnamese navy around the then still unoccupied Johson South Reefs (Vuving, 2016; Watson & Phillips, 2016; Zhao, 2018). After the military conflict, which caused at least 74 casualties on the Vietnamese side, the PRC established a physical presence on the Spratly islands for the first time by occupying six features it still controls during the time of writing (Vuving, 2016; Watson & Phillips, 2016). Figure 8 gives an overview of the situation:

Figure 8: Map providing an overview of the occupied territory regarding the Spratly island group.

The PRC controls 7 areas, as it occupied the Mischief Reef in 1994. The map was taken from an article on The Diplomat (Curtis, 2016; Vuving, 2016).

22

After the events of 1994, where the PRC annexed the Mischief Reef in search of further territorial consolidation, tensions eased somewhat under the growing influence of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a regional actor (Curtis, 2016). As the member states of the multilateral organization felt increasingly threatened by the policies of the PRC, they pushed towards negotiations with the PRC. The process finally led to the signing of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in November 2002, which implied that the ASEAN could work towards greater regional integration and stability in the face of a rising PRC, and allowed the PRC to guard against the increasing influence of the U.S. among the ASEAN member states (Curtis, 2016, p. 539; Watson and Phillips, 2016). The Declaration was not legally binding however, and has like the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking which were signed as follow-ups in 2003, not fully brought an end to the tensions because of a fundamental underlying lack of trust among the parties (Curtis, 2016; Raine, 2013, p. 48). Thus, the tensions were relatively eased, but while the non-ASEAN member of Taiwan still gradually cemented its physical presence in the following years, the PRC’s discourse marked a quite radical shift in May 2009 (Watson & Phillips, 2016). On 7 May 2009, the PRC’s government sent a note verbale to the responsible maritime UN commission in which it reacted to the claims of Vietnam and Malaysia by providing a map with the NDL and the explanation that “China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and envoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof (Chung, 2016, p. 58; Watson and Phillips, 2016; Wenjuan, 2018; Zhao, 2018). While this was the first time the PRC presented the NDL claim to the international public, it continued a strategy of deliberate ambiguity by using the terms of ‘adjacent waters’, ‘sovereign rights’ and “jurisdiction” (Beckman, 2016; Chung, 2016; Wang, 2015). The ‘Xi Era’: From Arbitration to Artificial Islands The strategy of using vague and non-defined concepts has persisted ever since. When the Philippines brought the PRC’s claim to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague on 22 January 2013, the PRC’s ambassador to Manila simply reiterated the ambiguous government discourse of the PRC to reject the case (Chung, 2016; N.N., 2018a). Two months after the Philippines started their case against the PRC, Xi came to power and it has been identified that his entry caused an increasing assertiveness in the territorial behaviour of the PRC towards the conflict (Connolly, 2017; Ferdinand, 2016; Liang, 2018; Liff, 2018; Tekdal, 2018; Thornton & Thornton, 2018). Driven by the renewed objectives, the PRC militarized its occupied territory further by starting land reclamation projects since June 2013 (Barnes & Hu, 2016; Connolly, 2017). By creating artificial land and military bases on the new islands in the occupied territories, the PRC and the other states try to not only to improve their military capabilities but also the legitimacy of their claims in the juridical sense (Barnes & Hu, 2016; Chang, 2014; Helman, 2015; N.N., 2015; Tiezzi, 2014; Watson & Phillips, 2016). Figure 9 shows the locations of reclamation works in the SCS:

Figure 9: Map of the reclamation works in the SCS. Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef are the PRC’s ‘Big Three’.

The map featured in The Economist (N.N., 2015).

23

While the reclamation activities continued in the years following 2013, the process at PCA also progressed. Three years later, on 12 July 2016, the PCA rejected the PRC’s NDL claim by declaring it unlawful and the 497 page ruling also stated that none of the island features are qualified to be entitled territorial and economic rights even though states try reclamation to make the island features fit with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to legitimate their claims (Chun, 2017; Lee, 2017; N.N., 2018c; Thornton & Thornton, 2018; Watson & Phillips, 2016). While the Court’s ruling against the PRC can be considered ground-breaking in the realm of international law and a success for the American Freedom of Navigation policy to patrol the SCS, it was a Pyrrhic victory in reality (Lee, 2017; Wenjuan, 2018). The PRC does not accept the PCA’s decision, and stresses that the dispute should rather be solved through individual negotiation among the countries that are involved in the dispute (Chun, 2017; Lee, 2017). Moreover, Wenjuan (2018) argues that the Philippines used international law as tool rather than principle. Being pragmatic, and dependent on the PRC’s development projects, President Rodrigo Duterte remarked for instance that the SCS arbitration would ‘take the back seat’ during his next visit to Beijing (Lim, 2016; N.N., 2018c; Wenjuan, 2018). In fact, Peter Hartcher argued in an opinion article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 4 June 2018 that the countries who actually lose their claimed territories to the PRC were very diplomatic towards the PRC at the 2018 edition of the annual Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, and thereby carefully tiptoed around the subject (Hartcher, 2018). Thus, while the final years of Xi’s first term have come to an end, observers identify that the PRC has solidified its position even further. After ignoring the 2016 ruling, Beijing increased its military capacity on the Spratlys by turning the reclaimed islands into the most well-developed features of the region. Especially the Big Three features of Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef are the best developed, and have led military analysts to argue that the PRC will “prevail in any situation other than an all-out war with the U.S.” (Farley, 2018; N.N., 2018c). Farley (2018) puts it in other words and argues that the U.S. is left in a conundrum. As the PRC can virtually expand at its own will, the U.S. must be very careful in deciding which values it wants to defend and which it should compromise in the realm of its future policy regarding the SCS dispute (Farley, 2018).

24

Methodology Introduction Having understood the PRC’s role and position in the SCS dispute through classical geopolitics, it is time to turn towards the study of critical geopolitics. This section discusses the methods which are used to conduct the Analysis and will also discuss the limitations of the proposed methodology. Before entering the discussion however, the Research Question and its three sub-questions are introduced. Research Question As the Theoretical Framework identifies the key tenets of critical geopolitics, it can be argued that it can be mainly studied through the formal, practical and popular dimension. Therefore, the Analysis will contribute to critical geopolitics by conducting a discourse analysis of the PRC’s discourse on the SCS dispute through the three main dimensions of critical geopolitics. Combining this method with the notion that the PRC’s policy has become more assertive under Xi it leads to the following Research Question:



To answer the question, three sub-questions have been formulated:

1) What was the discourse of the PRC-based think tanks in the formal dimension during Xi’s first term?

2) What was the discourse of the actors from the PRC’s government in the practical dimension during Xi’s first term?

3) What was the discourse of the pro-CCP English language newspapers in the popular dimension during Xi’s first term?

Discourse Analysis As the three questions focus on discourse, the method of discourse analysis must be discussed. Following the definition of discourse, Dittmer (2010) argues that discourse analysis comprises of both the analysis of the claims the discourse sets out and the analysis of the power and positionality of those who construct the discourse. Thus, the sub-questions will develop an understanding of the first point, but can only do so when they have been contextualized (Dittmer, 2010). While the Theoretical Framework has illustrated the background of both sides of discourse analysis, they must now be operationalized. Operationalization Discourse constitutes a framework which creates reality, and the claims that form it must therefore be closely examined. Bryman (2012) argues that attention to rhetorical detail can give a good insight of how claims are constructed. Thus, by using Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, the discourse of the actors from the PRC can be identified (Bryman, 2012). Following this method, three more point are important. Firstly, the deconstruction will most likely point towards a common strategy that underlies the claims of reality and will therefore show what the hegemonic discourse looks like. Secondly, as multiple dimensions are studied, the hegemonic discourse in one dimension might be different in another dimension as discourse remains a form of situated knowledge. Finally, discourse forms reality by claims in language, and it is argued here that the claims stem from events in the material world.

25

Thus, the questions will be answered by deconstructing the language in the texts of the three dimensions. By deconstructing the language in search of claims, the Analysis seeks to identify the pattern that illustrates which strategy is used to form the discourse per dimension. It has for instance already been theorized in the Theoretical Framework that the strategy of deliberate ambiguity has been used by the PRC’s government in the practical dimension. The Analysis assumes however that there is an interplay between the dimensions, and the strategy can therefore also be found elsewhere. The same reasoning goes for the notion of national security, where the SCS can be related to the security of the PRC’s Heartland and terms supporting the claim refer to security as argument. Finally, the identified increasing assertiveness of the PRC has been associated with the slogan of the ‘China Dream’, which is understood as the vision that has been actively championed since Xi took office and broadly holds that the PRC must be rejuvenated by strengthening nationalist ideology and the military to finally establish a prosperous society for all (Ferdinand, 2016; Guo et al., 2017; Lams, 2018). It follows that terms which constitute the claims in discourse can be part of these broader strategies, and the Analysis therefore focuses on this practice. Dittmer’s (2010) second point relates to the contextualization of the constructors of discourse. As the three questions focus on think tanks, the government and newspapers these institutions must get defined more accurately in this section and placed in their respective contexts. Firstly, Abb & Koellner (2015) have outlined the most important foreign policy think tanks of the PRC. As they argue that the PRC houses the most think tanks in the world outside the U.S., it would be impossible to study all of them. Therefore, the Analysis takes an approach which acknowledges that most think tanks are closely linked to and controlled by the CCP and studies the publications (that is journals, reports and editorials) of the think tanks that have published on the SCS dispute in English in the period of Xi’s first term (Abb and Koellner, 2015). Still, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), China Institute for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) and the National Institute for South China Sea Studies (NISCS) are important institutions (Abb & Koellner, 2015; Dixon, 2014; Wang, 2015). The second dimension focuses on the government. This institution has multiple spokespersons and communication channels, and the discourse of the government is therefore derived from an amalgam of speeches, remarks and press releases that have been forwarded by the members of institutions such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and politicians themselves. Of special interest here are the speeches that Xi has given during the 18th and 19th edition of the National Congress of the Communist Party of which the first was held from 8 November 2012 until 14 November 2012 and the latter from 18 October 2017 until 24 October 2017. As these congresses are held every five years, the PRC’s leadership sets the course for the upcoming five years during the congress and the new leadership of the Politburo, what is understood as the body of 25 members who collectively form the top of the CCP, is chosen (Clover et al., 2017). By analysing both addresses, Xi’s discourse can be studied to examine the changes in discourse between the start and end of his first term. Finally, newspapers are studied. As some of the PRC’s most widely circulated newspapers are regarded as mouthpieces of the CCP which are particularly important for their coverage of political affairs, they will be studied to examine the method of transforming the CCP’s view towards a popular discourse (Phong & Chi, 2017; Jaro & Pan, 2018). It follows that the People’s Daily, the Global Times and the China Daily are studied. To contextualize the newspapers, their backgrounds will be briefly discussed in the section below.

26

The People’s Daily is regarded as a leading newspaper in the PRC with a daily circulation of 2,4 million that acts as the primary agenda setter. Being this authoritative, the newspaper should be seen as the chief conduit for CCP interpretations of political, economic and cultural events to CCP members and ordinary citizens (Phong & Chi, 2017; Wang et al., 2017). The Global Times is a daily newspaper with a daily circulation of over 2 million that is affiliated to the People’s Daily, but which focuses on international affairs. Thus, the Global Times must be understood as the link between the PRC and the world (Phong & Chi, 2017). China Daily is the last-mentioned newspaper and was founded in 1981. The newspaper can be regarded as the most authoritative English-language newspaper for covering political, economic, cultural and social issues happening in the PRC to the outside world (Zhang and Wu, 2017). With a daily domestic circulation of 300,000 copies and 600,000 copies overseas, the China Daily is regarded as an important English-language newspaper that attracts a high-end audience such as diplomats and international reporters and is therefore widely cited by international media (China Daily, n.d.; Zhang and Wu, 2017). Being the PRC’s leading newspaper overseas, Zhang & Wu (2017) argue that the China Daily is on a strong mission to brand the PRC to the outside world. Party-run media outlets in general are also working more towards this as Xi made a visit to three of them on 19 February 2016 including the China Daily, where he stressed that “the media run by the party and the government are the propaganda fronts” (Guo et al., 2017; N.N., 2016; Wang et al., 2017). Thus, the Operationalization can be summarized in the Conceptual Model of Figure 10:

Figure 10: Conceptual Model of the Operationalization. The middle box shows ‘Discourse on the SCS dispute’, the general discourse is accordingly composed via boxes of the Popular, Practical and

Formal Dimension. The Popular dimension consists of the China Daily, the Global Times and the People’s Daily which are in turn influenced by the PRC’s government. The Formal dimension is understood through think tanks that are also influenced by the government and publish journals,

editorials and reports. Finally, the Practical dimension consists of institutions and politicians who present their discourse through speeches, remarks and press releases. The arrows show the influence.

27

Limitations Before finally entering the Analysis, a couple of points must be made. Firstly, the Operationalization offers only a limited understanding of the dimensions. As the dimensions are now understood through texts that are derived from the leading CCP oriented institutions such as ministries, think tanks and newspapers, they do not fully represent their dimensions and therefore the entire society which consists of more discourses than the hegemonic CCP variant (Zhou and Yang, 2018). A second point of concern relates to the relevance of the units of analysis themselves. Guo et al. (2017) point out for example that the popular dimension has undergone changes because of the recent rise of social media platforms. However, despite the often-theorized diminishing influence of traditional media such as newspapers, it appears not to be the case in the PRC where political affairs are still more influentially covered by traditional media outlets (Guo et al., 2017). Finally, the think tanks publish a richer amount of content on the Chinese version of their websites. The Analysis of the formal dimension is therefore partly based on translations that are provided by Google Translate which translates the websites from Standard Chinese to English. As the translations might cause a slightly different understanding, the Analysis must be interpreted with caution.

28

Analysis Introduction The Analysis will answer the three sub-questions. As every sub-question seeks an understanding of discourse during the period of Xi’s first term, every sub-question is going to be examined on a chronological basis. Doing so, every part will eventually lead to an identification of key claim strategies that will be used to answer the main Research Question. The formal dimension will be analysed first. Sub-Question 1: The Formal Dimension The start of Xi’s first term can from the formal dimension be characterized by a theorizing about the future of the role of the PRC in the world and the East-Asian region. Scholars of the CASS and CIIS have thereby used a discourse which calls for the development of “a harmonious world” (Li, 2012; Xulong, 2013). As the PRC developed rapidly after 1978, and the end of the Cold War started the development of a multi-polarized and economically globalized world, Li argues that the PRC’s leaders have contributed through their efforts to build a “peaceful and harmonious world” where a security mechanism prevails that jointly works to “avoid conflict and wars and maintain world peace and security” (Li, 2012). When the harmonious world concept is geopolitically understood, a CIIS reports describes it as “living in harmony with other countries, building towards a harmonious region, creating a harmonious and stable international and regional security environment, striving for harmonious development and common development, developing harmonious relations among different civilizations, building harmonious oceans; constructing harmonious outer space; building up harmonious cyberspace; and advancing the reform of international system and global governance” (Xulong, 2013). Thus, the formal scholars describe a world that is filled with harmonious, and therefore peaceful, outer spaces and oceans, which are controlled via a multipolar global governance model. When the harmonious world discourse gets closely examined and is therefore applied to the events in the material world, the discourse can be used to understand the formal interpretation of the hegemonic position of the U.S., and more importantly the SCS dispute. Thus, the scholars relate the discourse to multiple dimensions such as development and security (Fang, 2014). While the development argument is used to argue for a continued economic development of the PRC itself, the discourse also perceives the PRC’s neighbourhood as developing (N.N., 2013b; Ting, 2013). Ting (2013) argues for instance that “the Asian era is approaching” and continues to argue that “the advent of the Asian era is not only an increase of the economy itself, but more importantly the construction of the East Asian region”. As the “East Asian regional mechanisms will have a profound impact on the entire international order”, Ting turns towards the U.S. and argues that “it is difficult for the United States to accept that East Asian countries form their own regional organizations and leave the United States out of business” and even elaborates this point as “the United States is more difficult to accept that such an organization is dominated by China” and “such a situation means that the United States will lose its dominance” (Ting, 2013). Ting’s (2013) argument identifies two important developments. Firstly, it follows the harmonious world discourse when it describes the advent of the Asian era since both discourses are essentially about the development of a new order. Secondly, the newly developing order should also be understood as multipolar, as the argument clearly shows that the harmonious world is against the interest of the U.S., which is due to the word dominance understood as the current global hegemon.

29

Thus, as the discourse describes the development of a harmonious world it is accordingly placed in a context where that reality is being threatened by the notion of the traditional security concept (Ting, 2014; Xulong, 2013). The traditional security concept is defined here as the establishment of “military alliances and the build-up of armaments”, and it is argued that it “will not help global security” (Li, 2012). Therefore, the discourse makes an indirect reference to the foreign policies of the U.S. as “the core of the United States’ Asia-Pacific strategy is its bilateral military alliance system” (Feng, 2013; Ting, 2014). Threatening the discourse in general, Xulong extends the argument to the notion of harmonious oceans and outer space as “some external forces have deliberately planned to spoil the good environment of China’s peaceful development by messing things up in the Asia-Pacific, making overall arrangements in China’s neighbourhood, fanning up flames or adding fuel to the flame, and constantly making troubles” (Xulong, 2013). As the ‘good’ outer space of the discourse is threatened, the author suddenly takes a geographical approach and argues that “China’s legitimate rights and interests in the Yellow Sea, East China and South China Sea are all being challenged severely” and in particularly “the South China Sea issue, some countries are emboldened by external support and continuously play the game of “small countries bullying the big ones””. Therefore, “it has become a major task for China’s diplomacy to find ways to resolve disputes, manage and control conflicts, seek win-win outcome and continue promoting the construction of a harmonious neighbourhood and region while safeguarding its own legitimate rights and interests” (Xulong, 2013). The strategy that emerges here is that the SCS is portrayed as a geographical region that is an essential sea of the harmonious world which is under threat of hostile external forces. In fact, Ting argues that “it is an indisputable fact that China’s associated island and reefs in the South China Sea belong to China”(Ting, 2015). To prevent the external forces from spoiling the environment of China’s peaceful development and continue promoting a harmonious neighbourhood, other scholars have worked on a new security concept that develops a strategy which will be discussed before the Analysis turns to the practical dimension. Although many scholars provided various interpretations of the new security concept, it is argued here that the concept is intrinsically part of the harmonious world discourse. Fang (2014) argues for instance that “China’s core interests are defined as state sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and national reunification”. These core interests can accordingly be applied to Xulong’s (2013) earlier remark of safeguarding the PRC’s interests, and it follows here from the security perspective that there is an implicit argument for maintaining national security and territorial integrity. This claim is in line with a speech held by Wu Shicun on a forum hosted by the NISCS in 2014, where he argued that “the contentious areas” such as the dispute in the SCS “move ever closer to China’s shore” (Shicun, 2014). With the increasing pressure on the PRC’s shore, the new security concept must find a way to deal with it. Therefore, Xi proposed at a meeting in 2014 that “national security must be guided by the overall national security concept, aiming at people’s safety, relying on political security as the basis and guaranteeing military, cultural, and social security” and it can therefore also be understood as “a national security road with Chinese characteristics” (Zhishen, 2015). Thus, national security with Chinese characteristics implies that “economic and military forces are not enough” as “we must also have political, cultural, and moral strength” (Bo, 2014).

30

While this understanding is spread among scholars in the PRC’s domestic formal dimension, it is argued too that “China needs to have a better public relations strategy in communicating its position” when it comes to the contentious areas like the SCS (Nong, 2014). Thus, the NISCS member argues in response to the military developments in the SCS that “China may have more hard and soft power than in the past” but “lacks smart power”. The PRC must therefore “improve its response – verbal and non-verbal – to provocative actions from others”. Instead of “repeating its oft-stated policy of “peaceful development” and its stance of not being a “threat” to the region, China must deliver a strong and clear message of its intentions, a message that is understood by the international community and cannot be misconstrued by Westerners” (Nong, 2014). Despite Nong’s opinion that was voiced in The Straits Times, scholars of the CIIS continued their strategy in a report published in February 2016. While the authors agree with Nong that it is necessary to “dispel misgivings” about projects in the contentious areas such as the MSRI by using an “appropriate set of terms and concepts to expound on the contents of the initiative” they still utilize the peaceful claim strategy. As “there are some Chinese scholars who use such concepts as “strategy” and “military strategy” to interpret China’s international economic and trade policy, artificially adding strategic color [sic] to trade and investment activities of local governments or enterprises” they actually “aroused unnecessary concerns”. Therefore, “the discourse on the Silk Road should not be construed in “strategic” terms” as it “is necessary to emphasize that China will neither pursue unilateralism nor impose its will on others, and to avoid using such concepts” which “may generate misgivings on the part of the outside world”. Finally, the CISS scholars stress that it “is necessary to enhance public diplomacy, dispel unnecessary misgivings and create an objective and friendly international environment” to implement the BRI (Zongze et al., 2016). The report does not only discuss the BRI however, as it uses a remarkably strong claim strategy regarding the events in the SCS. The PRC’s government is according to the scholars “determined to unswervingly take the path of peaceful development” as “its will to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unshakeable” (Zongze et al., 2016). By referring back to national security, the scholars accordingly argue that “a peaceful and stable South China Sea is in the interest of all littoral countries, including China” and the PRC is therefore ready “to work with other countries to ensure peace, stability and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea” as “China loves peace and cherishes development” (Zongze et al., 2016). Having analysed this strategy, it is quite clear that the PRC’s scholars object the role of the U.S.’s strategy. The reference to freedom of navigation is also no coincidence here, as another CIIS report from June 2016 states for instance that the “United States is partial to and sides with its allies, claiming it does not take sides on territory disputes on the one hand, but on the other hand invoking alliance treaties, maritime laws and freedom of navigation to suppress China” as “U.S. officials have time and again questioned the legitimacy of China’s “nine-dash” line in the South China Sea” (Feitao et al., 2016). While Zongze et al. (2016) discredit the freedom of navigation argument in general by arguing that the PRC’s military does not influence it as they state that the “navigation in the South China Sea is free, its security being proved by over 100,000 cargo ships of various countries smoothly passing through every year” and the PRC “is ready to continue to work with countries in the region to safeguard freedom and security of navigation in the South China Sea”, other scholars use a similar argument to react to the ruling of the PCA (Yiwei, 2016; Zongze et al., 2016).

31

After the ruling, Yiwei (2016) continued the identified strategy. The scholar who is the director of the School of International Studies at Renmin University, argued that “the members of the ASEAN have shown their resolve to go forward and not let their agendas be hijacked by outside countries with ulterior motives”. Thereby, Yiwei points directly at the U.S. as he argues that the “United States is a power from outside the region that represents the strongest military force operating there” as it is “in pursuit of self-interest, it continues to disrupt peace in the region and out of national interest in conjunction with its allies” and the scholar is accordingly grateful to the Philippines as “the newly elected government of the Philippines understands these ulterior motives and refuses to be a pawn” (Yiwei, 2016). Instead, in reaction to an ASEAN meeting a year later where a new code of conduct regarding the SCS was agreed on, a scholar of the CASS insisted that the “adoption of the framework demonstrates China’s insistence on peaceful development and reinforces its image as a responsible world power” and adds that the easing “of tensions in the South China Sea will also create a favorable [sic] environment for the “Belt and Road” initiative” (Zhang, 2017). Thus, the SCS dispute forms a crucial part of the MSRI in the formal discourse. The PRC is thereby portrayed as a responsible world power that is on the path of building a harmonious world that utilizes a national security strategy with Chinese characteristics which seeks for enhancing “mutual trust”, in contrast to the U.S., that is portrayed as the hegemonic antagonist which is seeking to disrupt the peace and development the PRC promotes, as it “blames its relatively diminishing role on China and others” since the U.S. has a “narrow and one-sided understanding of China” (Peng, 2018; Zhang, 2017). Finally, Xing Guangcheng who is the head of the China Frontier Institute, clearly identifies how the 19th National Party Congress, that is understood as a meeting in the practical dimension, influences the formal dimension as the scholar argues that scholars “must thoroughly understand the party’s spirit” that was set out during the Congress, to establish an “in-depth exploration of the academic development of China’s borderland studies, and construct a disciplinary system, academic system, and discourse system of China’s borderland studies so as to contribute to the prosperity and development of philosophical and social sciences with Chinese characteristics” (Guancheng, 2018). Following Guancheng’s argument, that links the formal and practical dimension together, the Analysis will now turn to the practical dimension. Sub-Question 2: The Practical Dimension Xi’s first public address was on 15 November 2012, when he spoke to the international press a day after the 18th National Congress was concluded. During the address, Xi made a couple of interesting remarks as he stated that the CCP “has rallied and led the Chinese people in transforming the poor and backward Old China into an increasingly prosperous and powerful New China, thus opening a completely new horizon for the great renewal of the Chinese nation” and does so while working for the cause of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Moreover, Xi started his term and thus concluded the address with the remark that “just as China needs to learn more about the world, the world needs to learn more about China” and Xi therefore hoped that “you will continue to make more efforts and contributions to deepening the mutual understanding between China and the countries of the world” (Jinping, 2012). Thus, Xi’s very first address illuminates two important points. Firstly, Xi introduces the notion of development with Chinese characteristics, which can now be understood as a recurring theme since the formal dimension distinguished national security with Chinese characteristics. Secondly, Xi aims at the development of mutual understanding.

32

While Xi started his first term with the remark of developing mutual understanding, and the formal scholars criticized that approach, the practical dimension focuses on the position that the PRC communicates to the outside world to develop a better understanding. The 18th National Congress immediately did so, as it immediately provided an outline to explain the PRC’s domestic political development model since “China shall not copy the development patterns of foreign countries” as “there is more than one pattern demonstrating democratic politics” and “every country shall choose the social system and path of democratic politics according to its own conditions” since “copycat versions” of Western political systems “often led to unexpected or counterproductive effects” (N.N., 2012a). In addition to the development dimension, the National Congress produced an outward statement voiced in the China Daily which reacted to the speech of Hu Jintao, who is Xi’s predecessor, that discussed an issue in the security dimension. As Hu said that “China would enhance its capacity for exploiting marine resources, develop the maritime economy” and ““resolutely” safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests”, the statement argued that “China’s newly proposed strategy to build a “maritime power” will not lead to marine hegemony” as the PRC “advocates peaceful development” (N.N., 2012b). Thus, from the outset of Xi’s first term the discourse in the practical dimension shows similarities with the formal discourse, since it is reiterated that the PRC is different from the West and moreover an advocate of a peaceful world. To examine the continuity of this strategy, the practical discourse of the PRC, which is from the security perspective defined on the website of the MoD as “a national defense [sic] policy which is purely defensive in nature” since “China places the protection of national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, safeguarding of the interests of national development, and the interests of the Chinese people above all else”, is applied to the communications of the MFA to external affairs (Ministry of National Defense, n.d.). It follows that the events in the SCS serve as the primary unit of analysis. One of the first challenges for the MFA during Xi’s first term came on 2 May 2014 when a company from the PRC started drilling operations to find oil and gas near the Paracel islands. In reaction to the operation, the Vietnamese government sent armed vessels to disrupt the operation and the MFA’s reaction clearly showed the discourse of the PRC. According to the MFA the “actions were serious infringements upon China’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdictions” and “also undermined the freedom and safety of navigation in these waters, and damaged peace and stability in the region”. As “China is a staunch force for maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea” by “promoting cooperation between and development of countries in the region” (N.N., 2014a). A similar claim strategy arises when the case of jurisdiction at PCA is considered. While multiple statements have been made, and speeches given, there is a persistent strategy that runs through these contributions in the practical dimension that try to discredit the PCA. Firstly, the PRC’s government has continuously maintained that “The Arbitral Tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case” and before any ruling was developed the government insisted that the PRC’s “non-participation in the present arbitration is solidly grounded in international law” (N.N., 2014b; Zhenmin, 2016a). Thus, the PRC insists that any ruling of the PCA is invalid since the PRC does legally not participate. Moreover, the PCA is portrayed as a tool to threaten the PRC as Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin argues that “we hope that other countries do not take the opportunity to threaten China” but “work with China towards peace” (Zhenmin, 2016b).

33

Thus, the practical discourse distinguishes between good and bad politics. In other words, countries that adhere to the PCA are perceived as bad since they support an institution that tries to undermine the peaceful development process of the PRC in the SCS, and countries that reject the legitimacy of the PCA are portrayed as good since by doing so they pave the path towards peace and stability with the PRC. It is therefore no coincidence that many of the speeches provided at (international) meetings refer to the concept of (mutual)-trust (Hong, 2014; Jinping, 2017a, 2014a, 2014b; Yi, 2018, 2015; Zhaoxing, 2015; Zhenmin, 2017, 2016b). Thus, countries must trust the PRC to “dispel strategic misgivings” since the PRC’s intentions are essentially good as they are harmonious and peaceful (Yi, 2015). Finally, Xi’s speech at the 19th National Congress does indeed show a certain level of assertiveness as the SCS is only mentioned once under the header of major achievements in economic development where Xi states that the construction “of islands and reefs in the South China Sea has seen steady progress” (Jinping, 2017b). Without entering a speculative discussion on the significance of this speech on future discourse however, the Analysis turns now to the final dimension. Sub-Question 3: The Popular Dimension The popular dimension is understood through the discourse found in the People’s Daily, Global Times and China Daily. These three newspapers have written hundreds of articles on the SCS however, and they describe all kinds of affairs that take place in the SCS. Therefore, as it is nearly impossible to go through all the material, the Analysis aims to understand how this territory is portrayed to the reader in the various articles. While the other two dimensions are diplomatic in tone, the selected media in the popular dimension take a tougher stance. All the three newspapers appear very eager to defend the PRC’s cause in the SCS, as the developments in the practical dimension are often referred to and accordingly interpreted. For instance, when the PRC’s ambassador to the Philippines reiterated the PRC’s position just after the Philippines started the trial in January 2013, China Daily headed that “China has indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands” (N.N., 2013c). While the actual article accordingly offered a more nuanced narrative, the implicit discourse is clear. A similar claim strategy is formulated in terms of the external forces argument that was identified in the formal dimension. Portraying the U.S. as antagonist, multiple articles utilize a strategy that implicitly incorporates the SCS to the PRC. To illustrate this argument, the China Daily published an article on 13 May 2014, just after the incident with Vietnam took place, where the author argued that “contrary to an aggressive image painted by Vietnam and the United States lately, China has been quite restrained” (N.N., 2014c). Instead, contrary to the aggressive image, an article in the same newspaper stated a couple of months later that it “can hardly be accepted as a coincidence that the previously calm South China Sea has lost its tranquillity since the United States” entered the scene (Xinhua, 2014). Accordingly, yet another China Daily article used the viewpoint of an expert of the National University of Singapore to stress that “what the United States means by freedom of navigation is the freedom of conducting military activities in the region” since the U.S. “still keeps its Cold War mentality” (Xinhua, 2015). The People’s Daily contributed to the argument through a commentary where it was added that the U.S. “will definitely pay the price once it crosses the bottom line drawn by China” since the PRC “has rock-solid determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territory” (Zhong, 2016). Thus, the by implying that the U.S. forms a threat to the otherwise harmonious SCS, the popular PRC claim strategy tries to legitimate the PRC’s position.

34

Another similar claim strategy also occurs when the PCA’s ruling is discussed in this dimension. After the ruling was published, The People’s Daily published an editorial where it went fiercely against the PCA by stating that “it is ridiculous that this award supports every single illegal claim made by the Philippines” as such “a biased award has exposed to the world that that, from the very beginning, the arbitration lacked any legal basis or fairness and is nothing more than a political farce”. The editorial continues by stating that “the arbitration is a political provocation and its true purpose is to violate China’s territorial sovereignty, maritime rights, and interests over the islands features in the South China Sea” and “whenever the law is used as a tool of political manipulation, is loses impartiality” (People’s Daily, 2016). Therefore, although in other words, the argument that the PCA functions as tool to threaten the PRC is re-used. While there are many similarities, the popular dimension facilitates claim strategies that are uncommon in the other two dimensions. Firstly, The Global Times published an article in 2016 in which the arguments of Syrian political experts were used to stress that “Washington has always emerged as a power supporting separatists movements in Tibet and Taiwan, even though indirectly, with the aim of tightening the noose on China economically”. Therefore, they argue that “the importance of the South China Sea emanates from being a hub where one third of the world’s maritime cargo passes through” and Washington does therefore “through its allies such as Japan, repeats its “strategic provocations” in that area to annoy China and create a severe dispute in that area to annoy China diplomatically, strategically and economically” (The Global Times, 2016). While it is interesting to see the incorporation of a Syrian perspective, given the conflict in Syria and the notion that the U.S. supports separatist movements, the Analysis will for the sake of brevity not elaborate on it. Secondly, The Global Times takes not only a stance against the U.S., but also against Japan. In reaction to a tour that Shinzo Abe, who is the Prime Minister of Japan, made to the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam in January 2017, the newspaper stated that “he mentioned the South China Sea disputes on many occasions” during the trip “to keep China in check in the name of maritime security”. While Japan is no actor in the SCS dispute, the newspaper still argues that “if tensions build in the South China Sea, Tokyo will boast more power in countering China in the East China Sea dispute”. This other dispute, which is not discussed and is primarily between the PRC and Japan, can following the logic be won by Japan as when “there is an increasing risk of conflict in the South China Sea, Washington will expand its military presence in the West Pacific” which works in the advantage of Japan (Minghao, 2017). Figure 11 shows the cartoon used in the article: Figure 11: Political cartoon of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His ‘Asia-Pacific tour’ is depicted as an anti-PRC campaign, as he is blamed to ‘hype up’ the tensions in the SCS (Minghao, 2017). Finally, in the face of rising tensions, the PRC’s military presence in the SCS is promoted as beneficial for the safety and comfort of the locals on the (reclaimed) islands and Sansha, the PRC’s youngest city (Global Times, 2017; Jun, 2017).

35

Conclusion The thesis has tried to develop an understanding of the SCS dispute through both classical and critical geopolitics. In the Theoretical Framework it has been made clear that although both schools differ, critical geopolitics needs a proper contextualization to be understood correctly when being applied in the Analysis. It followed that the SCS dispute was identified to be at the core of some of the PRC’s projects such as the BRI and more specifically the MSRI. In the meantime, it was also established that the U.S. constitutes the current global hegemonic power, while the PRC is ascending in status but does not aspire to replace the current system. After the long stage of contextualizing, the Methodology set out the following question:



The Analysis took off with the formal dimension and here it was identified that the PRC uses a claim strategy which works via the harmonious world discourse. The SCS was accordingly placed in the harmonious world and it portrayed one of the peaceful oceans, that make up the PRC’s reality. The peaceful ocean was identified to be threatened however, by dominant external forces, better known as the U.S. and its allies that adapted to the traditional security strategy. Instead, the PRC’s claim strategy stressed that it needed to work on expanding and communicating its discourse of national security with Chinese characteristics that seeks for the creation of the harmonious and thus prosperous and peaceful world together with other willing countries it can trust. The practical dimension established that the PRC is on a path of development with Chinese characteristics. The discourse holds that the PRC’s development is peaceful but is being distorted by countries that support and use tools such as the PCA to threaten the PRC. Therefore, a distinction is made between good and bad countries. Bad countries constitute the supporters of the PCA, and good countries constitute those who reject its legitimacy. As the PRC continuously argues for the development of mutual-trust, it is argued that the discourse must be successfully conveyed to others to show the good intentions of the PRC’s development policies. Finally, the popular dimension portrayed the U.S. as the evil ever distorting hegemonic antagonist. As the SCS is perceived here as an indisputable area of the PRC, that does not pose a threat to the freedom of navigation, U.S. military presence in the region is perceived as an irrational threat to the PRC. And therefore, the PRC will safeguard its territory with rock-hard determination. The popular discourse is also more aggressive, as Japan is for example ridiculed for its behaviour and it searches for unconventional methods to construct reality. Having studied the SCS dispute through three critical geopolitical dimensions, a few remarks must be made before drawing the thesis to the final conclusion. Firstly, the discourse constitutes the hegemonic discourse that is being propagated by the CCP and does not represent all discourses in the country. Secondly, only a limited number of sources have been studied meaning that the Analysis has only generated a partial picture as it only represents the sources that were under analysis. Finally, having studied the PRC’s institutional system, it must also be argued that the theory on the construction of discourses did not fully apply to this case. The CCP had a strong steering hand, and it has resulted in unclear boundaries between the dimensions. As discourse is a continuous process, further research should focus on the current speculation of growing Chinese assertiveness and the China-Dream discourse.

36

Literature Abb, P., Koellner, P., 2015. Foreign policy think tanks in China and Japan: Characteristics, current profile, and the case of collective self-defence. International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis 70, 593–612. Acharya, A., 2018. Chinese Party–State under Xi Jinping. Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 53. Agnew, J., 2013. The origins of critical geopolitics, in: The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics. pp. 19–32. Art, R.J., 1996. American foreign policy and the fungibility of force. Security Studies 5, 7– 42. Austin, J.L., 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford University Press, London. Ayoob, M., 2002. Inequality and Theorizing in International Relations: The Case for Subaltern Realism. International Studies Review 4, 27–48. Baldwin, D.A., 1979. Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies. World Politics 31, 161–194. Barnes, B.B., Hu, C., 2016. Island building in the South China Sea: detection of turbidity plumes and artificial islands using Landsat and MODIS data. Scientific Reports 6. Barnett, C., 2009. Deconstruction, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 23–30. Barth, B., 2014. China’s re-emergence as a global economic power: How should Europe respond? European View 13, 233–241. Beckman, R., 2016. ‘Deliberate Ambiguity’ and the Demise of China’s Claim to Historic Rights in the South China Sea. Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy 1, 164– 182. Berg, L.D., 2009. Discourse Analysis, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 215–221. Bilgin, P., 2008. Thinking past ‘Western’ IR? Third World Quarterly 29, 5–23. Blanchard, J.-M.F., 2018. China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and Southeast Asia: A Chinese ‘pond’ not ‘lake’ in the Works. Journal of Contemporary China 27, 329– 343. Bo, J., 2014. Jing Linbo, Institute of Financial and Strategic Studies: Studying the Sixth Session of the Third Plenary Session of the Party [WWW Document]. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. URL http://cass.cssn.cn/xueshuchengguo/jingjixuebu/201401/t20140106_936943.html (accessed 6.16.18). Bowler, P.J., 2001. Evolution, History of, in: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier, pp. 4986–4992. Bradsher, K., 2018. China’s Economic Growth Looks Strong. Maybe Too Strong. The New York Times. Bryman, A., 2012. Social research methods, 4th ed. ed. Oxford University Press, Oxford ; New York. Buckley, C., 2018. Xi Jinping Thought Explained: A New Ideology for a New Era. The New York Times. Buckley, C., Meyers, S.L., 2018. China’s Legislature Blesses Xi’s Indefinite Rule. It Was 2,958 to 2. The New York Times. Buckley, C., Wu, A., 2018. Ending Term Limits for China’s Xi Is a Big Deal. Here’s Why. The New York Times. Burdekin, R.C.K., Willett, T.D., 2015. China’s Financial Sector Development and Global Presence: Editors’ Introduction. The Chinese Economy 48, 173–175.

37

Butler, J., 2004. Jacques Derrida. London Review of Books 26, 32. Castro, J.E., 2009. Functionalism (Including Structural Functionalism), in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 277–282. Cha, C.H., 2017. China’s Search for Ideological Values in World Politics: Chinese Adaptation to Liberal Order Drawn from Political Reports of the Chinese Communist Party Congress since 1977: China’s Seeking for Ideological Values. Pacific Focus 32, 416–444. Chang, F.K., 2014. China’s (Is)land Reclamation in the South China Sea [WWW Document]. Foreign Policy Research Institute. URL https://www.fpri.org/2014/05/chinas-island- reclamation-in-the-south-china-sea/ (accessed 6.7.18). China Daily, n.d. About China Daily [WWW Document]. China Daily. URL http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/static/aboutchinadaily.html (accessed 6.12.18). Chun, J., 2017. When national pride meets naval power: maritime insecurity and Chinese hegemony. International Politics 54, 598–617. Chung, C. C. P.C., 2018. What are the strategic and economic implications for South Asia of China’s Maritime Silk Road initiative? The Pacific Review 31, 315–332. Chung, C.P.C., 2016. Drawing the U-Shaped Line: China’s Claim in the South China Sea, 1946–1974. Modern China 42, 38–72. Clover, C., Feng, E., Hornby, L., Ju, S., 2017. Xi Jinping’s top team: China’s new Politburo Standing Committee. Financial Times. Connolly, D., 2017. The Rise of the Chinese Navy: A Tirpitzian Perspective of Sea Power and International Relations: The Rise of the Chinese Navy. Pacific Focus 32, 182–207. Couper, P., 2014. A student’s introduction to geographical thought: theories, philosophies, methodologies. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Curtis, H., 2016. Constructing Cooperation: Chinese Ontological Security Seeking in the South China Sea Dispute. Journal of Borderlands Studies 31, 537–549. De Hauwere, N., 2017. Marine Regions · South China Sea (IHO Sea Area) [WWW Document]. Marineregions.org. URL http://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=4332 (accessed 6.4.18). Dittmer, J., 2010. Popular culture, geopolitics, and identity, Human geography in the new millennium : issues and applications. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Md. Dittmer, J., 2007. The Tyranny of the Serial: Popular Geopolitics, the Nation, and Comic Book Discourse. Antipode 39, 247–268. Dixon, J., 2014. From “Pearls” to “Arrows”: Rethinking the “String of Pearls” Theory of China’s Naval Ambitions. Comparative Strategy 33, 389–400. Dodds, K., Atkinson, D., 2000. Geopolitical traditions: a century of geopolitical thought. Routledge, London. Dodds, K., Kuus, M., Sharp, J.P. (Eds.), 2013. The Ashgate research companion to critical geopolitics. Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT. Dodds, K., Woon, C.Y., 2015. Geopolitics, in: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier, pp. 91–96. Doevenspeck, M., 2009. Ritter, C., in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 412–413. Economy, E.C., 2018. - China’s New Revolution: The Reign of Xi Jinping Essays. - Foreign Aff. 97, 60–74. Emery, K., 2011. Speech Act Theory. The Encyclopedia of the Novel. Ernste, H., Philo, C., 2009. Determinism/Environmental Determinism, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 102–110. Fang, Z., 2014. CSSN-Room for improvement in new type of Sino-US military relations [WWW Document]. Chinese Social Sciences Net. URL

38

http://english.cssn.cn/research/internationalstudies/201407/t20140731_1274469.shtml (accessed 6.16.18). Farley, R., 2018. The South China Sea Conundrum for the United States [WWW Document]. The Diplomat. URL https://thediplomat.com/2018/06/the-south-china-sea-conundrum- for-the-united-states/ (accessed 6.7.18). Feitao, L., Jianqun, T., Yamei, S., Lei, C., Lan, D., 2016. Managing Sino-U.S. Disagreements in Political, Economic and Security Fields (Research Report), CIIS Report. China Institute of International Studies, Beijing. Feng, N., 2013. CSSN-An adolescent China VS an ageing United States [WWW Document]. Chinese Social Sciences Net. URL http://english.cssn.cn/opinion/201311/t20131130_889915.shtml (accessed 6.15.18). Ferdinand, P., 2016. Westward ho the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping. International Affairs 92, 941–957. Fettweis, C.J., 2015. On Heartlands and Chessboards: Classical Geopolitics, Then and Now. Orbis 59, 233–248. Fong, Y.L., Chia, T.Y., 2017. Framing Diplomatic Relations: A Comparative Analysis of Malaysian and Chinese Newspaper Coverage on Premier Li Keqiang’s Visit to Malaysia. China Report 53, 467–489. Foucault, M., 1969. L’archéologie du savoir, Bibliothèque des sciences humaines. Gallimard, Paris. Foucault, M., 1966. Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines, Bibliothèque des Sciences humaines. Gallimard, Paris. Frantz, E., Kendall-Taylor, A., Wright, J., 2018. Analysis | Did Xi Jinping just become China’s strongman? Not quite. Washington Post. Friedmann, J., 1986. The World City Hypothesis. Development and Change 17, 69–83. Geddes, B., Wright, J., Frantz, E., 2018. How Dictatorships Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Glassman, J., 2009. Hegemony, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 80–90. Global Times, 2017. Spectacular views of islands in China’s youngest city Sansha - Global Times. Global Times. Gregory, D. (Ed.), 2009. The dictionary of human geography, 5th ed. ed. Blackwell, Malden, MA. Guan, W., 2017. Beijing Consensus and Development Legitimacy: The Evolution of China’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Regime from a Law & Development Perspective. Asian Journal of Comparative Law 12, 115–139. Guancheng, X., 2018. Xing Guangcheng: Studying the Nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and Building China’s Borderland Studies [WWW Document]. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. URL http://cass.cssn.cn/xueshuchengguo/wenzhexuebulishixuebu/201801/t20180119_3821 569.html (accessed 6.17.18). Guo, L., Mays, K., Wang, J., 2017. Whose Story Wins on Twitter?: Visualizing the South China Sea dispute. Journalism Studies 1–22. Hallding, K., 2017. Can green finance impact China’s Belt and Road Initiative? [WWW Document]. Stockholm Environment Institute. URL https://www.sei.org/featured/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-how-can-finance-help-to- make-it-sustainable/ (accessed 6.1.18). Harper, T., 2017. Towards an Asian Eurasia: Mackinder’s heartland theory and the return of China to Eurasia. Cambridge Journal of Eurasian Studies 1, CRZXUW. Hartcher, P., 2018. Great powers stepping up on China. The Sydney Morning Herald.

39

Hartshorne, R., 1954. Political geography, in: James, P.E., Jones, C.F. (Eds.), American Geography: Inventory and Prospect. Syracuse University Press, New York, pp. 167– 225. Hartshorne, R., 1950. The Functional Approach in Political Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 40, 95. Harvey, D., 1973. Social justice and the city, Johns Hopkins studies in urban affairs. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Haverluk, T.W., Beauchemin, K.M., Mueller, B.A., 2014. The Three Critical Flaws of Critical Geopolitics: Towards a Neo-Classical Geopolitics. Geopolitics 19, 19–39. Helman, C., 2015. Whatever Is Behind China’s Spratly Island Showdown, It Isn’t Drilling For Oil [WWW Document]. Forbes. URL https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/27/war-with-china-these- tiny-islands-could-trigger-it/ (accessed 6.7.18). Herwig, H.H., 2016. The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer “Educated” Hitler and Hess. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham.

Hindustantimes, 2016. China rents screen at Times Square for South China Sea propaganda: Report [WWW Document]. https://www.hindustantimes.com/. URL https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-rents-screen-at-times-square- for-south-china-sea-propaganda-report/story-3u0gpsWDReEkAZNT8sC5YN.html (accessed 6.18.18). Hobson, J.M., 2004. The Eastern origins of Western civilization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ; New York. Holdar, S., 1992. The ideal state and the power of geography the life-work of Rudolf Kjellén. Political Geography 11, 307–323. Holslag, J., 2017. How China’s New Silk Road Threatens European Trade. The International Spectator 52, 46–60. Holslag, J., 2010. Chapter One: China’s Rise and the Use of Force: A Historical and Geopolitical Perspective. Adelphi Series 50, 19–28. Hong, X., 2014. Remarks by Mr. Xu Hong, Director-General of the Department of Treaty and Law of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the Position Paper of the Government of t he People’s Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1217150.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). Hong, Z., 2013. The South China Sea Dispute and China-ASEAN Relations. Asian Affairs 44, 27–43. Hu, R.W., 2017. China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ Strategy: Opportunity or Challenge for India? China Report 53, 107–124. Humphreys, D., 2018. In search of a new China: mineral demand in South and Southeast Asia. Mineral Economics 31, 103–112. Hunt, K., 2016. Showdown in the South China Sea: How did we get here? [WWW Document]. CNN. URL https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/28/asia/china-south-china-sea- disputes-explainer/index.html (accessed 6.6.18). Huxley, M., 2009. Foucauldianism, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 255–262. Jacob, J.T., 2017. China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Perspectives from India. China & World Economy 25, 78–100. Jaros, K., Pan, J., 2018. China’s Newsmakers: Official Media Coverage and Political Shifts

40

in the Xi Jinping Era. The China Quarterly 233, 111–136. Jazeel, T., 2014. Subaltern geographies: Geographical knowledge and postcolonial strategy. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35, 88–103. Jinping, X., 2017a. Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt and The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1465819.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). Jinping, X., 2017b. Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Jinping, X., 2014a. Carry Forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence To Build a Better World Through Win-Win Cooperation. Jinping, X., 2014b. Remarks by President Xi Jinping’s Special Representative and Vice Premier Wang Yang at the Joint Press Conference of the Sixth Round of The China- US Strategic and Economic Dialogue [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1177467.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). Jinping, X., 2012. Full text of Xi’s address to the media [WWW Document]. China Daily. URL http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012cpc/2012- 11/16/content_15934514.htm (accessed 6.17.18). Jones, M., Jones, R., Woods, M., 2004. An introduction to political geography: space, place and politics. Routledge, London ; New York. Jun, L., 2017. S.China Sea island construction strengthens defense, helps locals. People’s Daily. Kao, S.-M., 2015. International Practices on the Management of Fishery Resources: Lessons Learnt for the South China Sea. Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 18, 165–183. Kaplan, R.D., 2014. Asia’s cauldron: the South China Sea and the end of a stable Pacific, First edition. ed. Random House, New York. Karatasli, S.S., Kumral, S., 2017. Territorial Contradictions of the Rise of China: Geopolitics, Nationalism and Hegemony in Comparative-Historical Perspective. Journal of World-Systems Research 23, 5–35. Kearns, G., 2009. Mackinder, H. J., in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 309–311. Kelly, P., 2006. A Critique of Critical Geopolitics. Geopolitics 11, 24–53. Kim, H., 2013. The Implications of the Chinese “String of Pearls” for the U.S. Return to Asia Policy: the U.S., China, and India in the Indian Ocean. Journal of Global Policy and Governance 2, 193–204. Kim, M., 2017. Avoiding Being a Crushed Prawn and Becoming a Dolphin Swimming between the Two Fighting Whales? South Korea’s Strategic Choice in the Face of the Intensifying Sino–US Competition. Journal of Asian and African Studies 53, 612–628. Kim, S., Deng, Q., Fleisher, B.M., Li, S., 2014. The Lasting Impact of Parental Early Life Malnutrition on Their Offspring: Evidence from the China Great Leap Forward Famine. World Development 54, 232–242. Kjellén, R., 1918. Undersökningar till politikens system 1: Öfverindelning och terminologi. Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift 21, 98–128. Kjellén, R., 1916. Staten som lifsform., Politiska Handböcker. Hugo Gebers Förlag, Stockholm.

41

Kjellén, R., 1899. Studier över Sveriges politiska gränser. Ymer 19, 283–331. Knutsen, T.L., 2014. Halford J. Mackinder, Geopolitics, and the Heartland Thesis. The International History Review 36, 835–857. Kuhn, T.S., 1962. The structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Lacoste, Y., 1976. La géographie, ça sert, d’abord, à faire la guerre. F. Maspero, Paris. Lai, K., 2012. Differentiated Markets: Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong in China’s Financial Centre Network. Urban Studies 49, 1275–1296. Lams, L., 2018. Examining Strategic Narratives in Chinese Official Discourse under Xi Jinping. Journal of Chinese Political Science. Le Thu, H., 2018. China’s dual strategy of coercion and inducement towards ASEAN. The Pacific Review 1–17. Lee, W., 2017. Introduction: the South China Sea Dispute and the 2016 Arbitration Decision. Journal of Chinese Political Science 22, 179–184. Li, N., 2009. The Evolution of China’s Naval Strategy and Capabilities: From “Near Coast” and “Near Seas” to “Far Seas.” Asian Security 5, 144–169. Li, W., 2012. CSSN-China’s Contribution to the Building of a Harmonious World [WWW Document]. Chinese Social Sciences Net. URL http://english.cssn.cn/opinion/201311/t20131130_889894.shtml (accessed 6.14.18). Li, X., 2016. Applying offensive realism to the rise of China: structural incentives and Chinese diplomacy toward the neighboring states. International Relations of the Asia- Pacific 16, 241–271. Liang, C., 2018. The rise of China as a constructed narrative: Southeast Asia’s response to Asia’s power shift. The Pacific Review 31, 279–297. Liff, A.P., 2018. China and the US Alliance System. The China Quarterly 233, 137–165. Lim, B.K., 2016. Philippines’ Duterte says South China Sea arbitration case to take... Reuters. Liu, Y., 2018. Lessons of New Democracies for China. Journal of Chinese Political Science 23, 105–120. Ljungwall, C., Tingvall, P.G., 2013. Is China different? A meta-analysis of China’s financial sector development. Applied Economics Letters 20, 715–718. Lossau, J., 2009. Anthropogeography (After Ratzel), in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 140–147. Lynch, A., 2017. MAP ON MONDAY: Three Geostrategists and their Maps: Mahan, Mackinder, Spykman. Mackinder, H., 1904. The Geographical Pivot of History. The Geographical Journal 23, 298– 321. Maley, P., 2018. Keep China out of Pacific. The Australian. Marklund, C., 2015. The Return of Geopolitics in the Era of Soft Power: Rereading Rudolf Kjellén on Geopolitical Imaginary and Competitive Identity. Geopolitics 20, 248–266. McEwan, C., 2009. Subaltern, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 59–64. Mearsheimer, J.J., 2006. China’s Unpeaceful Rise. Current History 105, 160–162. Minghao, Z., 2017. Abe fails to hype up sea tension with Asia-Pacific tour. Global Times. Mingran, T., 2015. On China’s Challenge to American Hegemony. Journal of Chinese Humanities 1, 313–334. Ministry of National Defense, n.d. Defense Policy [WWW Document]. Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://eng.mod.gov.cn/defense- policy/index.htm (accessed 6.17.18).

42

Mortensgaard, L.A., 2015. The Spratly Islands Dispute – A Discourse Analysis. E- International Relations. Mueller, M., 2013. Text, Discourse, Affect and Things, in: Dodds, K., Kuus, M., Sharp, J. (Eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics. Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 49–68. Muir, R., 1976. Political Geography: Dead Duck or Phoenix? Area 8, 195–200. Murphy, A.B., 2015. Political Geography, in: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier, pp. 374–379. N.N., 2018a. China’s Assertiveness in the Paracel and Spratly Islands: A Sign of Weakness, Not Strength - Defence Viewpoints from UK Defence Forum [WWW Document]. Defence Viewpoints. URL https://www.defenceviewpoints.co.uk/articles-and- analysis/chinas-assertiveness-in-the-paracel-and-spratly-islands-a-sign-of-weakness- not-strength (accessed 6.5.18). N.N., 2018b. The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency [WWW Document]. Central Intelligence Agency / The World Factbook. URL https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pg.html (accessed 6.5.18). N.N., 2018c. China’s South China Sea Grab Now Complete, Report Says. Asia Sentinel. N.N., 2016. Xi Jinping asks for “absolute loyalty” from Chinese state media. The Guardian. N.N., 2015. Making waves. The Economist. N.N., 2014a. The Operation of the HYSY 981 Drilling Rig: Vietnam’s Provocation and China’s Position [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/t1163264.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). N.N., 2014b. Position Paper of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/t1217147.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). N.N., 2014c. China far from being “aggressive” in South China Sea. China Daily. N.N., 2013a. Paracel Islands | islands, South China Sea. Encyclopedia Britannica. N.N., 2013b. CSSN-Provide Security Guarantee for Common Development [WWW Document]. Chinese Social Sciences Net. URL http://english.cssn.cn/research/militaryscience/201312/t20131211_904230.shtml (accessed 6.15.18). N.N., 2013c. China has indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands - China - Chinadaily.com.cn. China Daily. N.N., 2012a. Decoding China’s political logic [WWW Document]. China.org. URL http://www.china.org.cn/china/18th_cpc_congress/2012-11/12/content_27078508.htm (accessed 6.17.18). N.N., 2012b. Maritime power to protect ecology [WWW Document]. China.org. URL http://www.china.org.cn/china/18th_cpc_congress/2012-11/14/content_27105667.htm (accessed 6.17.18). Nong, H., 2014. A dangerous game in South China Sea [WWW Document]. The Straits Times. URL https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/a-dangerous-game-in-south-china- sea (accessed 6.16.18). Nye, J.S., 1997. China’s re-emergence and the future of the Asia-Pacific. Survival 39, 65–79.

43

Ó Tuathail, G., 2002. Theorizing practical geopolitical reasoning: the case of the United States’ response to the war in Bosnia. Political Geography 21, 601–628. Ó Tuathail, G., 1996. Critical geopolitics: the politics of writing global space, 1. publ. ed. Routledge, London. Ó Tuathail, G., 1989. Critical geopolitics: The social construction of space and place in the practice of statecraft. Syracuse University, Syracuse. Ó Tuathail, G., Agnew, J., 1992. Geopolitics and discourse: practical geopolitical reasoning in American foreign policy. Political Geography 11, 190–204. Ó Tuathail, G., Dalby, S. (Eds.), 1998. Rethinking geopolitics. Routledge, London. Oishi, E., Fetzer, A., 2016. Expositives in discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 96, 49–59. O’Loughlin, J., 2009. Superpower, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 82–86. Osborne, S., 2018. China passes law to allow President Xi to remain in office indefinitely. The Independent. Palacio, J.F., 2013. Was Geopolitics Born 60 Years Before Mahan and Mackinder? The Forgotten Contribution of Friedrich List. L’Espace Politique. Peng, Y., 2018. Yuan Peng: Looking at the U.S. Strategy towards China from the Great Debate [WWW Document]. China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. URL http://www.cicir.ac.cn/NEW/html/opinion.html?id=a549cf39-624e-40a1-bde7- a482acfaa522 (accessed 6.17.18). People’s Daily, 2016. People’s Daily slams South China Sea arbitration tribunal for being political tool. People’s Daily. Petras, J., 2012. China: Rise, Fall and Re-Emergence as a Global Power. Global Research. Pu, W., 2015. How The Eleven-Dash Line Became a Nine-Dash Line, And Other Stories [WWW Document]. Radio Free Asia. URL https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/line-07162015121333.html (accessed 6.5.18). Raine, S., 2013. Regional disorder: the South China Sea disputes, Adelphi. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. Ratzel, F., 1897. Politische Geografie: oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges. Hansebooks, S.l. Reuber, P., 2009. Geopolitics, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 441–452. Robertson, P.E., Sin, A., 2017. Measuring hard power: China’s economic growth and military capacity. Defence and Peace Economics 28, 91–111. Ross, R.S., 2018. On the fungibility of economic power: China’s economic rise and the East Asian security order. European Journal of International Relations 135406611875785. Sassen, S., 1991. The global city New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Schreer, B., 2017. Towards Contested ‘Spheres of Influence’ in the Western Pacific: Rising China, Classical Geopolitics, and Asia-Pacific Stability. Geopolitics 1–20. Scott, A.J., University of California Berkeley, International Conference on Global City Regions (Eds.), 2001. Global city-regions: trends, theory, policy ; [selection of the proceedings of an international conference on global city-regions held at the University of California, Los Angeles, 21 to 23 October 1999]. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford. Scruton, R., 2007. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [England]. Sempa, F.P., 2015. The Roots of Mackinder’s Geopolitics. Orbis 59, 613–619.

44

Sharp, J., 2011a. Subaltern geopolitics: Introduction. Geoforum 42, 271–273. Sharp, J., 2011b. A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania. Geoforum 42, 297–305. Sharp, J.P., 2013. Geopolitics at the margins? Reconsidering genealogies of critical geopolitics. Political Geography 37, 20–29. Sharp, J.P., 2009. Critical Geopolitics, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 358–362. Sharp, J.P., 2000. Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s digest and American identity. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Sharp, J.P., 1993. Publishing American identity: popular geopolitics, myth and The Reader’s Digest. Political Geography 12, 491–503. Shicun, W., 2014. Manage Maritime Disputes in Asia-Pacific, Maintain Regional Peace and Stability [WWW Document]. National Institute for South China Sea studies. URL http://en.nanhai.org.cn/index/research/review_c/id/9.html#div_content (accessed 6.16.18). Shirk, S.L., 2018. The Return to Personalistic Rule. Journal of Democracy 29, 22–36. Sicker, M., 2010. Geography and politics among nations: an introduction to geopolitics. iUniverse, Inc, New York Bloomington. Spykman, N., 1942. America’s Strategy in World Politics - The United States and the Balance of Power. Harcourt Brace, & Co., New york. Squire, V., 2015. Reshaping critical geopolitics? The materialist challenge. Review of International Studies 41, 139–159. Stein, A., 2001. Realism/Neorealism, in: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier, pp. 12812–12815. Storey, D., 2009. Political Geography, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 243–253. Sumida, J., 1999. Alfred Thayer Mahan, geopolitician. Journal of Strategic Studies 22, 39– 62. Takenaka, H., Ichikawa, H., Scott, A., Sassen, S., 2017. Global Power City Index 2017 (Ranking Summary No. 10), GPCI Report. Institute for Urban Strategies, The Mori Memorial Foundation, Tokyo. Teggart, F.J., Mackinder, H.J., 1919. Geography as an Aid to Statecraft: An Appreciation of Mackinder’s “Democratic Ideals and Reality.” Geographical Review 8, 227. Tekdal, V., 2018. China’s Belt and Road Initiative: at the crossroads of challenges and ambitions. The Pacific Review 31, 373–390. Terlouw, K., 2009. World-System, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 269–278. The Global Times, 2016. Syrian politicians stress China’s right of sovereignty over South China Sea territories - Global Times. The Global Times. Thornton, W.H., Thornton, S.H., 2018. Sino-globalisation: The China Model After Dengism. China Report 54, 213–230. Tiezzi, S., 2014. Why Is China Building Islands in the South China Sea? [WWW Document]. The Diplomat. URL https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/why-is-china-building-islands- in-the-south-china-sea/ (accessed 6.7.18). Ting, G., 2015. Of the National Context of the South China Sea Diplomatic Activities [WWW Document]. China Institute of International Studies. URL http://www.ciis.org.cn/chinese/2015-07/10/content_8060156.htm (accessed 6.16.18). Ting, G., 2014. International and Regional Security Situation in 2013_China Institute of International Studies [WWW Document]. China Institute of International Studies. URL http://www.ciis.org.cn/chinese/2014-06/12/content_6977322.htm (accessed

45

6.15.18). Ting, G., 2013. Asia-Pacific region shaping into a critical period_Chinese Institute of International Studies [WWW Document]. China Institute of International Studies. URL http://www.ciis.org.cn/chinese/2013-11/13/content_6455801.htm (accessed 6.15.18). Vuving, A., 2016. South China Sea: Who Occupies What in the Spratlys? The Diplomat. Wallerstein, I., 1974. The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Academic Press, New York. Wang, H., Sparks, C., Lü, N., Huang, Y., 2017. Differences within the mainland Chinese press: a quantitative analysis. Asian Journal of Communication 27, 154–171. Wang, Y., Hu, A., 2007. Multiple Forces Driving China’s Economic Development: A New Analytic Framework. China & World Economy 15, 103–120. Wang, Z., 2015. Chinese Discourse on the “Nine-Dashed Line”: Rights, Interests, and Nationalism. Asian Survey 55, 502–524. Watson, I., Phillips, M., 2016. South China Sea: Taiwan enters power struggle [WWW Document]. CNN. URL https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/26/asia/taiwan-south-china- sea/index.html (accessed 6.6.18). Wegge, N., Keil, K., 2018. Between classical and critical geopolitics in a changing Arctic. Polar Geography 41, 87–106. Wemheuer, F., Manning, K.E. (Eds.), 2011. Eating bitterness: new perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and famine, Contemporary Chinese studies. UBC Press, Vancouver. Wenjuan, N., 2018. China’s domestic strategic debate and confusion over the South China Sea issue. The Pacific Review 31, 188–204. Williamson, J., 2012. Is the “Beijing Consensus” Now Dominant? Asia Policy 13. Williamson, J., 1990. Chapter 2: What Washington means by policy reform., in: Williamson, J., Institute for International Economics (U.S.) (Eds.), Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C. Winlow, H., 2009. Darwinism (and Social Darwinism), in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 4–11. Woodward, K., Dixon, D.P., Jones, J.P., 2009. Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies, in: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 396– 407. Xiaotong, Z., Keith, J., 2017. From Wealth to Power: China’s New Economic Statecraft. The Washington Quarterly 40, 185–203. Xinhua, 2015. Experts term US views on South China Sea as “unnecessary provocation.” China Daily. Xinhua, 2014. A calm South China Sea needs no flame-stoker - Opinion - Chinadaily.com.cn. China Daily. Xulong, C., 2013. In Pursuit of the “World Dream”: The Progress and Prospects of China’s Promotion of a Harmonious World (Research Paper No. No. 2), CIIS Report. China Institute of International Studies, Beijing. Yi, W., 2018. Remarks by H.E. Wang Yi Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China At the 2018 New Year Reception. Yi, W., 2015. For China-US Friendly Cooperation, For Global Peace and Development. Yiwei, W., 2016. CSSN-How ASEAN made wise decision about South China Sea issue [WWW Document]. Chinese Social Sciences Net. URL http://english.cssn.cn/opinion/201608/t20160809_3155807.shtml (accessed 6.16.18). Zhang, F., 2017. Chinese Thinking on the South China Sea and the Future of Regional Security: Chinese thinking on the South China Sea. Political Science Quarterly 132,

46

435–466. Zhang, L., Wu, D., 2017. Media Representations of China: A Comparison of China Daily and Financial Times in Reporting on the Belt and Road Initiative. Critical Arts 31, 29–43. Zhao, S., 2018. China and the South China Sea Arbitration: Geopolitics Versus International Law. Journal of Contemporary China 27, 1–15. Zhao, S., Qi, X., 2016. Hedging and Geostrategic Balance of East Asian Countries toward China. Journal of Contemporary China 25, 485–499. Zhaoxing, L., 2015. Building the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century with Open Mind and Bold Courage. Zhen, L., 2016. What’s China’s ‘nine-dash line’ and why has it created so much tension in the South China Sea? South China Morning Post. Zhenmin, L., 2017. Steadily Promote Cooperation among South China Sea Coastal States. Zhenmin, L., 2016a. China Remains Committed to Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in the South China Sea through Negotiations and Consultations. Zhenmin, L., 2016b. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin at the Press Conference on the White Paper Titled China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea [WWW Document]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. URL http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1381980.shtml (accessed 6.17.18). Zhishen, D., 2015. “New Security Concept and New Security System Construction” Released in Beijing [WWW Document]. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. URL http://cass.cssn.cn/baokanchuban/xinshukuaidi/201504/t20150410_1581438.html (accessed 6.16.18). Zhong, S., 2016. Commentary: US should not challenge China’s bottom line in South China Sea issue - People’s Daily Online. People’s Daily. Zhou, Y., Yang, Y., 2018. Mapping contentious discourse in China: activists’ discursive strategies and their coordination with media. Asian Journal of Communication 28, 416–433. Zongze, R., Yurong, C., Jianxue, L., Junying, S., Jinyue, G., 2016. China’s New Neighborhood Diplomacy: Seeking Stability Through Management and Planning (Research Paper No. No. 9), CIIS Report. China Institute of International Studies, Beijing.

Documents

A (Critical) Geopolitical Analysis