Disputes About Disputes: Understanding the South China Sea

Steve Chan. China’s Troubled Waters: Maritime Disputes in Theoretical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Do Thanh Hai. Vietnam and the South China Sea: Politics, Security and Legality. New York: Routledge, 2017. The two books under review here demonstrate some of the diversity of writing within the discipline of international relations. In China’s Troubled Waters: Maritime Disputes in Theoretical Perspectives, political scientist Steve Chan, following Kant, describes his style as “nomothetic,” “which emphasizes attention to classes of events rather than specific episodes” (vii). Strategic and defense studies scholar Do Thanh Hai’s Vietnam and the South China Sea: Politics, Security and Legality is an example of what Chan calls the “idiographic approach,” focusing “on the more unique or specific aspects of the situation” (vii). Chan wants to be able to generalize and compare, and he explicitly eschews narratives of “who did what to whom.” Hai, on the other hand, is keen to make clear that it is China who did something to Vietnam. The most obvious criticism to make of his book is that it is written from an overtly Vietnamese perspective. That is a weakness, but also potentially a draw for those interested in the formulation of Vietnamese policy. Chan writes from an ostensibly neutral position, but, as we shall see, his analysis is rooted within a Chinese world view

South China Sea disputes : still no evidence of historical Chinese claims

Despite China's assertion of its historical claims to parts of the South China Sea, recent arguments by some commentators repeat a number of commonly-held misunderstandings about the South China Sea disputes and does not provide evidence in support of China's claims

The paracels: historical evidence must be examined

Advocates of the Chinese territorial claim to the islands of the South China Sea frequently cite vague historical references in support of their arguments. In order to be properly assessed, the exact references should be made explicit and honestly assessed