Narins, Tom

English

HASP Journals (Univ. Heidelberg)

311Book ReviewsThe 47th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2021 showed that China’s international relations with the Pacific and the rest of the world are developing extremely dynamically. While Canada, on behalf of 44 countries including the Pacific states of Palau and Nauru, expressed concern about China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, 68 developing countries led by Belarus, including the Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Tonga, sided with Beijing and rejected interference in China’s internal affairs. The anthology presents an excellent analysis of China’s relations with the Pacific, the multidimensionality of which cannot be adequately depicted here, even in part. This volume has considerable impor-tance given the relatively limited scientific scholarship thus far on this topic. Roland SeibKeyuan Zou (ed.), The Bel t  and Road Init iat ive and t he Law of t he Sea. (Maritime Cooperation in East Asia 9). Boston: Brill, 2020. XVIII, 220 pages, €125.00. ISBN 978-9-0044-2204-9 (hc)This edited volume presents a collection of writings that aims to assess the maritime implications of the nascent, China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was officially announced by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013, within the framework of the international law of the sea. The “Road” portion of the BRI somewhat confusingly refers to the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), which is ocean based. The MSR is envisioned as using China’s coastal ports to link China’s economy with Europe and with the South Pacific Ocean via maritime passageways including the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean (p. 1). The book is organised into five parts, which consider the BRI in relation to: the use of the oceans; sea lanes of communication and navigational safety; maritime energy and sea ports; maritime law enforcement and cooperation; and access of land-locked states to the sea. Taken together, the overall thesis of this timely contribution involves assessing and understanding the economic and legal challenges that exist in the maritime domain with regards to fulfilling the lofty economic and development promises of the BRI in the near and long term.While Chapter 1 provides a concise overview of each contribution in the vol-ume, Chapter 2 discusses the BRI in relation to maritime economic cooperation in East Asia, specifically from a South Korean perspective. Authors Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee assess the BRI in terms of its potential to enhance regional connectivity in East Asia and clearly consider its growth to be a model for po-tential South Korean-led regional development. Nevertheless, the BRI is viewed312 Book Reviewsas paradox – where participant states must balance “the economic rewards and benefits” (p. 15) of the BRI with concerns over financial dependency on China or even being “subject to Chinese military intervention” (p. 15). In Chap-ter 3, Renping Zhang provides historical background and contemporary facts about the legal implications of the BRI as it pertains to ocean use.Chapters 4, 5 and 6 look at specific sub-areas of international maritime law including the Polar Code, two new Artic Agreements, the safety of passenger ships in Korea and the geopolitical dilemma of the Chinese government’s at-tempt to convince new participant states to enrol in the BRI, while at the same time defending Chinese claims to national sovereignty over vast swathes of the South China Sea. All three of these chapters provide rich detail for scholars seeking more in-depth assessments of these relatively narrow legal concerns.The chapters in part three touch on the policy and potential legal implica-tions of the Global Energy Interconnection Initiative, the role of sea ports, and harmonisation of transport law within the context of the BRI. With regard to transport law (see Chapter 9), author Zhihua Zheng explains the role that the harmonisation of transport law plays in strengthening closer economic ties between China and other BRI-participant states.The chapters in the fourth part examine maritime law enforcement and cooperation from the perspective of bilateral cooperation in fisheries law en-forcement, ocean-based cooperation in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, as well as the very important role played by nine memorandums of understanding (MoUs) on state port control – the most important of which are the Paris MoU and the Tokyo MoU, discussed in Chapter 12. In that chapter, author Chen-ju Chen emphasises the key role in ocean-based cooperation and enforcement played by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) conventions, most of which have been accepted by China (p. 170).Of all of the parts of this volume, part 5, which focuses on the (economic and political) access opportunities of land-locked states to the sea, is perhaps the most understudied and presents questions that have only recently begun to be discussed in scholarly circles. In Chapter 13, Helmut Tuerk provides a very accessible overview of the rights of land-locked states in relation to ocean and sea access in terms of international maritime law. The discussion of a state’s right to the resources of Exclusive Economic Zones (p. 191) is perhaps the most compelling section of this chapter. Equally timely and seemingly unknown to much of the BRI scholarly community is Anastasia Telesetsky’s exploration of the use of regional fisheries management organisations to allow land-locked countries to partially benefit from the marine resources afforded to those nearby states that do have direct access to the coast.This volume combines established as well as emerging concerns relating to the implications for the BRI of international maritime law. While ideally the writing in this volume could have been focused more toward a general social 313Book Reviewsscience audience – rather than a legal audience – this book achieves an admirable feat. It engages with a broad range of important and emerging policy issues that lie at the crossroads of the BRI and the law of the sea and serves as one of the few publications to address this research area, which will continue to grow in significance. Tom NarinsChristophe Jaffrelot, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy. Translated by Cynthia Schoch. Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 2021. 656 pages, $35.00. ISBN 978-0-6912-2309-4 (eBook) Christophe Jaffrelot is among those scholars who have acutely analysed, and been critical of, the changes in the realm of politics and society in India over the last three decades. His book Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy is an extensive reflection on the historical curve and rise of Hindu nationalism, as one of the longest sustained campaigns in Indian democracy, culminating in the triumph of Hindutva, the saffronisation of insti-tutions as well as the state apparatus, and the making of a populist and divisive politician in Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India. Therefore, any assessment by Jaffrelot of Hindu nationalism and the rise of Modi must be located in a much broader space; political, social or cultural spaces alone will not help us to understand the expanse, ideology and the actual working of the Hindutva ideology that remains key to Modi’s success. Modi’s India is equally useful in tracing Jaffrelot’s articulation of “the rise of ethnic democracy”, which is not only a consequence of deficiencies in the accept-ance of democratic frameworks, but is also the product of a series of intensely fought elections, fierce battles over sites, rituals and spaces, and a polarising debate over the meaning of secularism and democracy. The book details that in India the decay of inclusive democracy and rise of ethnic democracy is not just a feature of the past few years or even decades but is the result of a long drawn-out campaign and the socio-political assertion of Hindu majoritarian notions supported by fundamentalists as well as self-proclaimed non-partisan Hindus.The book is divided into three parts and eleven chapters. The first part of the book begins by giving a brief account of shifts in democratic politics and further outlines almost every major political issue linked with the Hindu na-tionalist movement from the 1990s onwards and the rise of Narendra Modi as a populist leader from the early 2000s. Jaffrelot emphasises that the intertwining 

Keyuan Zou (ed.): The Belt and Road Initiative and the Law of the Sea

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Keyuan Zou (ed.): The Belt and Road Initiative and the Law of the Sea

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