The South China Sea and Asian Regionalism : A Critical Realist Perspective

123

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ENVIRONMENT, SECURITY,

DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE  PEACE AND SECURITY STUDIES 24

Thanh-Dam Truong

Karim Knio

The South China

Sea and Asian

Regionalism

A Critical Realist

Perspective

SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security,

Development and Peace

Peace and Security Studies

Volume 24

Series editor

Hans Günter Brauch, Mosbach, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13034

http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP.htm

http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP_PSS.htm

http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP_24.htm

Thanh-Dam Truong • Karim Knio

The South China Sea

and Asian Regionalism

A Critical Realist Perspective

123

Thanh-Dam Truong

International Institute of Social Studies

The Hague

The Netherlands

Karim Knio

International Institute of Social Studies

The Hague

The Netherlands

ISSN 2193-3162 ISSN 2193-3170 (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace

Peace and Security Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-13550-2 ISBN 978-3-319-13551-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-13551-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960224

© The Author(s) 2016

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for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

The cover map on Southeast Asia (2013) was produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and is in the

public domain. It was taken from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas, Austin

and is available at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/southeast_asia_pol_2013.pdf.

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To my father

Day by day

With great patience,

And loving-kindness

He showed me his way.

Through poetry,

Analogy,

And theory

He made me see with my heart.

As we parted

I heard:

“My small bird

The sky is wide

The world swings and turns,

No end.

Mindfully

Child

You must know

The seeds you sow.

Wear compassion

In your heart

Fill the air that you breathe

With no other feeling than

Compassion.

Remember

My child,

Your name

And this patrimony

Mean the same.

Let them be

Your lantern

When I no longer am.”

Thanh-Dam Truong, 22 April 1994

Acknowledgments

The impetus for this book came from a workshop on the South China Sea held at

the International Institute of Social Studies on 24–26 October 2011. Sponsored by

Erasmus University Rotterdam, the workshop brought together specialists from

Asia and Europe to discuss the themes related to the multifaceted character of

conflicts in this maritime zone and approaches to their management. The work￾shop’s main goal was to build interdisciplinary cooperation between social scien￾tists in European and Asian institutions to conduct research on conflict management

measures with a focus on human security. The workshop brought to the fore the

importance of addressing the interfaces between the different research disciplines.

We would like to thank all the participants for the valuable conversations held

during this workshop, Erasmus University Rotterdam for its financial support, and

the organizers for having created an environment conducive to a fruitful exchange.

Our choice of Critical Realism as a guiding framework for this book resulted

from a series of bilateral discussions. The authors are both concerned with ongoing

processes of social transformation under globalization and their differentiated

regional outcomes visible since the turn of the millennium. The following personal

aspects have also fostered our collaboration: (1) our common social location as

scholars in an institute well known for its track record in Development Studies as a

multidisciplinary field; (2) the different places of our social origins (Vietnam and

Lebanon), their hybrid cultures, and our life trajectories as members of the dias￾poras. These aspects have nurtured our travail in cross-cultural communication to

recognize the important role of perspectival reality as a phenomenological issue in

theory building and practice. Recognizing this issue means attentiveness to the role

of historically moulded beliefs and desires, the ways these have given form to

intentions, and the manners of translating intentions into action. The aim of our

book is to synthesize the extant knowledge on the South China Sea along these

lines and to bring a fresh perspective to research on peaceful transformation.

vii

We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights, PD Dr.

Hans Günter Brauch for his suggestions, a language editor who wishes to remain

anonymous, Kathrin Fischer for copy-editing, and Mike Headon (Wales) for a

careful final language editing. We have benefitted greatly from all their comments.

We remain responsible for the views expressed here.

The Hague, July 2015 Thanh-Dam Truong

Erasmus University Rotterdam Karim Knio

viii Acknowledgments

Contents

1 Introduction ......................................... 1

1.1 The South China Sea Seen from the Perspective of Asian

Regionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 A Critical Realist Approach to Research on the South

China Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2 Critical Realism and the Morphogenetic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.1 Clarifying the Meaning of Ontology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.2 The Concept of ‘Emergence’ and the Implications

of Living and Knowing in Open Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.3 Linking Critical Realism to the Morphogenetic Approach . . . . . . . 19

2.3.1 The Morphogenetic Approach in Succinct Terms. . . . . . . . 21

2.3.2 The Concept of ‘Interests’ in the Morphogenetic

Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

3 A Critical Genealogy of the Emergence of the South China

Sea as a ‘Complex’ in International Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3.1 The South China Sea as Hybrid Subject and Object . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3.2 The South China Sea as Colonial Subject and Object . . . . . . . . . . 39

3.3 The South China Sea as Postcolonial Subject and Object . . . . . . . 48

4 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

(UNCLOS III) and China’s Assertion of the U-shaped Line . . . . . . . 61

4.1 The U-shaped Line in China’s Maritime Claims

and UNCLOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.2 Testing China’s Legal Claims: Resilience or Subordination . . . . . . 68

4.3 The ‘ASEAN Way’: Between Self-reflexive Understanding

and Multilateral Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics . . . . . . . 73

5 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

ix

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

About this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

x Contents