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It is obvious that the security environment in East Asia is more unstable and unpredictable. In the South China Sea, tensions over disputed islands initiate a more severe Sino–American rivalry. In the East China Sea, China disputes the control over the Senkaku Islands, and is escalating military activities around those islands. North Korea continues provocative activities including launching of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons tests. This naturally leads to the idea that Japan needs to play a larger role to restore stability in the international order. This paper explores the challenges facing East Asian security in the face of the passage of Japan's new security bills in 2015 and how they impact the future of Japanese security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Asia-Pacific has seen the emergence of a new security dilemma, as geopolitical friction increases due to escalating crises. Significant tensions between China and many of its Asian neighbors have arisen due to maritime disputes, the North Korea nuclear crisis, and a military arms race. There are three main areas of the common security challenges in the Asia and Pacific region today: Chinese military growth, the U.S. military dominance and strategic “rebalance,” and conflicts or hot spots in the region. The future way out of the Asia-Pacific's current security dilemma depends heavily on how the U.S., China, and Japan can work together. This paper seeks to examine three issues: 1) the logic of China's military growth and how serious a threat it has posed to other countries in the region; 2) the major barriers that hold back military exchange programs between China and the U.S.; and 3) the intervening factor, the strengthening of a U.S.-Japan alliance and its repercussions for China. It will provide proposals to establish a collective framework including more specific security dialogues and cooperation in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's security environment in the 21st century is highly complex and constrained by its geopolitical exposition. Its vast borders with 14 countries, territorial disputes on land and at sea, as well as U.S. allies and partners along the first island chain complicate Beijing's ambitions to become a regional great power and deny U.S. power projection into the Western Pacific and onto the East Asian mainland. If confronted with a security challenge, China has increasingly resorted to coercion. This has been seen as a sign of China's growing military and economic power. However, this view neglected the strategic costs of coercion: the diplomatic backlash, the disintegration of the peaceful rise narrative, and the balancing behavior by the target state in response, plausibly in coalition with the United States. Conversely, this essay argues that Beijing's decisions to coerce are best understood as the choice between two bad options: accepting a regional state's challenge to China's national security or attempting to coerce it into a change of behavior, with the likely side-effect of alienating the regional state, prompting closer cooperation with the United States. Hence, observable coercion hints at an underlying grave threat to China's national security that warrants the costs of alienating regional states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has in recent years been actively engaged in multilateral diplomacy. From the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the One Belt, One Road initiative, Beijing is pursuing strategies and promoting norms that are viewed as concerted efforts by China to challenge some of the key institutional arrangements of the existing international order. This article seeks to discuss these contentious issues and assess the rationales, approaches and implications of Chinese diplomacy in initiating and promoting what can be considered as institutional-balancing strategies. The author suggests that the rationales behind these Chinese strategies have as much to do with Beijing’s shifting priorities and the need to address them as with reflecting a degree of dissatisfaction with existing multilateral institutions. And there are more marked differences in Chinese motivations and modalities in security arenas than in economic areas. However, it would be overstating Beijing’s intentions and capabilities if these China-sponsored initiatives are viewed as direct challenges to the existing international and regional orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the South China Sea dispute and its impact in international relations. It analyses why the Southeast Asian states are highly sovereignty sensitive, and how such sensitivity has made non-intervention the bedrock of managing their foreign policies. China has long viewed the near seas as regions of geostrategic interest, and thus the SCS is not an exception. On the one hand it brings hope and prosperity, and on the other uncertainty and threat. At the end, the article argues whether China’s assertive position regarding other countries’ sovereignty claims in the Arctic might undermine its own position in contested areas like the SCS, and suggests that China will at least have to learn how toshare and bear(term coined by the author) as a member of the international community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has gained a high profile in Sino–Japanese relations. Since the 2012 escalation of the territorial dispute, there is no sign of any de-escalation despite economic interdependence, which previously helped ease the tension. Drawing on the constructivist understanding of threat perception and power transition theory, this article analyzes the way in which the deepening of threat perceptions associated with a perceived regional power transition prevents Japan and China from working beyond their subjective conceptions of justice associated with boarders and history. Since 2012, the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute has increasingly fitted into a larger picture of power-political conflict taking place in a power transition in which both Japan and China aim to return to ‘normality’ by propagating their territorial claims, strengthening their military capabilities, and strategic realignment. To that end, this article first introduces a theoretical framework on the centrality of threat perceptions in power transition. Second, it traces the ways in which Japan and China have developed a threat perception of each other since 1972. The third section deals with the escalation of the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute since 2010 and highlights the deepening of mutual suspicion and threat perception exemplified at the bilateral and multilateral levels. I conclude that the Sino–Japanese territorial debate entered a new stage of normative and power-political competition in earning international support for territorial claims in the East China Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In early 2013, pursuant to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty, the Philippines initiated compulsory arbitration against China in an attempt to finally settle their South China Sea disputes. Tired after years of futile negotiating and what it views as belligerent Chinese actions in the Sea, the Philippines hopes that a UN tribunal will reject China's nine-dash line and its claims of sovereignty over much of the Sea. International legal regimes are systems of choice, and China must calculate if it is in its national interest to comply with an adverse award. As an aspiring power, the political, economic, and military costs of ignoring a UN tribunal to China are high. Yet, China's strict adherence to a historic right to the Sea's waters and islands may preclude it from seeing the wisdom in complying with a UN award. Thus, the solution to peace in the South China Sea may sit outside of UNCLOS and may necessitate a freeing from UNCLOS obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U-shaped line in the South China Sea has been recently challenged in the international community and this challenge reached its climax when the Philippines presented China with a Notification and Statement of Claim under Article 287 and Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Lawof the Sea (LOSConvention) on 22 January 2013. In its Statement of Claim, the Philippines requests the Annex VII Arbitral Tribunal to adjudge and declare that China's maritime claims based on the U-shaped line are contrary to the LOS Convention and invalid. Against this background, this article will analyze the issues concerning the related submissions of the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first highlights in Part I the procedural posture of the South China Sea Arbitration (the Philippines v. China) case and the affirmative duty of the Arbitral Tribunal under Article 9 of Annex VII to the UNCLOS, faced with the absence of China, to investigate conscientiously its own jurisdiction by taking notice of all available information and materials whether or not they are submitted to the Tribunal. Part II summarizes the Philippines' claims and highlights their nature as well as the delimitation geographical framework and the delimitation situation in this matter. The Philippines “skillfully” fragments a big dispute with China into various free-standing-appearing entitlement claims and activities claims in order to conceal the sovereignty-delimitation nature of the dispute or claims. Part III discusses the jurisdictional obstacles or objections ratione temporis and ratione materiae. The dispute is outside the jurisdiction of Section 2 courts and tribunals, because it predated the entry into force of the UNCLOS with respect to China. Furthermore, the Philippines' claims are essentially land territorial sovereignty matters, not concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, or are dependent on the resolution of land territorial sovereignty claims. Part IV discusses the jurisdictional obstacles or objections based on Article 298 of the UNCLOS and China's 2006 optional exceptions declaration as well as the Philippines' related Understanding. When defragmented as they must be because of the delimitation geographical framework and/or delimitation situation, the Philippines' claims constitute one delimitation dispute with China. In any event, a dispute “concerning” the interpretation or application of the provisions on delimitation or “relating to” “delimitation” within the meaning of Article 298 has a broader scope than a delimitation dispute, however strict a reading one gives to that term. All these issues have been excluded by China from the jurisdiction of Section 2 courts and tribunals. Such a defragmentation approach must be applied by the Tribunal. In addition, the “nine dash line” claims may present disputes involving historic title or historic rights as relevant circumstances in a potential delimitation between the Philippines and China, all being excluded matters. The Philippines' Understanding may also serve to exclude this case from the Tribunal's jurisdiction. Part V summarizes the arguments made in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]