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The completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge marks not only a record-setting achievement in engineering, but also a materialisation of ongoing efforts by the People's Republic of China to engage in cooperative projects aimed at expanding and deepening integrative connections with the semi-autonomous Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong. This paper explores the colonial and post-colonial social construction of Hong Kong as a political-economic island, and the implications this carries into the tensions and open conflicts that have unfolded under the One Country, Two Systems agreement. Using the bridge as a case, it critically examines the geopolitical and biopolitical dimensions of infrastructure as a practice of subnational (de)bordering. The case renders visible a contemporary moment where infrastructure occupies a central position at the conjuncture of technology, advanced governmentality and shifting geographies of sovereignty in the People's Republic of China, within subnational city-regional development plans, as well as internationally in projects, such as the geographically expansive Belt and Road Initiative. A close examination of the Bridge project highlights the constructed and contested nature of borders, as well as the complex identities and ideologies that define them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes a critical look at the sovereignty claims surrounding the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands. The dispute has long plagued Sino-Japanese relations and is considered one of the key regional security hotspots, with the People's Republic of China mounting an active challenge to Japanese administrative control. This article reviews the case for sovereignty under both the discovery and the prescription principles. However, the article concludes that one cannot find a compelling case for sovereignty under either principle in favour of either claimants. The paper argues that this is due to the traditional insignificance of the islands prior to UNCLOS establishing exclusive economic zones. Rather, the article suggests that to facilitate a resolution to the disputes, the islands should not be classified as islands under UNCLOS as they do not meet the legal threshold for such a classification, either today or historically. If anything, the weakness of claims that contributes to the intractability of the dispute today shows that traditionally neither China nor Japan has considered these territories as islands in a manner that would be in the spirit of UNCLOS. While such a reclassification would not immediately resolve the dispute, it would be a significant step to remove incentives for the further pursuit of conflicting sovereignty over the islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure has played an agential role in the securitisation of everyday life in the Karakoram high mountains of north Pakistan. Geopolitics bear heavily on this region where Pakistan shares borders with China, with whom it has aligned its foreign and security policy, and with India, with whom Pakistan remains embroiled in a long‐standing territorial dispute. Consequently, in the Karakoram, geopolitical anxieties have reflected inwards onto local populations through both security infrastructure and securitised infrastructure. In this postcolony frontier space, statecraft also frequently bypasses normative legal and administrative structures; such exceptions to normative law and administration have antecedents in colonial statecraft on the territorial margins of empire. This paper also argues that long cycles of military rule have allowed the military to acquire and project technocratic expertise, become custodians of state‐led development, and recently, to assume guardianship of, and to enter into joint financing with China on, construction projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the growing involvement of the U.S. security establishment in declaratory United States South China Sea (SCS) policy, a trend that has been building over 2014–15 because of China's island building in the South China Sea. The focus of that policy is that China's newly created SCS islands will not constrain legal U.S. maritime activity on, under, and over the high seas. This was announced by the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary of State, in Singapore in May 2015, and was a response to the disproportionately large scale of China's unannounced activity that was turning rocks and submerged shoals into credible military outposts. China was accused of undermining trust by introducing a military power dimension to the already complicated sovereignty disputes in the Spratly Islands. These accusations are correct. The reality is that China has changed the strategic balance in the Spratly Island chain by creating facilities on its new islands that will militarily overshadow the garrisons and defensive capabilities of the features occupied by Vietnam, the Philippines or Malaysia. Despite Chinese claims to the contrary, the U.S. military has no doubts that the island building is designed specifically for use as PLA operating bases. Among its more controversial recommendations, this paper puts forth a policy approach that puts more emphasis on deterrence. In this regard, Washington's call for Hanoi to stop improving the facilities it occupies in the Spratlys, probably to appear even-handed, seems strategically misguided. The goal should be to return some sort of strategic equilibrium to the Spratlys; Vietnam is the claimant best equipped to accomplish that. The other aspect of deterrence that will hopefully keep the peace is the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty because of its potential applicability if Filipino servicemen are harmed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Sino-Philippine Arbitration on the South China Sea Disputes was over on July 12, 2016, with a Merits Award in Philippine favor. Beijing rejected this arbitration and abstained from submitting written and oral arguments. Taiwan actively engaged in the debate with the Philippines since July 7, 2015. Not deemed as representative of China, Taiwan was considered capable of clarifying the meaning of the U-Shaped Line it first published in 1947 when seated in Nanjing, representing China then. The biggest maritime feature in the Spratly Islands, i.e. Taiping Island (Itu Aba), has been occupied by troops from mainland China since 1946 and then from Taiwan since 1956. The legal status of Taiping Island was the key to success of Philippine Submissions. The factual information from Taiwan became vital. This paper examines Taiwan's role in this arbitration and the degree to which it could actually speak for China at such legal proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the Tibet question through the looking glass of Taiwan, by considering four dimensions of comparative dynamics between the two cases of Taiwan and the Tibetan government-in-exile (TGIE) in relation to China: territorial, economic, ethnic and cultural. Of the four, the paper argues, Taiwan has high convergence with China in the economic, ethnic and cultural dimensions, and managed divergence in the territorial dimension. The TGIE, on the other hand, has high divergence with China in all four dimensions: territorial dispute, economic incongruence, ethnic estrangement, and cultural gulf. Further, the TGIE is ideologically and sentimentally charged by this divergence and thrives by exploiting it. It therefore should have few incentives to see the lessons of Taiwan applied in resolving the Tibet question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the differential impact of Chinese citizens’ use of traditional media and Internet sources on their political views about the country’s territorial dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Chinese citizens can utilize a variety of conduits of information that allow varying degrees of government control over the way foreign affairs and other controversies are presented. Those who rely on mainstream, state-controlled television, radio, and printed media for information on the disputes, and those who turn to less-prescriptive sources on the Internet, can be expected to have distinctive political attitudes. We use original 2013 Chinese survey data to explore patterns of media consumption and citizens’ attention levels towards the Sino-Japanese island dispute, and views regarding the government’s performance in handling the issue and appropriate policy responses. Those who derive their information from traditional media tend to view the government’s performance more positively, and are more likely both to favour compromise and to oppose the use of military force. By comparison, information from Internet sources, which is more user selfselective, sustains a wider range of attitudes about the Sino-Japanese island dispute and the appropriate policies for dealing with it, including both militaristic and moderate stances. All told, we find that Chinese citizens bring distinctive predispositions to their consumption of media information on this issue, but our results also clearly reflect an ongoing, pervasive influence for China’s state-run traditional media. These findings have important implications for considering the resilience of authoritarian systems in the Internet era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In the past few years, China has experienced a rapid development of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN.) In particular, the formation of CAFTA (the China--ASEAN Free Trade Area) will greatly encourage Chinese multinational corporations to "go out" and invest in ASEAN. However, the South China Sea disputes between China and several ASEAN countries have increased the political risks of China's FDI in ASEAN. This paper starts with an analysis of the political risks of China's FDI in ASEAN against the background of the South China Sea disputes, explains how to view and assess these political risks, and then comes up with a systematic and comprehensive mechanism for coping with the political risks of China's FDI in ASEAN against the background of the South China Sea disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequent occurrence of land expropriation disputes in rural areas of China has attracted attention of scholars to study causes. Most existing studies discuss causes from "structure-institution" level. In other words, land expropriation disputes are caused by existing imperfect institutions, regulations, and policies. Such analysis model points institutional causes, but pays little attention to policy implementation process, especially the subjective initiative of parties concerned. This paper described a decade-long land expropriation dispute case in detail. Through description of event and process and survey of reasons of actors, it revealed factors resulting in occurrence and upgrade of dispute, and analyzed factors and their interactions with the aid of Smith Process Model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1970s, overseas Chinese students in the United States protested against Japan's claim to the Diaoyutai Islands. Emerging at a time when the rivalry between the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland to represent China was at a critical juncture, the movement soon found itself caught up in the struggle between the two sides. It was out of the Protect Diaoyutai Movement that a new ideological constituent of overseas Chinese nationalism came to light, looking to the PRC as the hope for a sovereign China. It became a predominant force among overseas Chinese activists and the movement changed its direction from defending Diaoyutai to seeking Taiwan's reunification with the mainland. The paper discusses the factors that shaped and eventually radicalized the movement. It asserts that the event was a turning point in the evolution of overseas Chinese nationalism which transformed an undercurrent into a surging tide that gave rise to a new Chinese national identity among overseas Chinese in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has adopted a state-centered approach towards energy security to deepen political and commercial relationships with all energy producing nations and to aggressively invest in oil fields and pipelines around the world. Applying this approach to its relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbors has produced mixed results. While China's energy diplomacy has brought about opportunities for cooperation with some of its neighbors, notably some countries in Central Asia and continental Southeast Asia, it has become a source of conflict with some other neighbors, especially those with border disputes over maritime territories which may have rich natural resources. This paper examines China's state-led search for energy security and its implications for China's relations with Asia-Pacific countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An armed conflict between Taiwan and China is not unthinkable in the future. For historical, geographical, economic, and diplomatic reasons, Japan would not be able to stand on the sidelines. Relying on three major concepts—national interests, path dependence and balance of power, this paper explores Japan's three possible roles in the event of a cross-Strait conflict. First, Japan could pass the buck, staying out of the conflict as much as possible and providing at most logistical and intelligence support for an American military operation. Second, it could balance power, throwing its weight behind Washington against Beijing. Finally, it could play peacemaker. At the end of the article, the author discusses several key factors that would shape Tokyo's decision-making in the event of a cross-Strait conflict and assesses the relative probability of each option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the death of Mao Tse-tung, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone a modernisation process in line with its changed strategic doctrine. The shift from 'people's war' to 'limited war under high-tech conditions' has seen a reduction in army personnel, selected weapons purchases, combined arms operations training and greater force projection. China's neighbours--particularly India--have felt threatened by these changes. This paper argues, however, that the PLA's military capabilities should not be exaggerated as its modernisation has met with many problems and it does not necessarily reflect an aggressive intent. While the PLA has overall superiority with respect to Indian forces, the latter currently appears to have the edge with respect to conventional forces along their disputed border. Moreover, China's strategic attention appears to be more concentrated on the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]