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Conflicts in the South China Sea over territorial and maritime claims, resource exploitation, and land reclamations have intensified in recent years. Political leaders and diplomats have advanced various ideas to contain or resolve these conflicts before they escalate further. One of the proposals, the South China Sea Peace Initiative (SC-SPI) proffered by President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan, attempts to apply Taiwan's positive experience in handling East China Sea disputes to the South China Sea region by calling for all parties in dispute to shelve sovereignty claims while establishing a regional cooperation mechanism for the joint development of resources. This article examines key assumptions underlying the SCSPI and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses in light of the changing nature of the South China Sea strategic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South China Sea disputes have proven to be the most divisive issue in ASEAN. The collective decision-making of the ten member states towards the issue remains ineffective and this has often been attributed to their disunity. However, disunity in the ASEAN maritime commons is symptomatic of the underlying political culture in Southeast Asia. Using Lucian Pye's analysis of power as ritual in Southeast Asian political culture, we can surmise that the disjuncture between the hopes for a definitive Code of Conduct and the resulting lack of consensus in the 2012 biannual ASEAN summit chaired by Cambodia concretised ritualism. This paper's analysis focuses on how intra-ASEAN disagreement in resolving the South China Sea maritime dispute was compounded by Cambodia's 2012 asean chairmanship. It revealed that power as ritual reduces asean integration into a temple in support of the secularised version of the cosmic order and thus tolerating its lack of pragmatic utility and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses conflicts over issues of sovereignty and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (SCS), focusing on the involvement of the U.S. in the region in the 21st century. The author notes that countries such as the U.S., Japan, and India have interests in the SCS and highlights both diplomatic approaches to conflict and the building of military strength in order to address conflicts through force. The SCS is highlighted as a potential threat to maritime security, and multilateral efforts to address the issue by ASEAN are noted. Other topics include China's involvement in the region; a Code of Conduct on SCS disputes; and the 45th annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) on July 9, 2012.

The South China Sea dispute which has spilled over from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, is yet to find an amicable solution. The root cause of this tension is the dispute among the various claimants as regards the procurement of energy resources and securing territorial legitimacy. The entry of the US into the picture has further complicated the problem. In order to evolve a congenial regional environment, the disputing countries must evolve a collaborative outlook, not confrontationist, and adopt a regional perspective rather than proceed from their national interest only and take recourse to multilateral mechanisms as a means to reduce tension in the region. If the prognosis that the ‘21st century is the century of Asia’ is to be made a reality, then the economic prosperity and development of the Asian region will be essential, for which, all the disputing countries should change their mindset from local to global level and keep the South China Sea region as less tension-prone as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In November 2002 the ASEAN states and the People's Republic of China agreed upon a Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. This note, a follow-up to the author's article, "Vietnam and the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea" (Ocean Development & International Law, Vol. 32, pp. 105-130 (2000)), briefly describes the contents and importance of the 2002 Declaration.­ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China's (PRC's) two basic considerations informing a South China Sea policy are China's domestic situation and the regional international environment. In the early stage of PRC history, the Beijing government was too busy with power-consolidation campaigns to attend to affairs relating to the islands in the South China Sea. However, the desire to become a sea power and changes in the regional situation led Beijing to wish to expand into the South China Sea. First, successive outbreaks from the end of World War II to the 1970s--including the Korean War, the artillery war across the Taiwan Strait, and the Vietnam War--enabled the United States to gain leadership as well as control over the sea lanes of communication in the Western Pacific, thus imposing constraints on the PRC's expansion into the South China Sea. Second, the PRC navy has developed slowly and has so far been unable to expand into blue waters. The PRC's emphasis, therefore, has always been on coastal defense and its policy toward the South China Sea has been defensive by nature. In the post-Cold War era, a multilateral security mechanism has emerged in the Asia-Pacific region and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also proposed to conclude a code of conduct on the South China Sea. Although having so far insisted on resolving the Spratly (Nansha) Islands dispute through bilateral talks, Beijing may modify its South China Sea policy when substantive negotiations for the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea are held. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]