Government Narratives in Maritime Disputes

By admin-s On Jul 10, 2014

As it stands, Malaysia’s claims in the South China Sea depend entirely on China’s goodwill.

Mina Pollmann, The Diplomat

Malaysia and Vietnam show the role politicians can play in ratcheting up or down tensions.

Chinese mapmakers recently published a new map that extended China’s traditional nine-dash line in the South China Sea into a ten-dash line, expanding the maritime territory it considers to be part of its “core interests.” Mapfare in East Asia is nothing new, and mapping the geobody was an integral part of how European colonizers established their Westphalian mode of international relations around the world. Yet while China frames its disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei as historical border issues, it is anachronistic to extend the concept of maritime boundaries backwards into time. East Asian rulers of centuries ago did not conceive of sovereignty in the way the Western invaders did, nor did they particularly care about claiming specks of rock that had little economic or political value in an age before the advent of this industrialized and globalized era. Because of their small size and geographic distance, the disputed islands lack both indigenous voices and historical baggage – and this is what makes these islands perfect for government manipulation.

As Robert D. Kaplan argues in his book, Asia’s Cauldron, the very “emptiness” of these islands makes them the ultimate patriotic symbols, or “logos of nationhood in a global media age.” This manipulability gives disputant states great flexibility in choosing how to respond to China’s demands. Because it is difficult for civil society actors or independent journalists to access these sites without government permission, Southeast Asian politicians have much freedom to define what these territorial conflicts mean to their respective populations, as evidenced by contrasting the cases of Malaysia and Vietnam. The Malaysian government chose to downplay the nationalist significance of these disputed features because doing so gave them an advantage in the form of closer ties with China. The Vietnamese Communist Party emphasized China’s breach of its sovereignty, hoping that this narrative would help revive the party’s relevance to the populace.

The Malaysian government sees the South China Sea disputes as an opportunity to grow closer to China and gain economic, political and diplomatic benefits by strengthening bilateral ties and cooperating with China, particularly in ASEAN. Malaysia’s “quiet diplomacy” remains popular with its citizens as a “practical” approach and the best route to peace and stability in the region – a principled alternative to the confrontational and public anger expressed by the Philippines and Vietnam. Malaysia and China’s established modus vivendi on the issueappears to be, “China has high regard for [Malaysia’s] position and [Malaysians] don’t simply make public statements.” Malaysia hopes that by working with China in the present, China will be responsive to Malaysia’s claims in the future.