PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea

PRC Assertiveness in
the South China Sea

Andrew Chubb

Measuring Continuity and Change,
1970–2015

Why has the People’s
Republic of China (RPC) courted international opprobrium, alarmed its neigh-
bors, and risked military conºict in pursuit of its claims covering vast areas of
the South China Sea? Despite its central importance to understanding the se-
curity of the world’s most economically vibrant region in the twenty-ªrst cen-
tury, the question has remained unresolved. Many realist observers ªnd
China’s regional expansion unsurprising in light of its growing relative mate-
rial power, but others identify the maritime policy change instead with unfa-
vorable developments for Beijing.1 Area specialists focusing on domestic
political factors are similarly divided, with some pointing to bottom-up chal-
lenges to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from rising
popular nationalism, and others arguing that elite vested interests or overzeal-
ous frontline agencies lie behind the maritime expansion.2 Proponents of

Andrew Chubb is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Reli-
gion at Lancaster University.

The author is grateful to Thomas Christensen, Courtney Fung, Alastair Iain Johnston, Isaac
Kardon, and many past fellows of the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program for help-
ful feedback on an earlier draft; Zachary Haver and Yao Wang for research assistance; Geremie
Barmé and Ryan Manuel for an invaluable Library Fellowship at the Australian Centre on China
in the World; and Di Pin Ouyang of the Asian Collections Reading Room at the National Library
of Australia.

1. Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Sources of Chinese Conduct: Explaining Beijing’s Assertiveness,»
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 37, Non. 4 (2014), pp. 133–150, doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2014.1002160;
John J. Mearsheimer, “The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to U.S. Power in Asia,” Chinese
Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, Non. 4 (Hiver 2010), pp. 381–396, doi.org/10.1093/cjip/
poq016; Hugh White, “Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing,” Quar-
terly Essay, Août 2010, https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2010/08/power-shift; Ely
Ratner, “Course Correction: How to Stop China’s Maritime Advance,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 96,
Non. 4 (July/August 2017), pp. 64–72, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-06-13/course-
correction; Michael D. Swaine and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Assertive Behavior—Part Two: Le
Maritime Periphery,” China Leadership Monitor, Non. 35 (Été 2011), https://www.hoover.org/
research/chinas-assertive-behavior-part-two-maritime-periphery;
and Dingding Chen and
Xiaoyu Pu, “Correspondence: Debating China’s Assertiveness,” International Security, Vol. 38,
Non. 3 (Hiver 2013/2014), pp. 176–183, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00151.
2. Robert S. Ross, “China’s Naval Nationalism: Sources, Prospects, and the U.S. Response,” Inter-
national Security, Vol. 34, Non. 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 46–81, doi.org/10.1162/isec.2009.34.2.46; Suisheng
Zhao, “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: The Strident Turn," Revue
of Contemporary China, Vol. 22, Non. 82 (2013), pp. 535–553, doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2013.766379;
Thomas J. Christensen, “The Advantages of an Assertive China: Responding to Beijing’s Abrasive

International Security, Vol. 45, Non. 3 (Hiver 2020/21), pp. 79–121, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00400
© 2021 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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International Security 45:3 80

individual-level explanations diverge on which Chinese leader is supposed
to be responsible for the push through the maritime periphery—a weak
Hu Jintao unable to restrain confrontational conduct or a strong, hawkish
Xi Jinping driving it.3

This article argues that understanding the dynamics of the South China Sea
conºict depends on recognizing longer-term patterns of continuity and change
in the PRC’s behavior. In territorial and maritime disputes, lines of action in-
troduced at one point in time have cumulative effects, creating the conditions
for further changes in behavior in the future, and crucial decisions can take
years and even decades to manifest. I show that the most recent turning point
in China’s policy—the commencement of a rapid administrative buildup and
the introduction of regular coercive actions—occurred in 2007, several years
earlier than most analyses have recognized. À son tour, I trace this behavioral shift
to decisions taken in the late 1990s toward strategic objectives that emerged in
the 1970s. The article reveals these patterns by constructing a new typology of
state behaviors in maritime and territorial disputes, applying it to a unique
time series dataset of PRC behavior in the South China Sea from 1970 à 2015,
and analyzing the key turning points.

Assessing competing explanations for the PRC’s South China Sea behavior
has proved challenging given a lack of clarity on exactly what has changed,
and when. Few analyses have provided precise deªnitions or measurements of
the changes they seek to explain. Many have focused on coercion, but this ex-
cludes key aspects of China’s maritime expansion, such as its large-scale
island-building program in the Spratly Islands or the increasing on-water pres-

Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, Non. 2 (March/April 2011), pp. 54–68, https://www
.foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-asia/2011-02-21/advantages-assertive-china; Linda Jakobson,
China’s Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors (Sydney: Lowy Institute, 2014), https://www
Inter-
.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/ªles/chinas-unpredictable-maritime-security-actors_3.pdf;
national Crisis Group (hereafter ICG), Stirring Up the South China Sea (je), Asia Report No. 223
(Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2012), pp. 18–26, https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/
223-stirring-up-the-south-china-sea-i.pdf; and Audrye Wong, “More than Peripheral: How Prov-
inces Inºuence China’s Foreign Policy,” China Quarterly, Vol. 235 (Septembre 2018), pp. 735–757,
doi.org/10.1017/S0305741018000930.
3. You Ji, “The PLA and Diplomacy: Unraveling Myths about the Military Role in Foreign Policy
Making,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 23, Non. 86 (2014), pp. 236–254, doi.org/10.1080/
10670564.2013.766379; Robert D. Blackwill and Kurt M. Campbell, Xi Jinping on the Global Stage:
Chinese Foreign Policy under a Powerful but Exposed Leader (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign
Relations, 2016), p. 17; Irene Chan and Mingjiang Li, “New Chinese Leadership, New Policy in the
South China Sea Dispute?” Journal of Chinese Political Science, Non. 20 (2015), pp. 35–50, est ce que je.org/
10.1007/s11366-014-9326-y; and Nien-Chung Chang Liao, “The Sources of China’s Assertiveness:
The System, Domestic Politics or Leadership Preferences?” International Affairs, Vol. 92, Non. 4 (Juillet
2016), pp. 817–833, doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12655.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 81

ence of ostensibly unarmed surveillance ships.4 Such behaviors are captured
by the concept of gray-zone conºict, deªned as “attempts to achieve one’s se-
curity objectives without resort to direct and sizable use of force.”5 China’s
maritime dispute policy has rarely left the gray zone, however—a 1988 naval
battle with Vietnam being its most recent military clash—which limits the con-
cept’s utility in identifying variation over time.

The most common label attached to China’s current maritime behavior is
“assertive,” but the meaning of this term remains imprecise.6 Attempts to de-
ploy it analytically have produced a mushrooming list of modiªers: depuis
“passive assertiveness,” “non-confrontational assertiveness,” and “reactive as-
sertiveness,” to “creeping assertiveness,” “militant assertiveness,” and “ag-
gressive assertiveness.” Given this array of descriptive characterizations of the
changes in China’s behavior, it is unsurprising that there is little agreement
on when the key policy change occurred, with estimates ranging from the
early 2000s to Xi Jinping’s ascension in late 2012 et au-delà. Answering these
what and when questions is a crucial step toward understanding the why.

The article begins by deªning and disaggregating the concept of assertive-
ness into a typology suitable for measuring quantitative and qualitative
change in state behavior over time. Works investigating territorial disputes as
a cause of militarized escalation and war have focused on three generic state
behaviors, summarized by Taylor Fravel as compromise, delay, and use of
force.7 But within this rubric, the PRC has pursued a near-continuous delaying

4. Ketian Zhang, “Cautious Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing’s Use of Coercion in the South
China Sea,” International Security, Vol. 44, Non. 1 (Été 2019), pp. 117–159, est ce que je.org/10.1162/
isec_a_00354. On the role of unarmed Coast Guard vessels and their recent (concernant)arming, see Ryan D.
Martinson, Echelon Defense: The Role of Sea Power in Chinese Maritime Dispute Strategy (Newport,
R.I.: Naval War College Press, 2018); and Ryan D. Martinson, “China Maritime Report No. 2: Le
Arming of China’s Maritime Frontier,” China Maritime Studies Institute (Newport, R.I.: Naval
War College Press, 2017), pp. 1–2.
5. Michael Green et al., Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: The Theory and Practice of Gray Zone
Deterrence (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017), p. 21; and An-
drew S. Erickson and Ryan D. Martinson, éd., China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 2019).
6. Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” International
Sécurité, Vol. 37, Non. 4 (Spring 2013), pp. 7–48, doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00354.
7. M.. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conºict in China’s Territorial Dis-
putes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 5. The leading quantitative resource on
maritime disputes is the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) dataset, which includes claim initiation,
militarized escalation, and peaceful settlement attempts for maritime disputes in Europe and the
Western Hemisphere from 1900 à 2001. Like the Militarized Interstate Disputes data it builds
upon, the ICOW does not distinguish state actions below the threshold of threat or use of force.
Paul R. Hensel et al., “Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues,»

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International Security 45:3 82

strategy in the South China Sea. The framework developed here captures the
ways states advance their positions in such disputes without resorting to ei-
ther force or compromise. It also takes account of particular features of mari-
time spaces as objects of dispute—a domain in which the dangers of conºict
over maritime disputes are widely believed to have increased in recent de-
cades, especially in East Asia.8

The empirics presented here address key shortcomings in the information
sources upon which most existing analyses of the South China Sea rely. Few
studies have attempted to measure China’s maritime behavior using events
data or to control for a major skew in the supply of information on such
events.9 In 1988, when the PRC attacked Vietnam in the Spratly Islands and
seized six reefs, the confrontation barely made it onto the international media
agenda. Aujourd'hui, vast volumes of information circulate on daily developments
in the South China Sea. China’s increased economic and military power has
drawn attention to its actions from foreign governments and media, tandis que le
internet has dramatically expanded the volume of information about current
events more generally. Beijing’s own growing openness about its activities,
meanwhile, has further biased the information supply toward recent events.
To address this challenge, I employ an original time series of changes in PRC
behavior in the South China Sea dispute from 1970 à 2015 that draws on
sources not subject to the present-centric bias in the open-source English-
language information supply. These include internal-circulation PRC chron-
ologies of events in the South China Sea, advisory reports from Chinese
government specialists, scientiªc reports, and yearbooks of PRC maritime
agencies. Analysis of the data shows both a long-term trend of increasing
PRC assertiveness since the 1970s, as well as four breakpoints—in 1973, 1987,

Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 52, Non. 1 (Février 2008), pp. 117–143, doi.org/10.1177%2F0022
002707310425.
8. Lee Hsien Loong, “Scenarios For Asia in the Next 20 Years,” speech at Nikkei Conference, À-
kyo, May 22, 2014, https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/scenarios-asia-next-20-years; Michael D.
Swaine et al., Conºict and Cooperation in the Asia-Paciªc Region: A Strategic Net Assessment (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015); David C. Gompert, Astrid Stuth
Cevallos, and Cristina L. Garafola, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable (Santa Monica,
Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2016), p. 8; ICG, Stirring Up the South China Sea (je); and ICG, Dangerous
Waters (Beijing: International Crisis Group, 2013).
9. The most systematic longitudinal study on PRC behavior in the South China Sea to date is
Zhang’s time series of PRC coercive acts since 1990. Because it is assembled to test a theory of the
conditions under which the PRC engages in compellence, the time series does not measure
the PRC’s behavior per se, but rather Beijing’s responses to two speciªc kinds of unilateral admin-
istrative behavior by Southeast Asian claimants. Zhang, “Cautious Bully.”

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 83

1992, and 2007—marked by signiªcant increases in activity and the introduc-
tion of new methods, constituting important changes in China’s policy toward
the issue.10 The data pinpoint two key differences between China’s post-2007
policy and its earlier surges in the South China Sea: the protracted duration of
its administrative buildup and the introduction of regular coercive actions.

These empirical ªndings enable a new evaluation of a range of hypothesized
explanations for Beijing’s policy in the South China Sea, helping advance theo-
retical debate about a key case of foreign policy change in the twenty-ªrst cen-
tury.11 Policy decisions may take years to manifest in observable behavior, donc
advancing positive claims about the causes of state behavior requires docu-
mentary evidence and other qualitative sources. The latter part of the article
therefore turns to focused analyses of the four turning points in the PRC’s con-
duct, drawing on Chinese party-state sources. The surges in PRC assertiveness
dans 1973, 1987, et 1992 étaient, to a signiªcant degree, opportunistic responses to
favorable geopolitical circumstances. In contrast, the processes that produced
le 2007 turning point were set in motion nearly ten years earlier, when Beijing
decided to develop new domestic legal-administrative structures, organiza-
tional systems, and maritime law enforcement capabilities designed to extend
wide-ranging state administrative authority over the maritime spaces around
China’s periphery. À son tour, tracing these four turning points shows how this
goal, and the assertive state behaviors that seek to realize it, materialized from
several decades of interplay between the PRC party-state and the emerging in-
ternational Law of the Sea regime.

The remainder of the article proceeds in four steps. The ªrst section builds a
conceptual framework to render assertiveness a tractable variable with which
to measure state behavior in maritime and territorial disputes. The second
disaggregates a four-way typology of assertive actions. The third section
operationalizes this framework, applying it to an original set of events data on
China’s actions in the South China Sea from 1970 à 2015. Guided by the quan-
titative data, the fourth section provides focused, qualitative examinations of
the four identiªable breakpoints, engaging existing works on the PRC’s past

10. Charles F. Hermann, “Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redirect Foreign
Policy,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, Non. 1 (Mars 1990), pp. 3–21, doi.org/10.2307/
2600403.
11. Ibid.; Jakob Gustavsson, “How Should We Study Foreign Policy Change?” Cooperation and
Conºict, Vol. 34, Non. 1 (Mars 1999), pp. 73–95, doi.org/10.1177%2F00108369921961780; and David
UN. Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Presse, 2005).

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International Security 45:3 84

and present policies and drawing new insights from Chinese party-state
sources. The conclusion considers some broader implications of these ªnd-
ings for analysts and policymakers.

Assertiveness as a Variable

The word “assertiveness” has arguably deªned the English-language dis-
course on the PRC’s recent policies on its maritime periphery, and perhaps its
foreign policy in general.12 Yet the term has so far not formed part of any estab-
lished theory of state behavior in international relations. Iain Johnston inferred
from common usage that it refers to “diplomacy that explicitly threatens to im-
pose costs on another actor that are clearly higher than before”—that is, plus
coercive.13 But in relation to China’s maritime disputes at least, the term has
been associated with various classes of behavior, such as legal-administrative
acts and infrastructural projects (par exemple., artiªcial island-building) that do not nec-
essarily involve coercion.14

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary deªnes assertiveness as “bold or conªdent
statements and behavior.” This deªnition usefully covers the array of meth-
ods, both verbal and physical, and not necessarily directly confrontational, par
which states pursue their interests in disputes such as the South China Sea.
Adapting this standard deªnition to the context of maritime and territorial dis-
putes, I deªne assertiveness as statements and behaviors that strengthen the
state’s position in the dispute.

This deªnition serves three purposes. D'abord, it breaks assertiveness down
into observable events—statements and actions—that can be identiªed with-
out the need for strong, subjective judgments about the state of mind of the ac-
tor. In the context of disputes constructed around speciªc geographies, le
“bold or conªdent” quality of a state’s statements and behavior can instead be
inferred from their impact on the positions of the parties in relation to the ob-
ject of dispute, as discussed in further detail below. This renders assertiveness
a tractable variable for measuring change in state behavior.

Deuxième, the deªnition captures the broad sweep of state actions over a con-

12. Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?»; and Björn Jerdén, “The
Assertive China Narrative: Why It Is Wrong and How So Many Still Bought into It,” Chinese Jour-
nal of International Politics, Vol. 7, Non. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 47–88, doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pot019.
13. Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” pp. 9-dix.
14. Some of the modiªers often attached to assertiveness suggest coercive qualities (militant, ag-
gressive), but others disassociate assertiveness from coercion (passive, creeping).

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 85

tested possession. Unless a dispute is dormant or subject to a cooperative
agreement that simultaneously strengthens both parties’ positions, tel que
joint resource development, merely maintaining a disputed claim involves
some level of assertiveness. A state’s assertiveness can thus be understood
as a continuous scale variable whose relative value is determined by the num-
ber of assertive acts introduced, entretenu, or discontinued over a given
time period.

The third purpose is to link the concept of assertiveness with earlier con-
ceptual work on territorial dispute behavior by placing the state’s position in
the dispute at the center of the deªnition. A state’s position comprises three el-
ements: (1) overall administrative presence in the disputed area; (2) ability to
secure interests there using military force; et (3) ability to sustain the claim in
international law. This three-point formulation builds on Fravel’s deªnition
of a state’s bargaining position as “the amount of disputed territory that a state
controls and its ability to project military power over the entire area under
dispute,”15 but with two necessary modiªcations. One is to use overall admin-
istrative presence, rather than the amount of disputed land occupied, as the
ªrst component. The other is the inclusion of legal claim viability.

Overall administrative presence refers to all state assets within the disputed
area—from mobile units such as vehicles, ships, and aircraft, to ªxed facilities
such as roads, buildings, airstrips, ports, and sovereignty markers, ainsi que
less visible manifestations of state presence such as cellular networks and sci-
entiªc equipment. Unlike in land disputes, where lines of actual control keep
each state’s ofªcial presence relatively distinct, disputed maritime spaces and
uninhabited features are often subject to simultaneous or overlapping control.
Dans de tels cas, administrative presence, rather than occupation, is the main
mode by which state authority is exercised over the disputed possession. Reg-
ular patrolling by government boats, Par exemple, has consolidated China’s
presence in the space around the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East
China Sea and around features in the South China Sea. Ainsi, overall adminis-
trative presence includes, but is not limited to, the amount of disputed land
under occupation.

Legal claim viability is a key component of a state’s bargaining position in
territorial and maritime disputes, primarily because international law forms
an important element of state ofªcials’ own understanding of their bargaining

15. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 28, 38.

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International Security 45:3 86

positions. This is particularly so for maritime claims, which are governed by
a codiªed international treaty with 159 state parties—the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLCOS)—but it is also evident in the
increasing use of international legal processes in terrestrial disputes.16 The
stronger a state considers its claim to be under international law, the greater its
potential to resolve the dispute in its favor without facing the costs and unpre-
dictability of using force. Inversement, when a state’s legal position is chal-
lenged, its potential for cheaply accessing favorable outcomes diminishes,
compromising its overall position. This helps explain the sensitivity of states
to potentially legally signiªcant, but otherwise relatively innocuous, ac-
tions by adversaries.17

Deªning assertiveness in maritime and territorial disputes as statements
and behaviors that strengthen the state’s position enables its operationaliza-
tion as a study variable, but assertive conduct thus deªned can vary widely in
its implications for international stability. By design, the concept covers acts
ranging from verbal statements to the deployment of military force. The next
section constructs a typology that accounts for the qualitative differences
among the various types of assertive conduct.

Four Types of Assertive Actions

Existing typologies of state behavior in territorial and maritime disputes have
not yet recognized important variations below the use of force. The standard
Militarized Interstate Disputes coding scheme, Par exemple, distinguishes vari-
ous “hostility levels” for incidents in which a state threatens or uses military
force against another state, but it excludes actions below this threshold of
militarization.18 Paul Huth codes diplomatic and political conºict over dis-

16. Beth A. Simmons, “See You in ‘Court’? The Appeal to Quasi-Judicial Legal Processes in the
Settlement of Territorial Disputes,” in Paul F. Diehl, éd., A Road Map to War: Territorial Dimensions of
International Conºict (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999), p. 225.
17. When Sino-Japanese tensions erupted after an incident in the East China Sea in 2010, la RPC
made clear that its escalatory countermeasures were a response Japan’s decision to initiate domes-
tic legal proceedings against the Chinese ªshing boat captain who precipitated the incident, rather
than the captain’s physical detention. M.. Taylor Fravel, “Explaining China’s Escalation over the
Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands,” Global Summitry, Vol. 2, No.1 (Été 2016), p. 31, est ce que je.org/10.1093/
global/guw010. For a detailed case study, see Andrew Chubb, Chinese Nationalism and the “Gray
Zone”: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Maritime Policy (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College
Presse, forthcoming).
18. Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer, and J. David Singer, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–
1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns,” Conºict Management and Peace Science,
Vol. 15, Non. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 163–213, doi.org/10.1177%2F073889429601500203.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 87

puted territory separately from military escalation, but leaves nonconfronta-
tional assertive actions indistinguishable from “minimal or no diplomatic/
political conºict.”19 Fravel’s three-way typology of territorial dispute behavior
similarly treats actions short of military escalation or seizure of territory as
“delay.”20 The concept of gray-zone conºict, meanwhile, bundles noncoopera-
tive state conduct all the way up to the threshold of military force.21

Four types of assertive actions in maritime and territorial disputes are
identiªable, based on their increasingly serious implications for the posi-
tions of rival claimants: (1) declarative, (2) demonstrative, (3) coercive, et
(4) use of force. As summarized in table 1, these four categories constitute an
ordinal typology. This means that individual cases of behavioral change be-
long in the highest-level category for which they meet the criteria.22 Thus, comme
explained below, patrolling a disputed area is classiªed as a demonstrative be-
havior, though it may also involve declarative proclamations of the state’s
claim to the area. De même, direct interference with another state’s construc-
tion project or resource survey will belong unambiguously in the coercive cate-
gory, even if it also involves declarative and demonstrative elements. Direct
seizure of a particular disputed land or sea area will constitute a use of force,
even though it usually also entails activities in all three of the lower categories.
Declarative actions are ofªcial claims over the disputed area that make no
discernable threat to impose punishment on rival states. Such statements ªt
the broad deªnition of assertiveness outlined above because they affect the po-
sition of competing claimants, both by demonstrating nonrecognition of those
claims and because they are often considered as evidence in international legal
proceedings.23 Declarative actions include remarks by state ofªcials, domestic

19. Huth, Standing Your Ground, pp. 103–106, at p. 105.
20. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, p. 5.
21. Green et al., Countering Coercion, p. 21; and Michael Peterson, “The Chinese Maritime Gray
Zone,” in Erickson and Martinson et al., China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations, p. 16.
22. For a general discussion of ordinal classiªcation schemes, see Peter A. Hall, “Policy, Para-
digms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative
Politique, Vol. 25, Non. 3 (Avril 1993), pp. 275–296, at pp. 278–279 and n. 21, doi.org/10.2307/422246;
and Scott H. Beck, “The Decomposition of Inequality by Class and by Occupation: A Research
Note,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 32, Non. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 139–150, especially pp. 141, 147–149,
doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1991.tb00349.x. Other examples include Hermann’s typology of for-
eign policy change, and the three-point scale of diplomatic and military conºict in territorial dis-
putes deployed in Paul K. Huth, Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conºict
(Ann-Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 105.
23. See The South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of
Chine), Permanent Court of Arbitration, Case No. 2013–19, Juillet 12, 2016, https://www.pcacases
.com/web/view/7.

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International Security 45:3 88

Tableau 1. Four-Way Typology of Assertiveness in Maritime and Territorial Disputes,
Mapped onto Existing Concepts

Types of Assertiveness

Existing Concepts

Declarative
verbal assertions via non-coercive statements,
diplomatic notes, domestic legislation and
administrative measures, international legal
cases

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Demonstrative
unilateral administration of disputed
possession: patrols, surveys, resource
development, construction of infrastructure,
state-sanctioned tourism or activism, domestic
judicial proceedings, and cooperative
agreements with third parties

Coercive
threat or imposition of punishment: may be
verbal, diplomatic or administrative, économique
punishment, warning shots, physical
interference with foreign activities in disputed
area

gray-zone conºict (Green et al.;
Peterson); delay (Fravel); minimal
conºict (Huth)

coercion (Schelling; Zhang);
political-diplomatic escalation
(Huth)

Use of force
application of military force or direct seizure
and occupation of disputed possession

use of force / escalation
(Fravel); brute force (Schelling);
compulsion (Sechser)

SOURCES: M.. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conºict in
China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michael
Green et al., Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: The Theory and Practice of Gray Zone
Deterrence (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017); Paul
K. Huth, Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conºict (Ann-Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998); Michael Peterson, “The Chinese Maritime Gray
Zone,” in Andrew S. Erickson and Ryan D. Martinson, éd., China’s Maritime Gray Zone
Operations (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019) ; Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and
Inºuence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966 [2004]); Todd S. Sechser, “Mili-
tarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001,” Conºict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 28,
Non. 4 (Septembre 2011), pp. 377–401, doi.org/10.1177/0738894211413066; and “Cautious
Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing’s Use of Coercion in the South China Sea,” Inter-
national Security, Vol. 44, Non. 1 (Été 2019), pp. 117–159, doi.org/10.1162/isec_a
_00354.

laws and regulations, diplomatic declarations, submissions to international au-
thorities, and changes in domestic administrative arrangements governing the
disputed area. Their signiªcance is evident in the fact that they frequently
prompt ofªcial protests from other states—and they typically stay in effect in
perpetuity unless actively renounced. But because they involve neither physi-

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 89

cal actions in the disputed area nor threats of punishment, declarative actions
are a qualitative step further removed from conºict than the higher categories
of assertive behavior discussed below.

Demonstrative moves are unilateral administrative behaviors—actions that
manifest a state’s presence or jurisdiction in the disputed area, but without di-
rectly confronting adversaries.24 In many disputed areas, particularly at sea,
states may advance their position without engaging adversaries at all.25 Typi-
cal demonstrative moves include physical acts such as air and sea patrols, sci-
entiªc surveys, unilateral resource exploitation, and construction work, aussi
as state-sponsored civilian actions such as tourism, activism, and resource ex-
ploitation. Certain kinds of nonphysical moves can also be demonstrative,
such as signing agreements with third parties over resource development, ou
domestic administrative or judicial proceedings over the disputed area. For ex-
ample, Japan launched legal proceedings against a PRC ªshing boat captain
who ordered the ramming of a Japanese Coast Guard ship in the disputed ter-
ritorial seas around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in 2010, and Tokyo national-
ized three of the disputed islands in 2012. Because they demonstrate effective
administration of the claimed area, or external recognition of the claim, ce
class of actions compromises the position of other states in the dispute more
than declarative actions do. En effet, they can constitute stepping-stones to
acquisition by fait accompli.26 However, demonstrative acts do not involve dis-
cernible threats or punishment of other parties. These belong to the next cate-
gory, coercion.

Coercive behaviors are those involving the threat or use of punishment
against an adversary.27 Some actions self-evidently satisfy this deªnition, tel

24. The Merriam-Webster deªnition is (1un) “demonstrating as real or true”; (1b) “characterized or
established by demonstration.” Actions that convey a clear threat or warning to others, cependant,
will belong in the higher-level category of coercive actions.
25. In disputes that take place in wide geographical expanses, interactions between adversaries
may be minimal, enabling states to “take what they want” incrementally, without the need for co-
ercion. Schelling referred to this as “salami tactics.” Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Inºuence, avec
a new preface and afterword (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966 [2008]), pp. 66–69.
26. Dan Altman, “By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adver-
saries,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 61, Non. 4 (Décembre 2017), pp. 881–891, est ce que je.org/
10.1093/isq/sqx049.
27. This follows the usage established by Schelling, which includes both deterrent and compellent
varieties of coercion. Recent scholarly usage often has equated coercion with compellence, in line
with Alexander L. George’s concept of “coercive diplomacy,” deªned as “a response to an en-
croachment already undertaken,” and thus distinct from deterrence. As Robert J. Art and Kelly M.
Greenhill point out, such a concept could be more accurately labeled “compellent diplomacy.”
For the present purposes, adopting the broader deªnition allows us to sidestep questions of

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International Security 45:3 90

as physical interference with foreign activities in a disputed area or the ªring
of warning shots. Coercive state behaviors can also take a variety of other
forms, cependant, as Ketian Zhang has highlighted, including formal and in-
formal economic sanctions via the disruption of trade, threatening public
statements and diplomacy, and administrative moves.28 For example, promul-
gating territorial sea baselines that upgrade disputed waters to sovereign
territorial seas under domestic law, or the establishment of air defense identi-
ªcation zones in contested areas, can communicate threats to other state and
nonstate actors entering such areas. Coercive actions pose more serious risks to
stability than declarative or demonstrative moves because they present a rela-
tively narrow set of choices to other parties: alter their behavior or continue
and risk incurring punishment. The only qualitatively more escalatory kind of
move is a military attack or unambiguous forceful change in the status quo
of a disputed possession, as discussed below.

The most escalatory type of action in a maritime or territorial dispute is the
application of military violence or direct seizure of the disputed possession.
This category maps directly onto the use-of-force category in Fravel’s typol-
ogy.29 Such actions are a subset of what Thomas Schelling described as “brute
force”: actions that rely on the actor’s own strength to achieve goals directly,
rather than by inºuencing adversary conduct, as in coercion.30 There are three
key reasons why such actions are qualitatively more escalatory than coercive
ones. D'abord, in-kind responses from the adversary, or action to restore the status
quo ante, will entail physical confrontation. Deuxième, actions that conspicuously
change the status quo threaten the basic viability of the adversary’s bargaining
position, generating incentives for preventive escalation.31 Third, actions of an

whether the target had been engaging in encroachment or aggression. Schelling, Arms and Inºu-
ence, p. 69; George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington,
D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991), p. 4; and Art and Greenhill, “Coercion: An Ana-
lytical Overview,” in Greenhill and Peter Krause, éd., Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International
Politique (New York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2018), p. 13 n. 18.
28. Zhang, “Cautious Bully,” pp. 120–122.
29. M.. Taylor Fravel, “Power Shifts and Escalation: Explaining China’s Use of Force in Territorial
Disputes,” International Security, Vol. 32, Non. 3 (Hiver 2007/2008), pp. 44–83, especially p. 50,
doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.32.3.44.
30. Schelling, Arms and Inºuence, pp. 2–5. See also Todd S. Sechser’s description of compulsion,
the forcible imposition of the state’s objectives. Sechser, “Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–
2001,” Conºict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 28, Non. 4 (Septembre 2011), pp. 377–401, 385,
doi.org/10.1177/0738894211413066.
31. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation; and Fravel, “Power Shifts and Escalation.” From the per-
spective of prospect theory, a rapid and conspicuous change in the status quo is likely to place the
adversary in the risk-acceptant “domain of losses.”

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 91

unambiguously forceful character are likely to place the adversary’s leader-
ship under political pressure by engaging the leaders’ domestic competence
and international reputation. Notably, the use of force does not necessarily in-
volve military units, given that civilian actors can be deployed to seize dis-
puted possessions, as in the case of the PRC’s occupation of Mischief Reef
dans 1994.

Having distinguished these four qualitatively different types of assertive
state behavior in maritime disputes, it is now possible to identify changes in
the quantity and quality of assertiveness in a state’s behavior across time.
Assertive behavior intensiªes where an observed action is (1) a new method
of advancing the claim, unseen in previous time periods; (2) more frequent
than in previous time periods, Par exemple, an increase in patrol activity or re-
source exploration and exploitation; ou (3) applied over a broader geographic
area than in previous time periods.32 The next section applies this framework
to a unique time series of 132 cases of year-on-year intensiªcation of the PRC’s
assertive behavior in the South China Sea from 1970 à 2015.

PRC Assertiveness by the Numbers

A key challenge in assessing the changes in China’s behavior in the South
China Sea is the present-centric bias in the information supply. As noted ear-
lier, alterations in PRC behavior are more likely to have been observed in
English-language sources in recent years than further back in the past. To miti-
gate this bias, the data set analyzed below draws on historical PRC sources,
mainly reference materials intended to inform Beijing’s policymakers of events
in the maritime domain and report on the implementation of policies. These
include internal-circulation PRC chronologies of major events in the South
China Sea covering the period from 1949 à 1996,33 advisory reports on the sit-
uation in the South China Sea from 2002 à 2009,34 and yearbooks of PRC gov-
ernment agencies covering the state’s civilian maritime activities from the

32. For a discussion of inferences regarding the duration and diminishment of assertive behaviors,
see the online appendix at doi.org/10.7910/DVN/3Y7NRU.
33. State Oceanic Administration (SOA), “Dashiji (Chronicle of major events),” State Oceanic Ad-
ministration, 1963–2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20060117003814/https://www.soa.gov.cn/
memo/index.html; and Zhang Liangfu, Nansha Qundao Dashiji [Chronicle of major events in the
Spratly Islands] (Beijing: Zhongguo Kexue Yuan [Chinese Academy of Sciences], 1996).
34. National Institute of South China Sea Studies (hereafter NISCSS), Nanhai Xingshi Pinggu
Baogao [Evaluative report on developments in the South China Sea] (Haikou, Chine: Zhongguo
Nanhai Yanjiuyuan, 2002–2009).

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International Security 45:3 92

1970s to the present.35 These materials help identify previously unrecognized
past alterations in PRC behavior and conªrm details of other historical cases.36
The particular biases in such sources also need to be borne in mind. De-
spite being reference materials, these sources typically adopt an unquestioning
pro-PRC perspective on the events they describe. Like the PRC’s public com-
ments on the South China Sea, they generally characterize China as purely the
victim of unprovoked encroachments at the hands of its adversaries. En effet,
many of these chronologies focus primarily on other claimants’ activities in the
South China Sea. Cependant, this bias should increase conªdence in the veracity
of those cases of assertive PRC behavior that do appear. Dans l'ensemble, drawing
information from these sources should increase the closeness of the relation-
ship between the time series data and the underlying PRC behavior it seeks
to represent.

increasing assertiveness as a constant

The ªrst key point that emerges from the data is that increasing PRC assertive-
ness itself is not a new development in the South China Sea. As ªgure 1 shows,
the PRC has advanced its position in the disputes there in some form almost
every year since 1970. There have been only four years since 1970 when the
PRC’s assertiveness did not intensify in some way—and the most recent was
dans 1990.

Deuxième, within the overall picture of growing assertiveness in China’s
politique, four periods of rapid acceleration are apparent: 1973–75, 1987–89, 1992–
95, et 2007 onward. Outside these four surge periods, the average number of
cases observed is around 1.8 per year, a ªgure that can be understood as repre-
senting the baseline growth rate of the PRC’s assertiveness in the South China
Sea. During the four surge periods, the average number of assertive behavioral
changes observed has risen to between 3.0 et 5.1 per year. The assertive be-
havior since 2007 thus represents the PRC’s fourth major push in the South
China Sea since 1970.

35. Fisheries Administration, Zhongguo Yuye Nianjian [China ªsheries yearbook] (Beijing: Nongye
Chubanshe); and SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian [China ocean yearbook] (Beijing: Haiyang
Chubanshe). Volumes published between 1987 et 2014.
36. Candidate cases of year-on-year change in PRC assertive behavior entered the dataset through
a two-stage assessment process, before being coded according to the typology outlined above. Fur-
ther discussion of data collection, methodology, and coding checks are provided in the online ap-
pendix. A full list of sources, along with case descriptions, is included in the data ªle.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 93

Chiffre 1.

Intensiªcations of Assertiveness by the People’s Republic of China in the South
China Sea by Type, 1970–2015

declarative
demonstrative

coercive
military force

0
7
9
1

1
7
9
1

2
7
9
1

3
7
9
1

4
7
9
1

5
7
9
1

6
7
9
1

7
7
9
1

8
7
9
1

9
7
9
1

0
8
9
1

1
8
9
1

2
8
9
1

3
8
9
1

4
8
9
1

5
8
9
1

6
8
9
1

7
8
9
1

8
8
9
1

9
8
9
1

0
9
9
1

1
9
9
1

2
9
9
1

3
9
9
1

4
9
9
1

5
9
9
1

6
9
9
1

7
9
9
1

8
9
9
1

9
9
9
1

0
0
0
2

1
0
0
2

2
0
0
2

3
0
0
2

4
0
0
2

5
0
0
2

6
0
0
2

7
0
0
2

8
0
0
2

9
0
0
2

0
1
0
2

1
1
0
2

2
1
0
2

3
1
0
2

4
1
0
2

5
1
0
2

breakpoint 2007

The most recent turning point in the PRC’s behavior occurred in 2007. Chiffre 1
illustrates the major qualitative change in the type of actions by which China
has advanced its position since that time. The cluster of dark bars on the right-
hand side of the ªgure indicates the introduction of much more frequent coer-
cive actions—those that involve the threat or use of punishment—since 2007.
This indicates that China’s policy underwent what Charles Hermann termed a
“program shift,” wherein new methods are deployed in pursuit of the state’s
foreign policy goals, along with the intensiªcation of existing practices.37 The
ªnding is consistent with Zhang’s data on the PRC’s coercive responses to
Southeast Asian countries’ energy and construction activities, and with some
Vietnamese analysts’ early assessments of Chinese policy.38 It contrasts, comment-
jamais, with most English-language accounts of the PRC’s South China Sea
politique, which typically date the assertive shift to 2009, 2012, or even later.

No subsequent year has established a new pattern of behavior different from
the one that began in 2007. The strongest alternative candidate is 2012, quand
nine cases of intensiªed assertive behavior were observed, including the sei-

37. Hermann, “Changing Course.”
38. Do Thanh Hai and Nguyen Thuy Linh, “In Retrospect of China’s Policy toward South
China Sea Disputes since 2007,” Vietnam Journal of International Studies, Vol. 2, Non. 85 (Juin 2011),
pp. 1–18.

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International Security 45:3 94

zure of Scarborough Shoal, making it the PRC’s most assertive year since 1970.
This did not constitute a turning point, cependant; rather than continuing to ac-
celerate after 2012, the average yearly number of intensiªed assertive actions
fell back to 5.3 per year in 2013–15, only marginally higher than the 5.1 ob-
served on average each year since 2007. Ainsi, 2012 is better seen as an extreme
case within a broader pattern established ªve years earlier.

Dating the PRC’s assertive shift to 2012 would also obscure a crucial feature
of the change in China’s behavior that distinguishes its current policy from
earlier periods. If, as the data presented here suggest, the fourth surge in asser-
tive PRC maritime behavior began in 2007, then it is also by far the most
protracted. The three previous surges lasted only two or three years. In con-
trast, the intensiªcation of PRC activity that began in 2007 has continued for a
decade and beyond.

layers of assertiveness

What have these patterns added up to over the long term? Chiffre 2 addresses
this question by adding into the picture what is known, or can reasonably be
inferred, about the duration of each identiªed case of intensiªed assertive con-
duct. In more than one-third of the cases, the intensiªcation of China’s asser-
tiveness marked a “new normal” that continued at least through to 2015. Ce
stands to reason, given that many assertive actions are by nature ongoing and
continu, such as domestic legal and administrative moves and the con-
struction of facilities in disputed areas, which remain in place until abolished
or abandoned. Chiffre 2 illustrates how each of the surges in the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s established a new and much higher overall baseline level of PRC
assertiveness in the South China Sea dispute.

The cumulative layering of assertive behaviors also reºects deeper dynam-
ics of state policymaking in maritime and territorial disputes. Assertive actions
in a disputed area at one point in time often lay the groundwork for sub-
sequent intensiªcations of activity. John Garver has noted how China’s
construction activities in the South China Sea in the 1970s and 1980s created
the “physical base” for the expansion of PRC control in the area.39 Such
behaviors not only create faits accomplis; they can also have long-term
consequences beyond any discernable change in the status quo. Building a
new road in a disputed territory, or expanding an occupied island or reef, peut

39. John Garver, “China’s Push through the South China Sea,” China Quarterly, Vol. 132 (Décembre
1992), pp. 999–1026, especially pp. 1006, 1008, doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000045513.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 95

Chiffre 2. Accumulation of Assertive Behaviors by the People’s Republic of China in the

South China Sea, 1970–2015

key
intensiﬁed assertive actions:

declarative
demonstrative
coercive
use of force

known continuation
likely continuation
likely diminishment

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1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

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International Security 45:3 96

support an increased administrative presence and resource exploitation in sur-
rounding areas. Scientiªc research—especially cartography, meteorology, et
oceanography—is a precondition for future military operations, infrastructure,
and patrolling. An increase in patrolling at one point in time can facilitate fur-
ther increases in following years, as frontline actors gain experience and
conªdence operating in once unfamiliar areas.

The Philippines-China standoff over Scarborough Shoal in 2012 provides a
vivid illustration of this dynamic. The PRC’s rapid on-water intervention to
block the Philippines navy from arresting Chinese ªshermen was only pos-
sible because two maritime surveillance vessels were located nearby on a regu-
lar patrol. Such patrols commenced in the South China Sea in 2007; ªve years
plus tard, they directly enabled the PRC’s seizure of Scarborough Shoal.40 The pat-
tern of accumulating layers in ªgure 2 thus illustrate how assertiveness results
not only from contemporary policy decisions, but also from groundwork laid
down in previous years. This observation has important implications for the
explanation of shifts in behavior. Causal links between past and present lines
of action make it necessary to consider not just the immediate triggers for an
observed change in state behavior, but also temporally distant decisions and
slower-moving processes whose effects may only become observable years af-
ter being set in motion.

summary

The analysis above represents the ªrst systematic attempt at measuring the
long-term changes over time in the behavior of the PRC in the South China Sea
dispute. Operationalizing the typology of assertive state behavior in maritime
and territorial disputes with a unique time series of events data demonstrates
several important descriptive ªndings. Increasing assertiveness is not a new
feature of China’s policy in the South China Sea, and within this overall trend
of increasing activity, four turning points have each established a new policy
status quo on the issue. The surges in PRC assertiveness that followed the
turning points in 1973, 1987, et 1992 lasted around three years, but China’s
fourth push is far more sustained, having begun in 2007, several years earlier
than most English-language analysis has assumed. These ªndings provide a

40. As explained by the head of the State Oceanic Administration in a 2012 television interview.
Liu Cigui, interview by Wu Xiaoli, “Liu Cigui: Bohai yiyou haishang wuran yanzhong [Liu Cigui:
pollution serious from Bohai oil spill], Fenghuang Weishi, Juin 11, 2012, https://phtv.ifeng.com/
program/wdsz/detail_2012_06/11/15202134_0.shtml

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 97

descriptive foundation upon which to qualitatively investigate the causes of
change in Beijing’s behavior.

Explaining China’s Policy Shifts

Explanations for China’s South China Sea policy broadly fall into two groups,
respectively emphasizing external and internal factors. The former point pri-
marily to changes in the strategic context in which the PRC operates. In line
with realist expectations, many analysts argue that China acts as assertively as
its strategic circumstances permit. Ainsi, favorable changes in the PRC’s rela-
tive power within its region—both internally from the growth of China’s own
military, économique, and technological capabilities and externally from the
decline of those of others, particularly the United States—have resulted in
China intensifying its activities.41 As Aaron Friedberg argues, behind the
PRC’s intensiªed assertiveness lies “increasingly favorable leadership assess-
ments of the nation’s relative power and of the threats and opportunities that
it confronts.”42

A second popular explanation for policy change in the South China Sea has
focused on resources, particularly hydrocarbons and ªsheries.43 In general, le
higher the value of the disputed resources to the claimants, the greater the in-
centives for competition.44 International estimates of the South China Sea’s oil
and gas reserves have been revised downward over time, but internal Chinese
government sources dating back to the 1970s have consistently touted their po-
tential, along with other mineral deposits rarely mentioned in outside analy-
sis.45 The area’s abundant tropical ªsheries are also heavily emphasized in
PRC sources, and the severe depletion of ªsh stocks in coastal waters in the

41. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge,
1981), pp. 94–95; Chi-Kin Lo, China’s Policy towards Territorial Disputes: The Case of the South China
Sea Islands (Londres: Routledge, 1989); and Chen Jie, “China’s Spratly Policy: With Special Refer-
ence to the Philippines and Malaysia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 34, Non. 10 (Octobre 1994), pp. 893–903,
especially pp. 901–902, doi.org/10.2307/2644968.
42. Friedberg, “The Sources of Chinese Conduct,” p. 143.
43. Swaran Singh, “Continuity and Change in China’s Maritime Strategy,” Strategic Analysis,
Vol. 23, Non. 9 (1999), pp. 1493–1508, esp. 1506, doi.org/10.1080/09700169908455139.
44. Charles L. Glaser, “How Oil Inºuences U.S. National Security,” International Security, Vol. 38,
Non. 2 (Fall 2013), pp. 112–145, especially pp. 122–123, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00137; and Jeff D.
Colgan, “Fueling the Fire: Pathways from Oil to War,” International Security, Vol. 38, Non. 2 (Fall
2013), pp. 146–180, especially p. 156, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00135.
45. Voir, Par exemple, Qu Zhenmou, “Nanhai haishang jubu zhanzheng wenti tantao (Discussion
of the issue of a limited war in the South China Sea),” in Nansha Wenti Lunwen Ziliao Huibian
[Compendium of essays and materials on the Spratly issue] (Beijing: Haijun Junshi Xueshu

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International Security 45:3 98

post-1978 reform era underscores the plausibility of resources as a driver
of PRC policy there.

Troisième, following the logic of preventive war, states may make assertive
moves in the present to avoid doing so under worse circumstances in the fu-
ture. When a state’s bargaining position in the dispute is weak and deterio-
rates further, leaders may perceive the possibility of a favorable diplomatic
resolution to be in danger of declining to zero, creating incentives for
escalatory action to preserve the claim.46 Fravel’s exhaustive study of the
PRC’s territorial disputes found that “China has been more willing to use force
when its bargaining power has declined, not strengthened.” Following this
logic, external developments that signiªcantly weaken the PRC’s position in
the dispute—such as new assertive actions by other claimants—may explain
an increase in the state’s assertiveness.47

Fourth, changes in the international normative context could spur new as-
sertive behaviors. The UNCLOS regime has hardened disputed maritime
claims on all sides, spurred the development of new enforcement capabilities,
and created incentives for assertive actions to bolster claimants’ legal posi-
tions.48 According to Sheila Smith, this has been the case in the East China Sea,
where the Law of the Sea regime has hardened the claims of Japan and China
to the oil and gas resources in the area.49

Internal explanations for China’s assertive policies include domestic legiti-
macy issues; rising nationalism; elite competition; bureaucratic politics; et en-
dividual leaders. Domestic legitimacy issues may have prompted international
confrontation, per diversionary conºict theory. Many analysts have argued
further that rising nationalist sentiment among the public in China has created
pressure for tough foreign policies to preserve regime legitimacy.50 Substate
policy interests are argued to have lobbied successfully for assertive policies,

Yanjiusuo, 1988), pp. 115–127, especially p. 117; and Liu Huaqing, Liu Huaqing Huiyilu [Memoirs of
Liu Huaqing] (Beijing: Jiefangjun Chubanshe, 2007), pp. 534–535.
46. Huth, Standing Your Ground, p. 55; and Fravel, “Power Shifts and Escalation,” pp. 48–50.
47. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 7–9, 31; and Swaine and Fravel, “China’s Assertive
Behavior.”
48. Isaac B. Kardon, China’s Law of the Sea (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, forthcom-
ing); and Andrew Chubb, “Chinese Popular Nationalism and PRC Policy in the South China Sea,»
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Australia, 2017, pp. 133–180.
49. Sheila A. Forgeron, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 2015), pp. 107–110.
50. Robert S. Ross, “The Problem with the Pivot,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 91, Non. 6 (November/
Décembre 2012), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2012-11-01/problem-pivot; et
Zhao, “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited.”

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 99

with competing maritime agencies seeking to stretch their mandates, win bud-
getary allocations, and secure political prestige within the PRC bureaucracy.51
Intensiªed intrastate political competition could also make arguments for re-
straint prohibitively risky for CCP elites.52 Finally, individual leaders could
make a difference: a politically weak leader may lack the authority to prevent
assertive maritime conduct, or a more hawkish leader may drive a more asser-
tive policy after taking charge.53

As James Rosenau suggested, breakpoints in a state’s behavior offer impor-
tant information upon which to base explanations of foreign policy change.54
Below, the four breakpoints identiªed in the events data on Beijing’s maritime
behavior—1973, 1987, 1992, and 2007—are assessed in light of existing works
and a range of PRC party-state sources.

1973: pushing past the paracels

From late 1973 onward, the PRC used force to evict South Vietnam from the
Paracel Islands and stepped up its civilian presence and military infrastructure
construction. Saigon was not the only target, cependant, as the PRC pushed past
the Paracels, launching a systematic program of scientiªc surveys in the wa-
ters to the east and south of the archipelago. The PRC also dialed up criticism
of the Philippines over its moves in the Spratlys, opened up a new China-
Philippines bilateral dispute over Scarborough Shoal, and began asserting its
restrictive position on foreign military surveillance in and beyond the territo-
rial seas against the United States and the Soviet Union. Existing accounts of
China’s actions in this period have pointed to advantageous geopolitical cir-
circonstances, negative local developments for China’s position in the dis-
puted area, and a growing struggle over offshore energy resources to explain
the PRC’s use of force against South Vietnam. As shown below, cependant, le

51. Wong, “More than Peripheral,” pp. 744–752; Garver, “China’s Push through the South China
Sea” pp. 1026–1027; Jakobson, China’s Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors, p. 6; and ICG, Stirring
Up the South China Sea (je), pp. 18–26.
52. James Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy (Nouveau
York: Columbia University Press, 2012); and Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, “The Domestic
Context of Chinese Foreign Policy: Does ‘Public Opinion’ Matter?” in David M. Lampton, éd., Le
Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2001), pp. 151–187.
53. Chang Liao, “The Sources of China’s Assertiveness,” pp. 827–831; and You Ji, “The PLA and
Diplomacy,” p. 253.
54. James Rosenau, “Towards Single-Country Theories of Foreign Policy: The Case of the USSR,»
in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, and James N. Rosenau, éd., New Directions in the Study
of Foreign Policy (Winchester, Mass.: Allen and Unwin, 1987), pp. 53–74, especially p. 61.

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International Security 45:3 100

Paracels operation was part of a more general policy shift rooted in changing
international norms regarding the status of maritime space.

The most visible element of the surge from 1973 was the seizure of the
southwestern half of the Paracel Islands, known as the Crescent Group.
The operation, which established PRC control over the entire archipelago
for the ªrst time, was an early demonstration of the PRC’s use of irregular
maritime forces as frontline implementers of new policies. It began when
armed ªshing crews—maritime militia—began staking out unoccupied is-
lands in the Crescent Group in December 1973.55 Military confrontation fol-
lowed in January 1974 when Saigon sent reinforcements to push the PRC
out of its new positions. Beijing probably had not intended to immediately
evict the nearby South Vietnamese forces, but the advance into the Crescent
Group was clearly well planned.56 Drawing on eyewitness testimony, le
United States Army Special Research Detachment assessed that prepara-
tions were “initiated at least by December 1973, and possibly as early as
September 1973.”57

The advance was timed to capitalize on the weakness of the South
Vietnamese regime and the warming of U.S.-China relations after 1972. A U.S.
intelligence memo at the time referred to the prospect of American support
for South Vietnam in the Paracels as “virtually ruled out.”58 China’s lead-
ers also may have sensed a closing window of opportunity to prevent the
South Vietnam–held islands from falling into the hands of Soviet-backed
North Vietnam, which would be more capable of defending them than the
moribund Saigon government. En effet, as Chi-kin Lo has shown, signs of mis-
trust between Beijing and Hanoi over the issue were already emerging by
1973.59 Fravel ªnds that documentary evidence to support a “window of

55. Fravel, “Power Shifts and Escalation,” p. 75 n. 111; Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, p. 280;
and Dieter Heinzig, “Disputed Islands in the South China Sea: Paracels—Spratlys—Pratas—
Macclesªeld Bank” (Hamburg, Allemagne: Institute of Asian Affairs, 1976), p. 34, https://www
.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp08c01297r000300180013-8. On the recent roles of
China’s maritime militia, see Andrew S. Erickson and Conor M. Kennedy, “China’s Maritime Mili-
tia,” in Michael McDevitt, éd., Becoming a Great “Maritime Power”: A Chinese Dream (Arlington, Va.:
CNA, 2016), pp. 62–83, https://www.cna.org/CNA_ªles/PDF/IRM-2016-U-013646.pdf.
56. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 281–282.
57. United States Army Special Research Detachment (USASRD), Chinese Amphibious Assaults in
the Paracel Archipelago January 1974, Décembre 27, 1974, SRD-SR-44-74, Fort George G. Meade,
Maryland, p. 1. The author thanks Bill Hayton for sharing this source.
58. Ofªce of the Director of Central Intelligence, “Potential for Conºict over Certain Disputed Is-
lands in the East and South China Sea,” February 5, 1974, Library of Congress, p. 11, https://
www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/loc-hak-558-15-12-3.
59. Lo, China’s Policy, pp. 68–73.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 101

opportunity” interpretation is lacking, but acknowledges that the U.S. draw-
down in Southeast Asia resulted in “reduced constraints on China’s use of
force.”60 At a minimum, alors, these positive changes in the PRC’s relative
power position within its region presented advantageous conditions for the
move into the Crescent Group.

Energy resources were quickly touted as a likely driver of the PRC’s ac-
tions.61 Preliminary seismic surveys conducted under UN auspices had
identiªed potential hydrocarbons in the Spratly area in 1969, prompting the
Philippines and South Vietnam to occupy islands and initiate hydrocarbon ex-
plorations there.62 The assertive push also coincided with the spike in world
oil prices after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’
Octobre 1973 embargo, increasing the incentives for confrontation over re-
sources. Cependant, while the potential resource bounties may have contributed
to the PRC’s calculations, they probably were not a central motivation. Le
PRC made its ªrst ofªcial claim to resource rights around the disputed islands
more than four years after the UN survey, and the statement did not refer to oil
and gas in particular.63 China was also insulated from the oil price shock, être-
ing self-sufªcient in oil production at that time thanks to the large onshore
ªeld at Daqing.64 As shown below, if energy resources mattered, it was as
one element of a more general emerging PRC interest in the area.

A little-noted scientiªc program that immediately followed the Paracels op-
eration casts signiªcant new light on the motivations behind the PRC’s South
China Sea policy at this time.65 In the ªrst half of 1974, the PRC launched a sys-
tematic program of scientiªc surveys across the Paracel Archipelago Sea Area
(Xisha Qundao hai qu)—a wide geographic area named after, but extending far
au-delà, the archipelago.66 These investigations were much more than oil and
gas hunts. A government yearbook describes their breadth of purpose: “The

60. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 284–286.
61. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “The Paracel Islands Incident,” January 21, 1974, General
CIA Records, p. 3, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85t00353r0001
00010005-0.
62. See Marwyn Samuels, Contest for the South China Sea (New York: Methuen, 1982), p. 155.
63. The original statement appears on page 1 of the People’s Daily, Janvier 12, 1974.
64. See Lee Hong-Pyo, “China’s Petroleum Trade,” Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol. 4, Non. 1
(Winter/Spring 1990), pp. 184–221, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23253537.
65. Garver noted that “the seas south of the Paracels were surveyed between 1973 and 1978,” but
he did not discuss the implications of this for the PRC’s interests in the area. Garver, “China’s Push
through the South China Sea,” p. 1006.
66. For an illustrative map, see the online supplementary materials at doi.org/10.7910/DVN/
3Y7NRU.

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International Security 45:3 102

unfolding of marine hydrological-meteorological, geographical-geological, bi-
ological, chemical, and physical survey research has extreme signiªcance for
ªsheries production, transportation, oil and gas exploitation, warship activi-
liens, overall resource appraisals, and maritime forecasting.” Besides geological
samples, the surveys collected large volumes of biological specimens, gravita-
tional, magnetic, bathymetric, and meteorological data.67

The scope of the PRC’s comprehensive survey program soon expanded
southward from the Paracel Archipelago Sea Area to the Central South China
Sea Area (Nanhai zhongbu haiqu). The rapid push past the Paracels, and the spa-
tial arrangement of these operations, with measurement stations evenly
spaced across wide expanses of sea, illustrates how the scope of the PRC’s in-
terests in the South China Sea had expanded beyond claims to the disputed is-
lands, which it had inherited from its civil war rival, the Republic of China.68
The PRC’s interests in the South China Sea had undergone a crucial re-
deªnition, beyond island territories and toward broad-ranging administrative
rights across large maritime spaces—including, but by no means limited to,
the resources within. Developments in the international normative context
of the emerging Law of the Sea regime explain why this new interest in the ad-
ministration of maritime space was at the forefront of PRC policy planning at
le temps.

The match between the start of the UNCLOS III negotiations in 1973 et
China’s assertive push past the Paracels was not coincidental. The negotiations
speciªcally aimed to codify new norms of state jurisdiction beyond the narrow
customary territorial sea limit, and it was their commencement that prompted
the PRC’s ªrst ofªcial statements on the matter in July and August 1973.69 Comme
Isaac Kardon shows, the PRC’s positions on state jurisdiction at sea were at
ªrst derived largely from other developing states’ statements over the preced-
ing years, but Beijing quickly emerged as an inºuential player in the negotia-
tions.70 The PRC’s advocacy for a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone
(EEZ), as against other less expansive proposals, reºected the CCP’s radical
ideological line of the time. Cependant, it was detrimental to the PRC’s material

67. SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian 1986, pp. 403–404.
68. See maps in the online supplementary materials.
69. “Working Paper on Sea Area Within National Jurisdiction Submitted by Chinese Delegation,»
Juillet 16, 1973, United Nations General Assembly (A/AC.138/SC.II/L.34); and Zhiguo Gao, “China
and the LOS Convention,” Marine Policy, Vol. 15, Non. 3 (May 1991), pp. 199–209, est ce que je.org/10.1016/
0308-597X(91)90063-H.
70. Isaac B. Kardon, “Rising Power, Creeping Jurisdiction: China’s Law of the Sea,” Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Cornell University, 2017, pp. 93–97; on the PRC’s impact in the negotiations, see pp. 104–120.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 103

interests, as PRC delegates later lamented.71 Speciªcally, the 200-nautical-mile
EEZ norm greatly bolstered, and in some cases even created, the legal resource
claims of China’s neighbors in the East and South China Seas—as illustrated
starkly in the 2013–16 arbitration case launched by the Philippines under the
UNCLOS. The PRC has wrestled with this legacy of greatly expanded, yet ma-
terially unfavorable, norms of maritime jurisdiction ever since.

The UNCLOS III process thus crystallized not only the party-state’s interests
in offshore resources, but also wide-ranging security interests across large ex-
panses of ocean—a position that has been a key point of U.S.-China friction in
East Asia since that time. The expansive PRC positions on state jurisdiction at
sea that emerged through the UNCLOS negotiations were formulated at the
highest levels of the party-state. Former diplomat Xu Guangjian, who was part
of the PRC’s negotiating team, has stated that a central-level leading group
was established under State Council leadership to oversee the negotiations, co-
ordinating a cross-departmental delegation that included the Foreign Ministry,
State Geological Bureau, State Oceanic Administration (SOA), and People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) Navy.72

Evidence for internal drivers, rather than emerging international norms, as a
cause of the new assertiveness from 1973 is comparatively weak. The policy
shift involved a diverse array of actors within the party-state: while the PLA
Navy and local maritime militia implemented the Paracels operation, le
Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted the subsequent comprehensive sur-
vey programs south of the Paracels, and the assertive South China Sea propa-
ganda campaigns against Hanoi and Manila came from organs largely
faction later known as the “Gang of
controlled by the radical
Four.” Finally, as noted above, the PRC’s positions in the UNCLOS nego-
tiations were formulated through a cross-departmental group under State
Council leadership.73

leftist

As economic growth ºuctuated and the political campaigns of the Cultural
Revolution dragged on, the basic conditions for diversionary foreign policy ar-
guably existed. Encore, whatever domestic insecurities CCP leaders may have felt
dans 1973, they surely paled in comparison to those they faced in 1976. The death

71. Shan Xu, “Lianheguo Haiyangfa Gongyue tanpan shimo: Zhong-Ri ceng jiu dalujia huajie
jiaofeng” [The full story of the UNCLOS negotiations: China and Japan crossed swords over conti-
nental shelf delimitation], Liaowang Dongfang Zhoukan [Oriental Outlook Weekly], Décembre 10,
2012, https://news.ifeng.com/shendu/lwdfzk/detail_2012_12/10/20017168_0.shtml.
72. Ibid..
73. Ibid..

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International Security 45:3 104

of Premier Zhou Enlai turned into a serious political crisis when massive
crowds commemorating Zhou turned into angry demonstrations denouncing
the radical CCP leadership. As Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun have noted,
this constituted “the ªrst challenge to the regime from below” in the PRC’s
history.74 The crisis was followed in quick succession by the death of Mao, le
massive Tangshan earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, and an
economic recession. Each of these events added further grave challenges to the
party’s authority. Yet far from prompting a foreign policy confrontation, ce
series of domestic political issues coincided with a lull in China’s assertiveness
in the South China Sea. No new assertive behaviors are known to have been
introduced in 1976. Cependant, because most of the new activities were ongoing,
China’s baseline policy was now signiªcantly more assertive than it had been
before the surge.

1987: surging to the spratlys

The PRC’s second wave of new assertiveness in the South China Sea, lequel
began in 1987, repeated several features seen in the 1973–75 surge. Encore une fois,
the PLA Navy clashed with Vietnamese forces sent to oppose a well-planned
PRC operation to seize unoccupied features. Like the 1974 battle, the Sino-
Vietnamese confrontation of 1988 was only the most salient result of a more
general shift in the PRC’s policy that predated the clash. Beijing’s verbal asser-
tiveness against claimants from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) reemerged after more than a decade, and there is evidence PRC
policy planners intended the move against Vietnam in part to serve as a warn-
ing to Malaysia and the Philippines to refrain from oil and gas exploration in
the area.75 The confrontation in the Spratlys was accompanied by another ma-
jor expansion in civilian “comprehensive surveys,” with intense multi-
disciplinary scientiªc surveying now covering the entire “nine-dash line” area.

74. Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun, “The First Tiananmen Incident Revisited: Elite Politics
and Crisis Management at the End of the Maoist Era,” Paciªc Affairs, Vol. 77, Non. 2 (Été 2004),
pp. 211–235, at p. 212, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40022499.
75. Haijun Silingbu (Naval Command), “Guanyu ‘Nansha Qundao wenti xueshu yantaohui’ de
qingkuang baogao” [Situation report on the “Academic Symposium on the Spratly Archipelago
issue”], Nansha Wenti Lunwen Ziliao Huibian, pp. 8–16, especially pp. 13–14; Han Yujia, “Nanhai
zhanlüe geju yu zhoubian guojia junshi fazhan qianjing ji dui jiejue Nansha wenti de yingxiang”
[The impact of the South China Sea strategic structure on the military development outlook for
neighboring countries and the resolution of the Spratly issue], in Nansha Wenti Lunwen Ziliao
Huibian, pp. 61–62.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 105

And like in 1976, the wave of assertiveness stalled with the arrival of a serious
domestic legitimacy crisis.

The move into the Spratlys was based on highly favorable assessments of
the regional geopolitical situation at the time. PRC planners expressed con-
ªdence that neither superpower would intervene so long as Vietnam were the
ostensible target. In mid-1987, Par exemple, Han Yujia of the PLA General Staff
Department’s Intelligence Division told a naval research center that, because
China was already at war with Vietnam on the land border, ªghting Vietnam
in the Spratlys “will not have much of an effect internationally . . . we estimate
that the US and USSR will not stand with China, nor directly oppose China . . .
in military terms the probability of their direct involvement is low.”76 Numer-
ous other internal documents echo this assessment, which proved accurate.77

One of Vietnam’s key material strengths was its military alliance with the
Soviet Union, which maintained a large naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. But as
Sino-Soviet relations moved toward normalization after Mikhail Gorbachev’s
ascension in 1985, analysts in Beijing had observed a succession of signals of
reduced Soviet alliance commitment to Vietnam.78 PRC sources also indicate a
recognition of a temporary window of opportunity to move into the Spratlys
with minimal risk of encountering strong international opposition. Partici-
pants in a January 1988 naval conference on the issue noted that “major coun-
tries” such as Japan and the United States were likely to become involved in
developing oil and gas resources in the South China Sea, which would compli-
cate future attempts to expand the PRC presence. According to a summary
provided by the PLA’s naval command to the General Staff Department, le
majority view at the cross-departmental conference was that the PRC should
make its move before Vietnam’s entanglements in Cambodia were resolved.79

China’s position in the South China Sea dispute was not rapidly worsening
before its assertive shift in 1987. Détente between Washington and Moscow re-
duced the possibility of global superpower conºict, enabling Beijing to concen-
trate more attention and resources on its periphery,
including disputed
maritime territorial claims.80 On the local level, as Fravel points out, Southeast
Asian claimants occupied around a dozen Spratly features from 1980 à 1988,

76. Han Yujia, “Nanhai Zhanlüe,” pp. 61–62.
77. Nansha Wenti Lunwen Ziliao Huibian, pp. 54, 108, 118–119, 129.
78. Chen, “China’s Spratly Policy,” pp. 901–902.
79. Naval Command, “Guanyu ‘Nansha Qundao wenti’,” pp. 13–14.
80. Chen, “China’s Spratly Policy,” pp. 901–902.

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International Security 45:3 106

“weakening China’s bargaining position in a dispute in which it held no con-
tested land.”81 Chinese military sources indicate, cependant, that the majority of
these actions occurred in 1988, after the PRC made its move.82 In the two years
before China’s policy shifted on the water, Vietnam and Malaysia occupied
three previously vacant Spratly reefs, but none of these features was a land ter-
ritory.83 The archipelago’s ªfteen natural islands and rocks had virtually all
been occupied by the end of the 1970s, the most recent being Malaysia’s occu-
pation of Swallow Reef in 1983. Given that even today there remain many doz-
ens of unoccupied submerged reefs in the area, it is hard to see the occupation
of such marginal features as constituting a rapid decline in the PRC’s bargain-
ing position. The accumulation of assertive actions by other claimants over the
preceding decade may well have added to the PRC’s motivations, offering
moral and political justiªcations for a move into the Spratlys. There is little rea-
son to believe, cependant, that Beijing would have refrained from such a move
had other claimants been more restrained.

Preparations for establishing a foothold in the Spratlys are apparent from
1982, which saw the appointment of Liu Huaqing as PLA Navy commander
and the conclusion of the UNCLOS negotiations. Encore une fois, a key milestone
in the development of the Law of the Sea regime closely preceded the PRC’s
push for greater control of its maritime periphery. In the ªrst half of 1983,
Beijing ordered the PLA Navy’s ªrst mission to the southernmost extent of
China’s claims in the South China Sea, sent the SOA to conduct new oceano-
graphic surveys of the central South China Sea, and issued a new standardized
list of 287 ofªcial names for the islands, rocks, and reefs of the Spratly archipel-
ago.84 The following year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) launched
the ªrst comprehensive surveys of the southern South China Sea, gathering
gravitational, hydrological, meteorological, and resource information neces-

81. Fravel, “Power Shifts and Escalation,” p. 77.
82. Voir, Par exemple, “Waiguo qinzhu wo Nansha daojiao qingkuang” [Situation of foreign coun-
tries occupation of China’s Spratly Islands and Reefs], in Nansha Zigu Shu Zhonghua [The Spratlys
have belonged to China since ancient times] (Guangzhou, Chine: Guangzhou Junqu Silingbu
Bangongshi, 1988), pp. 203–207. This source lists eight new occupations from January to March
1988, after the PRC moved in, compared with two in 1987, two in 1986, one in 1983, and one in
1980, for a total of fourteen features occupied from 1980 à 1988.
83. Malaysia occupied Ardasier Reef and Mariveles Reef in 1986, and Vietnam occupied Barque
Canada Reef in early 1987. See ibid., pp. 204–205; and Zhang, Nansha Qundao Dashiji, pp. 113, 203.
Vietnam also occupied West Reef in December 1987, also after China’s push into the Spratlys be-
gan (not before).
84. SOA, “Dashiji: 1983»; and Zhang, Nansha Qundao Dashiji, p. 97.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 107

sary for establishing a permanent presence there.85 In 1985, the Central
Military Commission adopted revised strategic guidance endorsing Liu’s “off-
shore defense” concept, which had been in development since the late 1970s.
This crucial reorientation, turning the focus of the PLA Navy’s operations from
coastal areas to the “near seas” within the ªrst island chain, was an important
condition for the PRC’s expansion into the Spratlys from 1987.86

A map of the routes of the CAS comprehensive surveys conducted between
1984 et 1986 illustrates the PRC’s increasingly concrete interests in the mari-
time spaces across the speciªc area enclosed by the nine-dash line.87 By early
1987, as the top leadership actively considered an operation to establish a pres-
ence in the Spratlys, the State Council ordered the CAS to further “strengthen
survey research in Spratly waters.” In response, the academy organized the
largest comprehensive survey expedition yet, sending two ships on a six-week
voyage that had “major signiªcance for correcting charts, exploiting resources
and navigation.” The mission investigated candidate locations for occupa-
tion and placed sovereignty markers on Jackson Atoll and Louisa Reef.88

The comprehensive scientiªc survey program that preceded the move into
the Spratlys was also indicative of a heightened interest in the aquatic re-
sources and hydrocarbon deposits of the area. This interest, cependant, related
less to resource security or increasing resource values than to the transforma-
tion of the PRC’s economic model, which rapidly increased demand for en-
ergy, while also unleashing proªt-oriented ªshing enterprises, placing coastal
ªsheries under strain. A ban on ªshing in the Spratlys, in effect since 1954,
was lifted in 1985, after which the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries be-
gan organizing ªshing boats to commence the “revival of production in
the Spratlys.”89

Domestic drivers again appear comparatively weak in explaining China’s
1987 policy shift. In another echo of 1974, the CCP top leadership may not

85. Zhang, Nansha Qundao Dashiji, p. 97.
86. Xu Qi, Andrew S. Erickson, and Lyle J. Goldstein, “Maritime Geostrategy and the Develop-
ment of the Chinese Navy in the Early Twenty-ªrst Century,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 59,
Non. 4 (Autumn 2006), pp. 66–67, https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol59/iss4/5.
87. See map 2 in the online supplementary materials.
88. Zhang, Nansha Qundao Dashiji, pp. 114, 120–121.
89. Guo Jinfu, “Nansha yuye ziyuan de baohu he heli kaifa” [Protection and rational development
of Spratly ªsheries resources], speech at inaugural Symposium on Spratly Comprehensive
Scientiªc Surveys, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Janvier 1988, in Nansha Wenti Lunwen Ziliao
Huibian, pp. 298–303; and SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian 1994–1996 (Beijing: Haiyang
Chubanshe, 1997), p. 45.

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International Security 45:3 108

have ordered the attack on Vietnamese forces in March 1988: the PLA Navy
captain reportedly opened ªre on the Vietnamese troops without authoriza-
tion.90 The party leadership in Beijing did, cependant, approve the major asser-
tive actions at this time that led to conºict, including the seizure of six
disputed reefs. As recounted by PLA Navy Cmdr. Liu in his memoirs, the large
research missions, live-ªre naval exercises, and seizure and occupation of six
reefs were all carefully discussed and agreed upon by the top civilian leaders.91
Zhao Ziyang, who took over as CCP general secretary in 1987, was inti-
mately involved in the plan to establish a foothold in the Spratlys, according to
Admiral Liu. It is unlikely that another CCP leader would have acted sig-
niªcantly differently. Zhao’s predecessor, Hu Yaobang, had personally visited
the Paracel Islands in December 1985, where he vowed to “not permit anyone
to seize even one inch of our great country’s land.”92 The ultimate authori-
zation for the Spratly step-up came from Deng Xiaoping, who had ªrmly
established his paramount political authority at the end of the 1970s.93

Drawing on ofªcial histories of the PLA Navy, Garver has argued that bu-
reaucratic politics were a signiªcant driver of South China Sea policy in the
1980s. Highlighting public statements by senior PLA Navy ofªcers emphasiz-
ing the economic importance of the South China Sea’s resources, Garver ar-
gues the PLA Navy lobbied successfully to end a lull in China’s Spratly
advance in the mid-1980s by reframing its own strategic interests with refer-
ence to the state’s new interest in economic development.94 But as shown ear-
lier, preparatory work for a move to the Spratlys was ongoing throughout the
decade, as evident in both the CAS and the SOA expanding their comprehen-
sive survey programs, the high-level decision to restart state-sponsored ªsh-
ing, and the State Council’s approval of a new standardized list of the names
of speciªc PRC-claimed features there. De plus, as noted earlier, the recogni-
tion of broad economic interests in the South China Sea had already begun to
form among diverse bureaucratic actors through the UNCLOS negotiation
process beginning in 1973. In framing the PRC’s South China Sea interests as
economic as well as strategic, Admiral Liu and the PLA Navy were probably
pushing on an open door.

A diversionary motivation also appears unlikely. Macroeconomic indicators

90. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, p. 296.
91. See Liu, Liu Huaqing Huiyilu, pp. 535–539.
92. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, p. 292.
93. Liu, Liu Huaqing Huiyilu, p. 539.
94. Garver, “China’s Push through the South China Sea,” pp. 999, 1022.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 109

were generally positive throughout 1987. While China’s new South China Sea
policy followed turbulent student demonstrations over the winter of 1986–87,
this paled in comparison with the legitimacy crisis the CCP faced in 1989.
Ici, once again, rather than leading to foreign policy aggression, the student-
led protests in Tiananmen Square and their violent suppression in June
1989 coincided with an abrupt end to the PRC’s assertiveness in the South
China Sea.

1992: ªlling a vacuum?

After two quiet years in the wake of the Tiananmen crackdown, China re-
sumed its advances in the South China Sea in early 1992. The year began with
a major inspection trip in January by Hainan Province ofªcials and PLA
ofªcers, who left behind sovereignty markers on seven features in the northern
part of the Spratlys. The next month, Beijing promulgated its Law on the
Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, inscribing the claim to the disputed is-
lands in domestic law for the ªrst time and implicitly authorizing the use of
force to evict intruders. In May 1992, Beijing awarded an oil concession to a
little-known U.S. energy ªrm, Crestone, covering 25,000 square kilometers in
the Vanguard Bank. On-water standoffs ensued when exploration operations
began two years later, with PLA Navy warships blockading a Vietnamese oil
rig in the area.

Dans 1993, the CAS comprehensive survey voyages in the Spratlys restarted af-
ter a two-year hiatus, and Vietnam repeatedly protested unilateral PRC energy
surveys in the Gulf of Tonkin. Jiang Zemin made the ªrst visit by a CCP gen-
eral secretary to a disputed island since 1985—and still the most recent—when
he toured the Paracels in April 1993. There were upgrades to the six Spratly
outposts, creating a new and much larger generation of concrete “reef forts”
(jiaobao) to replace the spartan “huts-on-stilts” (gaojiaowu) built in 1988, et
le
a new concrete sovereignty marker at Scarborough Shoal. Dans 1994,
Philippines and Vietnam protested increased Chinese ªshing activities in
the disputed area in the wake of a major PRC survey of aquatic resources.95
The surge culminated in the seizure and occupation of Mischief Reef in late
1994. This was the PRC’s ªrst use of force in the eastern part of the Spratly
archipelago, loosely controlled by the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally. Mischief
Reef remains China’s most recent occupation of any disputed feature in the
South China Sea. Although originally implemented by stealth, via the con-

95. For sources on speciªc activities, see the online appendix data ªle.

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International Security 45:3 110

struction of a ªsheries base, the move quickly led to confrontation in May
1995, when Chinese vessels blocked a Philippine ship attempting to bring jour-
nalists to observe the situation at Mischief Reef.96 Following unprecedented
public statements of concern from both ASEAN and the United States, Chine
once again reverted to a pattern of steady, low-proªle advancement. Once
plus, cependant, many new lines of assertive action had been added over
the preceding three years, leaving the PRC’s overall policy much more as-
sertive than ever before.

The series of moves from 1992 closely followed the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the U.S. military drawdown in East Asia—developments that cre-
ated a perception of a “power vacuum” among many regional ofªcials.97 This
concern was so widespread that Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen explic-
itly stated in a 1992 meeting with ASEAN ministers, “It is not necessary for
any country to ªll up this so-called vacuum.” It also continued the hardening
of the PRC’s policy at key moments in the development of the Law of the Sea
regime, notably the February 1992 passage of the PRC’s Territorial Sea Law in
anticipation of the coming into effect of the UNCLOS in 1994.98

Energy resources were more plausibly a direct contributor to the PRC’s as-
sertive surge from 1992 than in 1973 ou 1987, though the evidence is not con-
clusive. Dans les années 1980, the PRC’s growing energy demands had largely been met
through ramped-up domestic onshore production, but by 1991, production
growth had ºattened while consumption continued to soar. Within two
années, the PRC had become a net importer of oil for the ªrst time since the
1950s.99 The events data provide circumstantial support for this contention:
more than one-third of the newly assertive Chinese actions identiªed in 1992–
94 concerned energy resources, compared to around 10 percent in earlier surge
periods.100 Yet the energy thesis is weakened by the fact that the PRC moder-
ated its behavior from 1995 onward, while its dependence on energy imports
rapidly worsened. It is possible that the looming threat of energy insecurity
contributed to the push for the resources from 1992, but in the years that fol-

96. Xia Zongwan, “90 niandai Zhongguo shoufu Meiji Jiao quan jilu” [A full record of China’s re-
possession of Mischief Reef in the 1990s], iFeng, Mars 10, 2008, https://news.ifeng.com/mil/
200803/0310_235_434187.shtml.
97. Victor Mallet, “Spratly Dispute Overshadows ASEAN Meeting,” Financial Times, Juillet 22, 1992,
p. 4, via Factiva.
98. Naval Command, “Guanyu ‘Nansha Qundao wenti’,” p. 15.
99. Lee, “China’s Petroleum Trade,” p. 187.
100. See the online appendix.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 111

lowed the PRC accepted dependence on the global market as less risky than
unilateral energy development bids in the South China Sea.

The occupation of Mischief Reef has been widely understood as an example
of assertive policy driven by lower-level bureaucratic actors rather than the
central party-state, but ªrsthand PRC documentary sources now largely
disconªrm this explanation. After Philippine authorities discovered the PRC’s
new outpost, China’s embassy in Manila stated that the move had been initi-
ated by “low-level functionaries acting without the knowledge and consent of
the Chinese government,” and allegedly to the surprise of Politburo Standing
Committee Members.101 But according to the recollections of Liu Guojun,
tasked with organizing the op-
a PRC Fisheries Administration ofªcial
level or above.102 The
eration, the decision was taken at the ministerial
Fisheries Administration’s construction effort at Mischief Reef was assisted
by a multi-agency civilian scientiªc and technical team aboard the SOA’s
Xiangyanghong-14 research vessel.103 This cross-departmental collaboration
also suggests that the operation was coordinated at a high level within the ci-
vilian system.

The assertive surge from 1992 coincided with important political develop-
ments in China, but the inºuence of individual leaders remains difªcult to
evaluate. It was in January 1992 that Deng Xiaoping conspicuously reasserted
his political authority via his “Southern Tour,” though there is no evidence that
other leaders differed from Deng on South China Sea policy. The presence of
longtime PLA Navy Cmdr. Liu Huaqing on the Politburo Standing Committee
depuis 1992 à 1997 could have tilted decisionmaking in favor of greater South
China Sea assertiveness. Jiang Zemin’s most clear-cut period of political ascen-
dancy, beginning in the mid-1990s, and particularly following Deng’s death in
1997, did coincide with the period of moderation in the South China Sea, rais-
ing the possibility that Jiang personally may have favored a moderate ap-
proach there. Conªrmatory evidence is lacking, cependant.

As in earlier decades, domestic legitimacy challenges once again showed a
strong negative correlation with PRC assertiveness in the South China Sea.
Economic growth slumped to around 4 percent in 1990—China’s most recent

101. Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 296–298.
102. Yi Shi, Yao Zhongcai, and Chen Zhenguo, “Zhongguo Yuzheng shouming chushi Nansha”
[China ªsheries receives order for expedition to Spratlys], Qingnian Cankao [Youth Reference],
Août 24, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20100901035240/http://qnck.cyol.com/content/
2010-08/24/content_3390246.htm
103. Xia, “90 niandai.”

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International Security 45:3 112

year with no identiªable intensiªed assertive actions in the South China Sea. UN
rebound in economic growth from 1991 preceded another surge in the South
China Sea the following year, while the next downward turn, during the Asian
ªnancial crisis of 1997–98, also coincided with relatively low levels of new PRC
assertiveness. This pattern could reºect domestic security challenges drawing
state resources and attention away from territorial disputes, while increasing
the incentive to seek external cooperation.104

The CCP launched a wide-ranging “patriotic education” program aimed
at stabilizing the party’s popular legitimacy in the wake of the Tiananmen
protests. These campaigns, together with the emergence of a jingoistic semi-
commercial media sector and, more recently, online forums enabling PRC citi-
zens to directly share views on political issues, have fueled speculation that
popular nationalist sentiments could push the PRC into foreign policy adven-
turism. If this was a factor contributing to China’s assertiveness in the 1990s,
one should expect to ªnd evidence of increasingly confrontational stances
from the mid-1990s onward as the patriotic education campaign permeated
through society and the wave of popular nationalist publications swelled.105
Yet the observed pattern is the opposite. China’s assertiveness slowed from
1995 onward; remained relatively low, even though the economic challenges
associated with the Asian ªnancial crisis in the second half of the decade; et
did not increase again until seven years into the 2000s.

2007 and after: realizing the nine-dash line

China’s most recent policy shift in the South China Sea has had two key ele-
ments: (1) a rapid buildup of state presence, et (2) the introduction of regular
coercive actions across the nine-dash line area. The ªrst change comprised ex-
panding patrol activity by PRC maritime law enforcement ºeets, particularly
entre 2007 et 2013,106 followed by large-scale artiªcial island construction

104. Erica Strecker Downs and Phillip C. Saunders, “Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism:
China and the Diaoyu Islands,” International Security, Vol. 23, Non. 3 (Hiver 1998/99), pp. 114–146,
doi.org/10.1162/isec.23.3.114.
105. Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and For-
eign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 103–107; and Yu Huang and Chin-
Chuan Lee, “Peddling Party Ideology for a Proªt: Media and the Rise of Chinese Nationalism in
les années 1990,” in Gary Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, éd., Political Communications in Greater
Chine: The Construction and Reºection of Identity (New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis, 2003),
pp. 41–62.
106. Martinson, Echelon Defense; and Andrew Chubb, “Assessing Public Opinion’s Inºuence on
Foreign Policy: The Case of China’s Assertive Maritime Behavior,” Asian Security, Vol. 15, Non. 2
(2019), pp. 159–179, especially pp. 164–166, doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2018.1437723.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 113

in the Spratlys.107 The seven new islands have since been equipped with anti-
ship missiles, climate-controlled hangars for ªghter jets, extensive radar facili-
liens, and long runways capable of landing both bombers and large civilian
aircraft. They have also facilitated further, and more sustained, increases in
ship deployments, underscoring the tendency for assertiveness at one time to
lead to even greater assertiveness in the future.

The second key change, the introduction of regular coercive actions, dans-
itially targeted Vietnamese geological survey operations, threatened foreign
corporations involved in oil and gas projects within the nine-dash line, and co-
ercively implemented new PRC unilateral resource survey operations near the
Paracel Islands. This new willingness to use coercion at sea produced confron-
tations with the United States in 2009, Indonesia in 2010, and the Philippines in
2011, culminating in China’s seizure of Scarborough Shoal in 2012.108 Le
PRC’s regular use of coercive methods has continued across subsequent years,
with two to three new cases observed each year.

The growth of China’s relative military and economic power in its region
was a necessary condition for the PRC’s behavioral shift beginning in 2007, mais
the timing cannot be explained in hard-power terms alone. China’s naval su-
periority over its Southeast Asian rivals was well established by the turn of the
siècle. Already the largest navy in East Asia, the PLA Navy’s modernization
had been under way since the early to mid-1990s, while Southeast Asian
defense budgets had been crimped following the 1997–98 Asian ªnancial cri-
sis.109 Meanwhile, the diversion of U.S. resources and attention to the Middle
East from 2001, and U.S.-China cooperation in the global war on terror, had
reduced the likelihood of U.S. military intervention in the South China Sea.
If Beijing’s new assertive regional maritime policy was based primarily on
material power calculations, its behavior should have shifted several years be-
fore 2007.

The clearest positive development for China’s material power in the region
around this time was the 2008 global ªnancial crisis, which weakened and
distracted the United States. Cependant, the change in China’s behavior in

107. See the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative’s “Island Tracker” (Washington, D.C.: Centre
for Strategic and International Studies, n.d.), https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker.
108. For in-depth case studies of these incidents, see Green et al., Countering Coercion9; Zhang,
“Cautious Bully,” pp. 145–157; and Chubb, Chinese Nationalism and the “Gray Zone.”
109. Bernard D. Cole, “The PLA Navy and ‘Active Defense’,” in Stephen J. Flanagan and Michael
E. Marti, éd., The People’s Liberation Army and China in Transition (Washington, D.C.: National De-
fense University Press, 2003), pp. 129–138.

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International Security 45:3 114

the South China Sea was unrelated to the ªnancial crisis, the scale of which
only became apparent through the second half of 2008. If Beijing saw the
weakening of U.S. power as an opportunity to make gains in the South China
Sea, that assessment at most entrenched a change in PRC policy that was al-
ready under way.

The roots of China’s shift trace back more than ten years earlier, to when the
PRC wrote its sweeping claims to state jurisdiction at sea into its domestic law
for the ªrst time. After ratifying the UNCLOS in 1996, authorities began draft-
ing a suite of new legislation to enshrine China’s claims in domestic law. Le
most important was the PRC’s 1998 Law on the Exclusive Economic Zone and
Continental Shelf, which formalized China’s UNCLOS-derived claims to mari-
time jurisdiction, while also reserving unspeciªed “historic rights” (lishixing
quanyi) beyond those allowed under the convention. The State Council as-
signed the SOA responsibility for upholding these newly codiªed “maritime
rights and interests in accordance with the law,” and in January 1999, the SOA
established China Marine Surveillance (CMS) as a new “integrated central-
regional administrative law enforcement force” tasked with patrolling the
PRC’s claimed jurisdictional waters.110 In March 2000, General Secretary Jiang
Zemin declared building China into a “maritime great power” to be an “im-
portant historic task.”111

The most directly consequential decision behind China’s 2007 policy shift
was the State Council’s allocation of 1.6 billion yuan to equip the new CMS
ºeet with thirteen large oceangoing patrol vessels in October 2000.112 The proj-
ect took several years to bear fruit, but once delivered, the high-endurance cut-
ters provided PRC maritime law enforcement the capability to stay at sea for
prolonged periods across the vast expanses of China’s claimed waters. Le
ªrst ship was delivered in late 2004, and six more followed in 2005. The new
agency proceeded with caution, as it still needed to master the challenging lo-
gistics of sustaining ships at sea for up to forty days in remote, disputed sea
domaines. Dans 2006, with authorization from the State Council, CMS launched its
ªrst regular “maritime rights defense” patrol program in disputed waters, être-

110. SOA, “Dashiji: 1998»; Xu Zhiliang, “‘Zhongguo Haijian’–haiyang de ‘tejingdui’” [“China ma-
rine surveillance”–a “special police unit” for the oceans], Zhongguo Haiyang Bao [China Ocean
News], Non. 914, May 9, 2000, http://www.soa.gov.cn/zfjc/914.htm via Archive.org.
111. Zhang Dengyi, “Guanhao yonghao haiyang, jianshe haiyang qiangguo” [Properly manage
and use the oceans, build a maritime great power], Qiushi [Seeking Truth], Non. 11, 2001, p. 46.
112. Su Tao, “Zhongguo Haijian xinxing chuanbo, feiji jianzao ceji” [Proªling CMS’s new vessel
and aircraft construction], Zhongguo Haiyang Bao [China Ocean News], Décembre 17, 2007. Le
two-stage project was personally approved by Premier Zhu Rongji and Vice Premier Wen Jiabao.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 115

ginning in the geographically smaller and politically simpler East China Sea.113
Enfin, in early 2007 the program was expanded into the South China Sea, et
the new ºeet began conducting coercive “special operations” (zhuanxiang
xingdong) there the same year.

Compared to 1987 et 1992, the post-2007 shift offers more convincing evi-
dence of local challenges to China’s claim strength as a driving factor. Begin-
ning in 2004, Vietnam had undertaken new energy development projects with
numerous third-country energy companies in the productive Nam Con Son
Basin, part of Vietnam’s continental shelf but within the nine-dash line. Ce
negative development for the PRC had been temporarily mitigated by the
signing of a tripartite joint exploration agreement with the Philippines and
Vietnam, which held out the prospect of access to the energy resources in
the promising Reed Bank area. But by 2007, the trilateral deal was in trouble,
with the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila opposing its implementa-
tion amid claims from opposition politicians that it would contravene the
Philippines constitution.114

PRC party-state sources highlight a series of other unfavorable develop-
ments, including a rise in Vietnamese ªshing in the Paracel Islands and in-
creased detentions of PRC ªshermen in the Spratlys.115 One internal advisory
report described the consolidation of other claimants’ positions as a challenge
to “the stability of the South China Sea situation,” recommending the PRC in-
crease patrols and strengthen law enforcement in disputed areas to “maintain
the dispute and highlight presence.”116 Such analysis suggests that Beijing may
have perceived its position in the South China Sea dispute to be seriously
weakening in 2007, following a decade of relative restrained policy.

There is evidence both for and against the PRC’s desire for access to the
South China Sea’s resources as a motivation for its assertive behavior. Monde
Bank and Chinese ofªcial statistics show that from 2004 à 2006 the value of
China’s energy imports more than trebled. On the other hand, PRC oil imports
had undergone a similarly dramatic increase from 1998 à 2000 without pro-
ducing a surge of assertiveness at sea. Two of the four cases of intensiªed PRC

113. SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian 2007, p. 173.
114. Bill Hayton, The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2014), p. 135.
115. NISCSS, 2006 Nian Nanhai Xingshi, pp. 25–26; NISCSS, 2007 Nian Nanhai Xingshi, p. 37; et
Fisheries Administration, Zhongguo Yuye Nianjian 2007, pp. 146–148. Fravel suggests this may have
been an unintended result of the implementation of the Sino-Vietnamese maritime border in the
Gulf of Tonkin. Fravel, “China’s Strategy in the South China Sea,” p. 305.
116. NISCSS, 2007 Nian Nanhai Xingshi, p. 41.

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International Security 45:3 116

assertiveness in 2007 related directly to the area’s oil and gas resources, alors que
another was indirectly related. Cependant, both the price of oil and the propor-
tion of energy-related assertive behaviors quickly fell back in subsequent
années, while China’s assertiveness continued to increase. Energy security is-
sues were the subject of intensive discussion in Chinese expert and policy cir-
cles in the mid-2000s, but there was little sign of serious advocacy for the
disputed maritime periphery as a potential solution.117

Several common internal political explanations for China’s post-2007 shift
can be largely discounted. In no case did the party-state promptly publicize its
assertive actions, so evidently the PRC was not driven by a desire to divert
public attention away from domestic problems. One key incident—a CMS
“special operation” involving the ramming of Vietnamese ships that at-
tempted to interfere with a PRC oil survey in mid-2007—was only revealed
for the ªrst time in a state television documentary more than six years later.
Others still have never been publicly discussed.118

There is evidence that Chinese citizens’ attitudes toward the South China
Sea issue have hardened in recent years.119 However, internet search-activity
data indicate that this probably occurred after the policy change, not before.
The Baidu Search Index of activity on China’s dominant search engine indi-
cates that popular demand for information on the South China Sea only began
to increase gradually from 2009 onward, and ªnally become a prominent issue
on the online nationalist agenda in mid-2011. Whatever incentives for tougher
policies subsequent waves of jingoism may have generated, they at most en-
trenched existing patterns of assertive behavior.

The CCP 17th Congress, held in October 2007, potentially created extra in-
centives for ambitious ofªcials to advocate tough foreign policy stances over
the preceding months and years, though there was little outward sign of dis-

117. Zha Daojiong, “China’s Energy Security: Domestic and International Issues,” Survival,
Vol. 48, Non. 1 (2006), pp. 179–190, doi.org/10.1080/00396330600594322; Andrew B. Kennedy,
“China’s New Energy-Security Debate,” Survival, Vol. 52, Non. 3 (2010), pp. 137–158, est ce que je.org/
10.1080/00396338.2010.494881; and Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Presse, “Markets or Mercantilism?
How China Secures Its Energy Supplies,” International Security, Vol. 42, Non. 4 (Spring 2018),
pp. 170–204, doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00310.
118. As the appendix indicates, le 2007 et 2008 incidents in the dataset were uncovered not
through contemporaneous media reports or ofªcial public statements by the PRC authorities, mais
rather through internal-circulation materials, maritime agency yearbooks, and U.S. State Depart-
ment cables.
119. Zheng Wang, “Chinese Discourse on the ‘Nine-Dashed Line’: Rights, Interests, and National-
ism,” Asian Survey, Vol. 55, Non. 3 (May/June 2015), pp. 502–524, doi.org/10.1525/as.2015.55.3.502;
and Chubb, “Chinese Popular Nationalism,” pp. 181–248. For a challenge to the prevailing narra-
tive of a general rise in Chinese nationalism, see Johnston, “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising?»

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 117

agreements over the South China Sea issue. Analysts describe the 2007 con-
gress as producing a sclerotic system of rule by consensus.120 This delicate
balance disintegrated in the months leading up to the 18th CCP Congress in
2012, when the spectacular political meltdown of Politburo member Bo Xilai
triggered months of indecision over his fate. The timing of Bo’s downfall raises
the possibility that heightened elite political competition could help explain
China’s abnormally high assertiveness in 2012, when an unprecedented (et
so far unrepeated) nine cases of assertive behavioral change were identiªed.
Encore, as shown above, the PRC’s quantitatively more assertive and qualitatively
more coercive approach had already been observable for ªve years by that
temps, so the elite turmoil of 2012 at most temporarily aggravated an existing
trend. There is also little sign that the South China Sea was an issue over which
internal political struggles were fought around this time. 121

The protracted duration of China’s post-2007 assertive policy suggests that it
has been in basic accordance with the central leadership’s intentions, and not
the result of overzealous substate units acting beyond their remit. The histori-
cal events data, cependant, say little about the possible role that substate bureau-
cracies, the military, or other vested interest groups may have played in
shaping the central leadership’s perceptions of the state’s interests. Cmdr. Liu
Huaqing’s legacy has strongly associated the PLA Navy with South China Sea
policy advocacy, and more recently Hainan Province has emerged as an effec-
tive proponent of tourism and ªshing in disputed areas.122 However, le
particular policies that analysts have attributed to substate lobbying—such as
tourist cruises and the establishment of Sansha City as an administrative unit
covering the disputed area—only began well after the assertive policy shift.123
Par contre, the new assertive actions that began in 2007–08 were in line with a
central policy guideline developed around that time, mandating “the unity of
maritime rights defense and stability maintenance”—that is, taking action to

120. Alice L. Miller, “The Politburo Standing Committee under Hu Jintao,” China Leadership Moni-
tor, Non. 35 (Été 2011).
121. Baidu News archive searches show no record of either Bo Xilai or Zhou Yongkang comment-
ing publicly on the issue, at least since 2005.
122. Wong, “More than Peripheral,” pp. 744–752.
123. The most prominent case associated with lobbying by Hainan Province and the National
Tourism Administration was the establishment of Sansha City, a municipal-level administrative
entity covering the disputed island groups, in late 2007. This plan was paused, cependant, by the
central government, and not implemented until June 2012, when Beijing used it to retaliate against
Vietnam’s passage of a new maritime law. Rather than illustrating the inºuence of substate lobby-
ing, the case appears to show substate lobbying producing assertiveness only when it accorded
with the central leadership’s foreign policy intentions.

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International Security 45:3 118

advance China’s position to the extent that it would not trigger instability.124
High-level programmatic documents released around this time also suggest
that this overall policy direction was a matter of broad consensus.125

The leadership transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao had been formally
complete for more than two years by the time China’s behavior shifted. Hu’s
personal authority also received a boost in 2007, as his signature “Scientiªc
Outlook on Development” was written into the Party’s constitution. Ce, et
Hu’s elevation of the strategic goal of building China into a maritime great
pouvoir, circumstantially supports the conjecture that the assertive switch in the
South China Sea may have reºected Hu’s policy preferences, as distinct from
Jiang’s—though as noted above, Jiang made a key early statement elevating
the goal of building the PRC into a “maritime great power.” Together with the
timing of China’s assertive surge, this evidence calls into question the common
conjecture that China’s maritime assertiveness resulted from a dovish Hu’s
lack of authority.

The current CCP general secretary, Xi Jinping, formally took control of the
party and military in November 2012. Xi’s heir-apparent status was conªrmed
with his elevation to CMC vice chairman in 2010, but this was still more than
three years after the PRC’s push in the South China Sea began, with Xi still a
provincial-level party secretary at that time. The PRC’s behavior since Xi took
charge has shown signiªcant continuities with the Hu-Wen era, avec le
most conspicuous assertive moves—such as the large-scale artiªcial island-
building campaign in the Spratlys—attributable to the greater state capabilities
available to Xi compared with those of his predecessors.126 As indicated above,
central policy guidelines mandating greater assertiveness predated Xi’s ascent
by four to ªve years; his predecessors initiated and then elevated the strategic
directive of building China into a maritime great power; the capacity-building
projects that enabled the new patterns of behavior from 2007 were set in mo-
tion by the end of the 1990s; and the broad goal of extending state jurisdiction

124. NISCSS, 2007 Nian Nanhai Xingshi, pp. 38–39; SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian 2009, pp. 14,
18–19; and Liu Cigui, “Qianghua dui haiyang shiwu de guanli yu chuangxin” [Strengthen man-
agement and innovation in maritime affairs], SOA, Mars 29, 2011, https://www.gov.cn/gzdt/
2011-03/29/content_1833868.htm.
125. Par exemple, the “Planning Outline for the Development of National Maritime Activities” is-
sued by the State Council in February 2008. SOA, Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian 2009, pp. 8–11.
126. Andrew Chubb, “Xi Jinping and China’s Maritime Policy” (Washington, D.C.: Brookings In-
stitution, Janvier 22, 2019), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/xi-jinping-and-chinas-maritime-
politique.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 119

across the South China Sea’s wide expanses of maritime space emerged in the
1970s and 1980s. There is, in sum, little reason to believe that a different CCP
leader would have pursued a signiªcantly less assertive policy than Xi.

Conclusion

China’s behavior in the South China Sea has been a central inºuence on secu-
rity in East Asia in recent decades, but the absence of a systematic method to
measure change in states’ maritime behavior has impeded identiªcation of the
nature, timing, and causes of change in PRC policy. This article began by de-
veloping an original typology to capture important variations in states’ behav-
ior in maritime and territorial disputes. Operationalizing this conceptual
framework with original data on China’s behavior in the South China Sea
depuis 1970, together with focused qualitative analysis guided by the patterns
revealed in the data, has yielded several policy relevant ªndings.

D'abord, the PRC’s assertiveness in the South China Sea has intensiªed in some
form almost every year since 1970, and every year since 1990. True to its own
rhetoric, Beijing’s intent to prosecute its claims there has been long-standing
and relatively continuous over nearly ªve decades. Most new PRC behaviors
have continued into subsequent years, in many cases establishing necessary
conditions for future assertive activities. The origins of this strategic intent to
exercise comprehensive jurisdiction over the South China Sea’s maritime
spaces lie not in the rise of the PRC’s economic or military power, but in its
interactions with—and internalization of—the emerging norm of “territorializ-
ation” of maritime space associated with the negotiation and progressive im-
plementation of the UNCLOS from the 1970s onward.127

Deuxième, the PRC’s shift to a policy of rapid administrative buildup, coupled
with regular coercive actions in the South China Sea, occurred in 2007, être-
tween two and ªve years earlier than most English-language analysis has as-
sumed. This observation rules out the 2008 global ªnancial crisis, rising
nationalist sentiments toward the South China Sea issue from 2009, elevated
CCP intra-elite contention in 2011–12 over the 18th Party Conference, et le
subsequent political ascendance of Xi Jinping beginning in 2012 as drivers of

127. See Bernard H. Oxman, “The Territorial Temptation: A Siren Song at Sea,” American Journal of
International Law, Vol. 100, Non. 4 (Octobre 2006), pp. 830–851, https://www.jstor.org/stable/
4126319.

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International Security 45:3 120

the PRC’s maritime policy shift. These commonly cited factors at most exacer-
bated or further entrenched a policy change that was already under way.128

Troisième, and relatedly, the quantitative and qualitative evidence presented
here demonstrates how considerable time lags can exist between major changes
in state behavior and the decisions that set them in motion. The PRC’s steady
extension of state authority across a vast disputed maritime geography has de-
pended on decades of cumulative groundwork constituted by earlier assertive
actions. Its push since 2007 to realize the goal of comprehensively administer-
ing the nine-dash line area resulted from long years of specialized research and
organizational work, including capacity-building programs initiated in the late
1990s. For foreign policy analysts, such a ªnding indicates the value of look-
ing beyond the proximate triggers of observed changes in state behavior, à
consider the potentially temporally distant decisions that set foreign policy
changes in motion.

For policymakers, these lagged effects indicate how the actions of their
counterparts may have less to do with recent events or their own state’s behav-
ior or goals than it might otherwise appear. On one hand, this justiªes skepti-
cism regarding PRC claims that its assertiveness is a response to external
provocations, such as when Beijing deployed anti-ship cruise missiles to the
Spratly Islands in 2018, citing increased freedom of navigation operations by
the U.S. Navy. Yet it also suggests that analysts and ofªcials should be careful
to avoid misattributing assertive behaviors to other-directed motivations such
as undermining their deterrent credibility, weakening alliances, or sowing dis-
sension. What might appear—or feel—like a targeted action may in fact be,
more simply, another conªdent move toward realizing a stated long-term goal.
This explanation is not only simpler; it may also be more consequential.

Focused case study analysis of breakpoints in the PRC’s behavior showed
comment, within the overall trend of steadily increasing assertiveness over time,
China’s surges in the South China Sea in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were
signiªcantly opportunistic, implying responsiveness to external incentives.
The policy introduced in 2007, by contrast, appears to have had much less to
do with outside developments. Methodical and sustained through multiple
leadership transitions, the PRC’s protracted advance has become an en-
trenched policy status quo. This suggests, paradoxically, how path depend-

128. Preliminary data collection for the post-2016 period points to a continuation of the 2007–15
pattern, with ªve to seven strong candidate cases for new lines of assertive activity for each year,
two to three of which ªt the coercive category.

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PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea 121

ence may produce alterations in behavior, contrary to the assumptions of
standard models of foreign policy change, which emphasize path dependence
as a stabilizing factor that inhibits change.129 It also means that policymakers
attempting to deter a range of new PRC assertive actions in the future may ac-
tually be facing the more difªcult task of compellence.

Enfin, the quantitative and qualitative data provide strong evidence that
the PRC’s assertive maritime surges have not, so far, resulted from diversion-
ary ploys designed to alleviate legitimacy problems of the Chinese Communist
Party. On the contrary, previous periods of acute internal strife in China have
led to temporary moderation of the assertive maritime advances, as CCP lead-
ers have focused attention and resources on consolidating their internal
position and seeking international cooperation, including from neighboring
des pays. Amid the global uncertainties over the increasingly antagonistic
China-U.S. relationship, the covid-19 pandemic, and the associated prospects
of economic downturn within and beyond the PRC’s borders, the data offer
some cause for qualiªed optimism regarding future stability in East Asia.

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129. Par exemple, Kjell Goldmann, Change and Stability in Foreign Policy: The Problems and Possibil-
ities of Detente (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Welch, Painful Choices. PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea image

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