Making Sense of China’s Maritime Border.docVIP

Making Sense of China’s Maritime Border 　　China’s recent activities on its ocean frontier have given rise to a fear that it’s seeking to expand its power at the expense of others now that it has a more powerful navy. The essence of this idea is that China’s activities are expansionist and more aggressive compared with 20 or 30 years ago because it has a new urge for more territory or because it wants to throw its newfound weight around in maritime areas to rewrite regional order. 　　Another interpretation is possible， more in conformity with the facts， and less sinister. China’s ocean frontier has， for the most part， never been settled in the four centuries since the idea of maritime borders under international law was first articulated in 1609. China’s primary motivation， then， is to defend what it sees as its island territories which neighboring countries have attempted to usurp. 　　Regional order， as defined by the balance of economic and military power between Japan and China and between the mainland and Taiwan， has already been rewritten by China’s peaceful rise and any additional gains accruing from the control of its claimed small island territories in the South China Sea would be marginal. For China， the main game on its maritime frontier is successful reunification of the mainland and Taiwan， which sits at the northern end of the South China Sea. Though China has come to describe the dispute in the Nansha Islands as a “core interest” because it involves sovereign territory， that is hardly new and is only a statement of the obvious. The more important characterization driving Chinese policy for decades has remained， as one Chinese Government adviser observed in 1996， that the dispute is “small in scale and local in nature.” 　　Beginning in the mid-1800s， colonial powers such as the United Kingdom， France， Japan and the United States became involved in carving out spheres of influence or de facto sovereignty （“concessions” of some kind） over enclaves of