The government of Vietnam appears to have filed a statement of its legal views with the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea arbitral tribunal formed to resolve the Philippines-China dispute in the South China Sea. It is a little unclear exactly what Vietnam has filed. According to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs website: In response to the question on Viet...
Over at The National Interest, I have an essay considering the strategic implications of the Philippines arbitration claim against China. I argue that the Philippines made a mistake by trying to force China into an arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that their "lawfare" strategy is probably going to backfire. Due in part to domestic pressures for...
In observance of United Nations Day on October 24, China's foreign minister Wang Yi issued a long statement expressing China's view of itself as a "staunch defender and builder of international law" (Chinese version here). As China-watchers know, China's Communist Party has just completed its "Fourth Plenum" (sort of a Party leadership strategy meeting) on the theme of the promotion of...
[Alvin Y.H. Cheung is a Visiting Scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute at NYU School of Law.] After two years of increasingly acrimonious debate over Hong Kong’s electoral reforms for 2017, the city’s pro-democracy movement has finally attracted global concern. A consistent theme of international responses has been that Hong Kong’s democratisation should occur in accordance with the Basic Law, the...
There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...
Several news agencies (here and here) have suggested that recent reports of Chinese military aircraft entering into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone is akin to a territorial incursion. For instance, J. Michael Cole warns at the Diplomat, "If they were indeed intentional, the latest intrusions could signal a further denigration of Taiwan’s sovereignty...
I had the privilege today to attend a conference in Taipei today discussing the "East China Sea Peace Initiative". The ECSPI is Taiwan's proposal to reduce and maybe even eliminate the confrontation between China and Japan in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. The ECSPI is not all that complicated. 1) Shelve Territorial Disputes;and 2) Share Resources Through Joint Development. There is...
So I managed to anger lots of folks (mostly on twitter) with my post Friday (republished in the Diplomat and RealClearWorld yesterday) on the international legal problems created by any Japanese intervention to defend Taiwan from an attack by China. I don't mind angering people (especially on twitter), but I do want to make sure they are angry with me for...
Harry J. Kazianis, the managing editor of The National Interest, has a smart post discussing the risk that the U.S. is taking if it tries to take more aggressive action to counter China in the South China Sea. Essentially, he argues the U.S. has no effective strategy to counter China's "non-kinetic" strategy to subtly alter the status quo by using...
I've been swamped with various projects and distractions here in Taiwan (mostly food-related), so I didn't notice until today this very interesting Zachary Keck post about how Japan's recent decision to re-interpret its constitutional provision to allow expanded overseas military activities would enable Japan to help defend Taiwan against an attack from China. It's a fascinating post, but it also made...
The conflict between China and Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig has (thankfully) calmed down a little bit, with fewer reports of rammings and water cannon fights in the South China Sea. But the war of press release and government-sponsored editorials has heated up and all of them are wielding international law as a weapon of authority and legitimacy. Vietnam's government...