A Study On China's Strategy In Coping With The South China Sea Issue

The South China Sea issue is sensitive, complicated, and changeable, which not only widely involves "6+1" parties, but also deep influences the political, economic, and military patterns of the whole world profoundly. In recent years, with the increasing involvement of extraterritorial forces, headed by the United States, Japan, and so on so forth, the South China Sea issue has graduated into "internationalized", "broadened" and "complicated", which, as a result, further deteriorates the overall situation, and increases the difficulty of solving the Issue.Under such a background, this dissertation, widely collected related historical records, closely followed its newest development concerned, elaborates and analyzes separately its core and the key problems on the basis of comprehensively studying the research results made by the experts in this field from the perspectives of law, diplomacy, administration and control, etc., by adopting various research methods, such as comprehensive and comparative study, numerical simulation, inductive interpretation, etc., and, strategically provided corresponding suggestions for effectively coping with the interrogations raised by the claimants and the extraterritorial forces, breaking the concurrent "South China Sea predicament", improving China's overall administration and control ability and efficiency, and thus supporting the future related researches and relevant national policy making with intellectual support or as reference.Chapter One firstly introduces the geographical location value and overall natural resources situation of the South China Sea. Then, it makes a historical stage division based on the developing process of South China Sea issue, introducing the status of its development in each stage respectively. It also summarizes the claims for the rights of South China Sea islands and rocks in sovereignty, maritime delimitation made by China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei elaborates the actual and potential influences on the diplomatic policies adopted by the United States and Japan, etc. on the South China Sea issue, and concludes the key issues confronted by China, which provides the research basis for the following chapters.In the second chapter, the research, starting from the core issue:the dispute for the rights of the South China Sea islands and rocks in sovereignty, analyzes the rationality and legitimacy of China's claims for the rights, and criticizes the other countries'claims, on the basis of the Pre-empt principle, the Prescription principle, restoration of territorial sovereignty, Inter-temporal Law, the doctrine of effective control and estoppel. Meanwhile, it refutes the legal problems existing in the claims for rights raised by the claimants, pointing out the strong relationship between solving the core issue and defining the legal status of the "Dotted Line in the South China Sea", and thus leading to the following discussion of the next chapter.In the third chapter, the dissertation reviews the history of the "Dotted Line in the South China Sea". After that, it studies and comparatively analysis the four theories on the legal status of the "The Dotted Line in the South China Sea", the national border line theory, historic waters line theory, and the historical rights line theory. Besides, the dissertation further launches a legal review of the case:The Republic of the Philippines v. The People s Republic of China, analyzing the background, the legal stands of China, i.e. "no acceptance, no participation", and the claims from both sides.In the fourth chapter, considering the International Court of Justice weights more on the influence of effective control, this dissertation begins with a legal analysis of effective control, and then moves to the situation of China's administration and control over the South China Sea. Based upon the historical records of China's practice in effective controlling, it generalizes five administration and control modes, and respectively studies, summarizes and induces their characteristics, typical cases, advantages and disadvantages as well.In the last chapter, on the basis of the results of previous researches, the dissertation furthers the study on solving the core and key issue of the South China Sea issue, analyzing and discussing from the following perspectives as the legal response, the diplomatic response, the methods to promote South China Sea issue to be solved based on integrated strategy, and the methods to improve China's effectiveness and efficiency of overall administration and control, and provides a series of reasonable suggestions and feasible strategies in coping with the South China Sea issue, and prompting the South China Sea issue to be solved.