Domestic Politics and International Bargaining in China’s Territorial Disputes

Abstract

Domestic Politics and International Bargaining in China's Territorial Disputes. By Chien-Peng Chung. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge-Curzon, 2004. Soflcover: 222pp. In 2006, as a first year Ph.D. student, I swallowed hard and clicked on the purchase icon at a popular online bookseller. The $150 price tag was worth it, I told myself. I was going to write a dissertation about Chinese territorial and Chung's book would be useful. As it turns out it was, and remains, invaluable. While it is rare to review books nine years after publication, the release of the paperback version of Chung's treatise on the domestic politics of China's territorial merits discussion as to whether the next generation of students of Chinese foreign policy should spend considerably less on the paperback version. In light of developments in the South and East China Seas in recent years, does Chung's model--based on Robert Putnam's two-level games framework --still explain Chinese behaviour towards its territorial disputes? Chung argues that, consistent with Putnam's expectations, bargaining outcomes are shaped by societal preferences and government coalitions, the ratification procedures of political institutions and the strategies of the negotiators, which affect bargaining outcomes in China's territorial (p. 145). Chung contrasts the recurrent bargaining failures in the East China Sea, with successful bargaining with Russia over the Zhaobao/Damansky border area. Territorial with India and over the South China were quieted at the time of writing and thus fall somewhere in between (p. 145). The cases studies confirm the expectation that domestic factors, such as the diffusion of the costs of cooperation across different constituencies, regime type, and the impact of coherent domestic opposition to an agreement can affect bargaining outcomes over territorial issues. Importantly, these findings remain relevant in China's two outstanding maritime disputes, over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands with Japan and with several other claimants in the South China Sea. Chung observes that the impact of particularly negative historical memories can be sufficiently strong so as to prevent official negotiations from even taking place (p. 147), a fact overlooked by Putnam's original theory. Chung's work also pre-empts recent work on public opinion and Chinese foreign policy by asking the question whether democracies are responsive to public opinion than their authoritarian counterparts. In a particularly prescient comment, due to the developing pluralism in the Chinese foreign policymaking process, it will be more difficult in future to coordinate the making and execution of foreign policy in China, especially with regard to sensitive issues like territorial disputes (pp. 150-151, emphasis added). This insight precedes detailed work on domestic sources of Chinese policy on the South China by the International Crisis Group's Stirring Up the South China Sea published in 2012. Indeed, Chung's framework is a useful prism through which to view bargaining over territory by other states as well. For example, the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking, an agreement among Chinese, Vietnamese and Philippine oil companies to explore for oil in the South China Sea, collapsed after it was revealed that part of the area was uncontested Philippine waters. Faced with accusations from opposition political parties of bargaining away Philippine territory ruling elites in Manila allowed the agreement to lapse in June 2008. The Japanese government's decision to nationalize three of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 2012 is also an example of domestic actors narrowing the terms of acceptable outcomes for policy-makers, by making it virtually impossible to ignore territorial issues. …