Negotiating ‘access’ to the international ‘rules-based order’: Taiwan’s South China Sea policy

Abstract

Maritime governance of international waterways such as the South China Sea (SCS) is still an overdue policy objective in a region fraught with ongoing political and military rivalry over natural as well as symbolic resources. Competition among supporters and challengers of the international ‘rules-based order’ is reshaping the normative-discursive framework in which negotiations over access to and management of maritime space are carried out. Among the players, the Republic of China (Taiwan)’s particular international status and geographic position make it a special case study, having shaped over the past decades its foreign policy into a liberal, international law (IL) stance. This article seeks to describe a contentious encounter at the boundary of these competing discourses by showing the extent to which the ‘rules-based order’, a normative-discursive structure represented by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), is coming under increasing pressure in maritime governance, an area of growing importance to international relations. My findings show how Taiwanese policy discourse regains symbolic ‘access’ to this framework through meaning change. I argue that, ultimately, this adjustment of a foreign policy discourse proves the resilience of the ‘rules-based order’.