24 February 2016 | CIL Seminar Series

Taiwan’s position on the South China Sea: Daylight between Taiwan and China?

Introduction

Taiwan’s claims in the South China Sea are often regarded as virtually indistinguishable from China’s. On paper, Taiwan and China appear to be making substantially the same claims and the controversial dashed line may be found on ROC and PRC maps alike. Neither government has officially clarified the line’s meaning or assigned its coordinates.

Dr Kuok argued that for about a year, Taiwan took small but significant steps toward clarifying its claims. It also adopted a more conciliatory approach, exemplified by President Ma Ying-jeou’s official launch of a South China Sea Peace Initiative in May 2015. These developments were significant and could have had a stabilizing effect in the South China Sea.

However, recent developments might call into question Taiwan’s commitment towards distancing itself from China. These include a statement, in October 2015, stating that the ROC will neither be recognizing nor accepting the tribunal’s award in the Philippines v China case, and visits by President Ma and others to Taiping Island.

Dr Kuok examined Taiwan’s evolving position on the South China Sea and implications for Taiwan and other actors in the region.

About the Speaker

Dr Lynn Kuok is a Fellow at Brookings Institution’s Center for East Asia Policy Studies and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Law. She will spend the next year between the Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA) and Brookings Institution (Washington, DC).

Her research interests include race and religious relations and nationalism in Southeast Asia and the politics and security of the Asia-Pacific region.

She has served as editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and the Singapore Law Review and holds a PhD (Politics) from the University of Cambridge, a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an LLB from the National University of Singapore. She is the author of Tides of Change: Taiwan’s Evolving Position in the South China Sea (May 2015) and Overcoming the Impasse in the South China Sea: Jointly Defining EEZ Claims (December 2014). She is currently working on a report on U.S. freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea.