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’.

Keywords:

• Discourse analysis
• foreign policy
• international law
• South China Sea
• Taiwan
• UNCLOS

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mathias Albert, Christoph Humrich, Gabriel Bădescu, the MOFA Taiwan Fellowship administrators and fellows, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on the research topic as well as earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Source: Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs, United Nations, Status of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the Convention and Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the Convention relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. Retrieved at: https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_agreements.htm

2 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), PCA Case N° 2013-09, Award, 12 July 2016, §28.

3 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), PCA Case N°2013-19, Award, 12 July 2016, Ch. X Dispositif, §1203, Part B (2).

4 Ibid,, Part B (7).

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Dana S. Trif

Dana S. Trif (Dr.rer.pol., Freie Universität Berlin, 2015) is an International Relations researcher in the Department of Political Science, College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences (FSPAC), Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania. In 2017, Dana was a Fellow of the Republic of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Taiwan Fellowship) and was hosted by the National ChengChi University. Interested in the interface between politics, law, and security, Dana’s current research focuses on the politics of international maritime law (South China Sea/Taiwan), identity, ideology, discourse theory & (visual) analysis and, more recently, protests, movement parties, and social movements.