Abstract
In the South China Sea maritime territorial disputes, only two rival claimants have so far taken a strong stand against Chinese claims: Vietnam and the Philippines. This chapter argues that the reason for their less-complacent attitude is believed to lie in their internal issues: massive populations of around 100 million individuals cramped in relatively small territories with few domestic resources to fall back on. This simple fact has compelled the two nations to vigorously defend, separately, their claims against what they perceive as Chinese territorial expansion. Vietnam has resorted to a multifaceted strategy, shifting from a national to an international focus; the Philippines has long weighed its options and finally decided to lodge an international arbitration against China as the main tool to assert its claims.
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Notes
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Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was a United States Navy officer, widely considered the world’s foremost theorist of military sea power.
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In theory, all resources are renewable, but those labeled non-renewable cannot renew themselves within a meaningful human time frame. For example, fossil fuels take thousands of years to form.
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A note verbale (verbal note) is a diplomatic communication prepared in the third person and unsigned: less formal than a note (also called a letter of protest), but more formal than an aide-mémoire (a memo).
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A continental shelf is an underwater landmass which extends from the above-water continent, resulting in an area of relatively shallow water known as a shelf sea. A continental shelf is limited by the continental margin, from which starts a continental slope down to the abyssal plain.
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UNCLOS was signed in 1982 and came into force in 1994, a year after Guyana became the 60th nation to ratify the treaty. As of January 2015, 166 countries and the European Union have joined the Convention.
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Baseline: the starting point along the national coasts of a country from which to measure its claims to maritime zones.
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“Passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security of the coastal State” (UNCLOS PART II, Article 19, Sec. 1).
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Maranzana De Filippis, F. (2018). South China Sea and Political Demography: The Cases of Vietnam and the Philippines. In: Spangler, J., Karalekas, D., Lopes de Souza, M. (eds) Enterprises, Localities, People, and Policy in the South China Sea . Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62828-8_7
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