South China Sea crisis |is a clash of ideas

China, on the other hand, defends its lighthouses as “efforts to safeguard navigation freedom and security”.

To the layman in Southeast Asia, meanwhile, the Western legalistic framework of the Law of the Seas is a foreign language. He might in fact, from his traditional post-colonial standpoint, bear no grudge against Chinese power. So is what the layman think about China’s maritime intentions come closer to the truth? 

Professor Wang Gungwu, a prominent Australian historian of Asia, raised a similar query recently. If we consider his thesis that China’s historical interest in the South China Sea is economic, we have a useful framework with which to approach the problem: Why are Chinese and American motives conflicting if both are economic?

Two parallel economic developments in recent years offer an answer.

The first is the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which binds member countries into a common market and customs union. The second is China’s Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road initiative. Where the TPP is contractual and competitive, the Belt-and-Road initiative is cooperative and developmental.

The relation between these two modes of economy can be explained historically.

The TPP descends from the concept, first elaborated by Hugo Grotius, of Mare Liberum (the Free Sea, 1609). It enshrines as a natural law the idea of “free ship, free goods” – which in turn underpins the principle of free trade.

Mare Liberum stems from the earlier principle of Ius Communicationis (Right of Communication), which describes the universal activity of common human exchange in trade, diplomacy, religion, custom, philosophy, etc. If China’s Belt-and-Road initiative identifies with the principle of Ius Communicationis, then we can put the collision between China and America into proper context.

Mare Liberum is a legalistic system of reciprocal treaties which, as the memory of the Dutch East Indies will testify, does not guarantee the individual’s security of person and equality of exchange within the freedom to trade.

On the other hand, Ius Communicationis expresses an international system of mutual cooperation based on common sense. It reconciles to the economy broader and older considerations than the modern concept of shareholder profit, such as welfare, governance and stability.

Ng Tze Shiung

Petaling Jaya