The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: Book review

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: The Struggle for Power in Asia

Author: Bill Hayton

Published by: Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2014, 298pp, US$35.

In 1867 the United States purchased the Alaska Territory from Russia for the relatively small sum of $7.2 million--a pretty good bargain, even when adjusted for inflation, for what would become America's largest state. Selling territory, sometimes under duress, was once not unknown, but states today jealously guard every square centimetre of what they regard as their sovereign territory. Nothing illustrates that point more than the South China Sea dispute, where six states (or seven if Taiwan is included as an actor) maintain overlapping maritime claims based on small islands, shoals and reefs.

Understanding the South China Sea dispute is no easy task, and thankfully BBC journalist Bill Hayton has written a fairly comprehensive, yet still highly readable, overview of the various claims and the wider geo-politics. Hayton has had access to material from all the important actors in the South China Sea, as well as being able to draw on the insights of the foremost experts on the problem.

Along the way Hayton tackles a few myths. While it is true that a race for resources has made the dispute more intense, the sea is actually not particularly rich in oil and gas. Hayton puts his finger on what is really at stake here--national pride and modern constructions of sovereignty. Hayton judges that all of the claims are of dubious provenance, but this has not stopped some of the claimants constructing a nationalist narrative that is hard to back down from. Hayton finds that China and Vietnam in particular are using nationalist themes to establish their respective single-party rulers as 'saviours of the nation'. The school curriculum, that great incubator of nationalist myth-making, has been appropriated for this purpose by a number of claimant states. Beijing in the last few years now includes a map of China in passports that features the [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE] dash line' of claim to the entire South C Tina Sea (although, [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE] explains, it remains unclear what China's nine-dash [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE] called the U-shaped line'--refers to in practice). [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE] to great lengths and considerable expense (which) [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE] be recouped) to establish a presence in the South [TEXT UNREADABLE IN...