Fact, fiction and the South China Sea
Too much writing about the history of the South China Sea disputes relies on a very small number of books and papers with very poor evidential bases. In this article I show how much of the conventional wisdom originates from a few Chinese newspaper articles published in 1933 and 1974 – times of crisis in […]
China incompetent? The tale of the oil rig
What has China achieved by sending its oil rig to drill off the Paracel Islands? It has managed to rupture relations with its brother communists in Vietnam, incensed Vietnamese popular opinion, generated gigabytes of critical international media coverage, revived the “China Threat” discourse in Southeast Asia and unified ASEAN […]