CSIS South China Sea conference

CSIS South China Sea conference

Posted by on Jul 15, 2015 in Conference, South China Sea | No Comments

I will be speaking at the fifth annual South China Sea conference organised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC on Tuesday 21 July. Many of the key voices in discussions about the South China Sea will be there – including Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. […]

Fact, fiction and the South China Sea

Fact, fiction and the South China Sea

Posted by on May 25, 2015 in Online, South China Sea | No Comments

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 […]

Global Asia – a ‘ fascinating account’

Global Asia – a ‘ fascinating account’

Posted by on Dec 24, 2014 in Book, South China Sea | No Comments

Nayan Chanda, the much respected former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, has written a lengthy review of the book for the excellent GlobalAsia website. He gives a good overview of the main elements of the book and adds a little vignette of his own about how the communist Vietnamese authorities issued a new map of the […]

National Geographic Book Talk

National Geographic Book Talk

Posted by on Dec 11, 2014 in Book, South China Sea | No Comments

An interview with Simon Worrall for National Geographic‘s Book Talk blog. An edited version of our conversation that necessarily simplifies some of my thoughts. Given that Simon wrote National Geographic’s feature on the Belitung Shipwreck (which features in Chapter One of the book) he knows a lot more than me about what happened. He was nice enough not […]

An Economist ‘book of the year’

An Economist ‘book of the year’

Posted by on Dec 5, 2014 in Book, South China Sea | No Comments

I’m very pleased to say that The Economist has listed South China Sea – the struggle for power in Asia as one of its best books of 2014. I’m honoured that it’s among such exalted company as Evan Osnos’s Age of Ambition and Louisa Lim’s People’s Republic of Amnesia.  You can read the full list of books of the […]

Introducing the book – a vodcast for Yale

Introducing the book – a vodcast for Yale

Posted by on Nov 4, 2014 in South China Sea | No Comments

A vodcast for Yale University Press in which I talk about how I came to write the book, why the islands of the South China Sea are both tiny but very important, the origins of China’s claim to the South China Sea and the importance of the South China Sea to the wider world. It’s […]

SCMP review – ‘superb and timely’

SCMP review – ‘superb and timely’

Posted by on Nov 4, 2014 in South China Sea | No Comments

Ben Richardson of the South China Morning Post has given the book a great review. My thanks to him for these fine words, among others, “Hayton makes full use of his trade-craft to spin a page-turning thriller packed with anecdotes, historical characters and eye-witness accounts”. Since the SCMP, more-or-less, overlooks the South China Sea, this […]

First review – “A splendid book”

First review – “A splendid book”

Posted by on Sep 15, 2014 in South China Sea | No Comments

A really excellent review of the book by The Economist, “Bill Hayton’s splendid book lucidly covers these disputes in all their complexity from virtually every angle—historical, legal, political, economic and strategic. A journalist with the BBC and author of a previous book on Vietnam, he tells a good yarn, even when the topic is as […]

China’s construction boom in the Spratlys

China’s construction boom in the Spratlys

Posted by on Sep 9, 2014 in South China Sea | No Comments

What’s changed as a result of China’s massive construction projects in the Spratly islands? Legally – nothing – but strategically – we wait and see. All the features that the PRC occupies in the Spratlys would be naturally underwater at high tide, so building on them, doesn’t mean they will count as ‘territory’ under international […]

China’s false memory syndrome

China’s false memory syndrome

Posted by on Jul 10, 2014 in South China Sea | No Comments

    The nationalist academics and government committees of the first half of the 20th century have bequeathed the Communist Party an “official history” that is demonstrably false. It is this, and not the threat of nationalist mobs on the streets that makes the South China Sea disputes so intractable and dangerous. But to concede […]