Motivation of the re-emergence of territorial disputes in the South China Sea : from an US and China regional strategies' perspective.

Abstract

Despite the fact that 20th century has witnessed frequent and intense conflicts in the South China Sea, the first decade of 21st century enjoyed peace there. When people believed the

region would observe more cooperation and less fights, the second decade raised the curtain of re-emergent South China Sea territorial disputes. While majority of the academic works were concentrating on the resolutions for the South China Sea territorial disputes, this thesis is taking the track of searching for the motivations of the re-emergence of territorial disputes. To make things straight, the thesis works specifically on the strategies that the U.S. and China carried out in the Asia Pacific region. Why the U.S. and China's regional strategies led to the re-emergence of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea? The thesis first performed explanation on the territorial disputes with a theoretical approach

and proposed that the competition between two big powers could lead to territorial disputes. The subsequent chapter reviewed past academic literature on the South China Sea territorial disputes and pointed out the lack of researches into roots of the territorial disputes. A representation of the South China Sea disputes was made in the third chapter, followed by a detail observance into the competition between the U.S. and China, through analysing the strategies the two big powers implemented within Asia Pacific. The fifth chapter linked the

competitive relation between the U.S. and China to the re-emergent South China Sea territorial disputes. And the conclusion that the South China Sea disputes were actually the competition between the U.S. and China was made.