World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

China has refused to participate in legal proceedings at a United Nations arbitration tribunal over its maritime territorial claims.  China has claimed large areas of the South and East China Seas as part of its sovereign territory (the map below shows the extent of Chinese claims–it is known as the “nine-dash line”) and the Philippines filed a suit under the 1982 UN Law of the Seas Convention against the Chinese claims.  Both countries have signed the convention (the US is not a signatory), but the Chinese have refused to participate in the proceedings of the tribunal which effectively moots any decision the tribunal may make.   Cases of non-refusal to participate are unusual but not unprecedented.  In 1986 Nicaragua sued the US in the International Court of Justice because the US had mined Nicaraguan harbors to prevent weapons from being imported by the Nicaraguan government (which was quite hostile to the US).  The US refused to participate in that suit.  The ICJ ruled against the US but lacked any ability to enforce its judgment.

The Nine-Dash Line

Thitinan Pongsudhirak teaches at Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok and has written an essay which links the current turmoil in Thailand with protests that are occurring elsewhere in the world   His analysis is that liberal democracy is failing and that elites in a number of countries are failing to recognize the dangers of this failure.  He is undoubtedly correct that there is a widespread feeling in many countries that governance is breaking down, but I think that the breakdown is also evident in non-democratic states as well.  The real question is whether political systems are capable of dealing with the demands of the people in a globalized world.

The World Trade Organization has finally delivered a global trade agreement after nearly 20 years of trying.  Many analysts had argued that global agreements were being bypassed in favor of regional trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership  because the difficulties in obtaining a global agreement were insurmountable.  We will need to look carefully at the new agreement which promises to increase trade by nearly $1 trillion in a matter of a few years.  Some analysts fear that the increased trade opportunities will increase the leverage of large corporations over developing countries by making it easier to move factories to the lowest cost countries.