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9 Yale J. Int'l Aff. 107 (2014)
Lo Longer the Status Quo? Changes in China's Approach to Territorial Conflict

handle is hein.journals/yaljoina9 and id is 115 raw text is: No LONGER THE STATUS QUO? CHANGES IN CHINA'S APPROACH TO TERRITORIAL CONFLICT By Andrew Taffer SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II, China has been involved in more territorial disputes than any other state. The vast majority of them, seventeen out of twenty three according to M. Taylor Fravel, have been settled by bilateral agreements, usually by compromising over the sovereignty of contested land. I Over half of these seventeen settlements have come since 1991.2 Beijing's conduct in this regard has been consistent with, and is in part the basis for, a prevalent view in much of the western academic literature on the People's Republic of China's (PRC) contemporary grand strategy. The literature has underscored the centrality of Chinese reassurance and the necessity of maintaining an essentially peaceful regional environment that enables Beijing to continue concentrating resources on domestic economic, technological, and military development.3 Beijing's strategy, as one scholar put it, has emphasized actions, and not just words, to reassure China's neighbors and to enhance the PRC's reputation as a more responsible and cooperative player.' According to this prudential calculus, as China continues its development, an aggressive posture toward its territorial conflicts is unlikely as the costs would outweigh any gains.5 Over the last several years, however, Chinese conduct with respect to several of its outstanding territorial disputes has been widely viewed as significantly more assertive and less compromising. Since 2012, Chinese government ships and aircraft have regularly entered the disputed waters and airspace around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, a collection of islets in the East China Sea claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo but which have been administered by the latter since 1972.6 In a particularly disturbing episode in early 2013, a Chinese military vessel was said to have aimed a fire-control radar at a Japanese destroyer.7 In the spring and summer of 2013, People's Liberation Army (PLA) detachments crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India, establishing camps in eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh and displaying signs calling for the withdrawal of Indian forces. According to the Indian government, since 2010 there have been over 600 Chinese violations of the LAC.9 Andrew Taffer is a PhD candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He formerly served as a Research Fellow with the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and as an analyst with the Long Term Strategy Group. WINTER 2014 107

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