As weapons are drawn in the South China Sea, a legal war is brewing, and academics are on the front lines. An article published today in the South China Morning Post reports that Chinese academics are being encouraged to create narratives about China’s illegal claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction over parts of the South China Sea, claims that blatantly violate foreign law and violate the sovereign rights of China’s neighbors. The PRC plans to flood regional media with those stories (whatever it can do, given its ownership of regional telecommunications infrastructure and social media), namely TikTok. The United States will have to step up its efforts to counter China’s legal war before Chinese rhetoric is accepted as fact in the region.
According to the article, Wu Shicun, president of the Huayang Research Institute of Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, encouraged a seminar of one hundred historians and lawyers to build narratives and interact in discourse to help China protect its “rights and interests” in the world. South China Sea. He encouraged discrediting the 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s claim to the South China Sea maximum, adding the hotly contested spaces of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and the regions claimed through Viet Nam, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. Wu cited “an uphill war over public beliefs and opinions” and cited that of his neighbors. Array Array cooperation with extraterritorial forces in examining long-standing and legal problems. He claimed that the foreign educational network has developed “bizarre theories that intentionally distort the history of the South China Sea and maliciously slander China’s rights and claims. “Array Array Array” He then suggested to the audience “to restore the valid context of problems similar to the South China Sea, from an ancient and legal perspective. “
The United States will have to prepare for the legal war that is coming. As I have written extensively, the United States government does not have a comprehensive strategy to counter China’s legal war or other “legal wars” by its adversaries. American legal and military scholars have been writing for about 25 years about lawfare, explained as the use of the law as a weapon of war or to achieve a strategic, operational, or tactical goal, with limited political influence. The United States Indo-Pacific Command developed a law enforcement program, which I advised, to counter China’s illegal claims and false narratives. A number of allied countries and spouses have followed similar systems or methods. The Chinese scholar’s response, published in the foreign press, suggests that those efforts are succeeding in his efforts to unite like-minded countries in the foreign legal order.
However, the Indo-Pacific Command program, while excellent, is not a match for TikTok’s global strength. Without a whole-of-government strategy to fight legal attacks, the United States is ill-equipped to fight China’s imminent legal offensive. China can spread false messages about foreign laws through a centralized state mechanism, at the speed of AI, something the United States cannot do without a holistic strategy. United States legislation and the administrative design behind it are designed to save government agencies from lying about the rest of the American people and about Americans’ privacy and freedom under the First Amendment. They are not designed to allow immediate coordination between agencies to respond to China’s legal lies.
The United States will have to act temporarily to prevent the People’s Republic of China narrative from becoming dominant. Orde Kittrie, a legal expert, and I suggested to the United States government that it expand a strategy to counter adverse law, and we made explicit recommendations on how to do so. The United States government’s strategy to counter China’s legal warfare would involve the combined legal functions of the Ministries of Defense, State, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, USAID, and other agencies, as well as those of spouse and allied countries. Together, those agencies will have to work to understand how China has managed to bolster its illegal claims through a complicated tangle of laws, layers of messaging and private-sector investments subsidized through a web of corruption, and use their combined legal team to attack its foundations and continue the fires. The U. S. private sector, which faces huge risks to its business operations if disputed borders create uncertainty and instability, will also have to be a partner of the government in fighting China’s legal war.
Combative words fly in the South China Sea. The United States will have to prepare to fight with all its legal arsenal. Only a comprehensive government strategy to counter China’s legal war can win the coming narrative war and save Chinese publishing from writing in the history books.
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