Domestic Politics and International Bargaining in China's Territorial Disputes.

• Author: Manicom, James
• Position: Book review

Domestic Politics and International Bargaining in China's Territorial Disputes. By Chien-Peng Chung. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge-Curzon, 2004. Soflcover: 222pp.

In 2006, as a first year Ph.D. student, I swallowed hard and clicked on the purchase icon at a popular online bookseller. The $150 price tag was worth it, I told myself. I was going to write a dissertation about Chinese territorial disputes and Chung's book would be useful. As it turns out it was, and remains, invaluable. While it is rare to review books nine years after publication, the release of the paperback version of Chung's treatise on the domestic politics of China's territorial disputes merits discussion as to whether the next generation of students of Chinese foreign policy should spend considerably less on the paperback version. In light of developments in the South and East China Seas in recent years, does Chung's model--based on Robert Putnam's two-level games framework --still explain Chinese behaviour towards its territorial disputes?

Chung argues that, consistent with Putnam's expectations, bargaining outcomes are shaped by "societal preferences and government coalitions, the ratification procedures of political institutions and the strategies of the negotiators", which affect bargaining outcomes in China's territorial disputes (p. 145). Chung contrasts the recurrent bargaining failures in the East China Sea, with successful bargaining with Russia over the Zhaobao/Damansky border area. Territorial disputes with India and disputes over the South China Sea were "quieted" at the time of writing and thus fall somewhere in between (p. 145). The cases studies confirm the expectation that domestic factors, such as the diffusion of the costs of cooperation across different constituencies, regime type, and the impact of coherent domestic opposition to an agreement can affect bargaining outcomes over territorial issues.

Importantly, these findings remain relevant in China's two outstanding maritime disputes, over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands with Japan and with several other claimants in the South China Sea. Chung observes that the impact of particularly negative historical memories can be sufficiently strong so as to prevent official negotiations from even taking place (p. 147), a fact overlooked by Putnam's original theory. Chung's work also pre-empts more recent work on public opinion and Chinese foreign policy by asking the question whether democracies are more responsive to...