Arctic vs. South China Sea: How Coastal States and User States View the Navigation Regime and Security?

For decades, there has been vague interpretation on the navigation regime in different maritime zones and continuous debate among the academics and policy makers on how to balance coastal states’ interests and the doctrine of “freedom of navigation”. The typical examples in the South China Sea (SCS) include the “EP-3” in 20011 and the “Impeccable” in 2009.2 Most recently, concerns over China’s intention in the Arctic, especially China’s interest on shipping were heard in many occasions, thus raising a new round of debate on the navigation regime.3 This chapter takes a comparative approach to analyze the case of the Arctic and the SCS which share many similar features, e.g., sovereignty dispute, competition for resources, significant geopolitics, important existing and potential international shipping routes, threat to maritime security and overlapping maritime claims, as discussed in Section 1. Section 2 analyzes coastal states’ perception on the navigation regime in both the Arctic and the SCS, and Section 3, on the other hand elaborates the user states’ interpretation of the navigation regime in both regions.