Publication

This article explores 1) how China and the ASEAN states that have territorial claims in the South China Sea view the concept of joint development; and 2) why this form of cooperation has failed to take-off in the disputed region. One obvious problem is picking topological basepoints, which collides head-on with China’s ‘indisputable sovereignty’ claims. With problems such as this, the text’s author concludes joint development planning may have to yield to ‘other modalities’, as illustrated by the Brunei-Malaysia commercial arrangement.