MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
MacMillan Center

Conflict in the South China Sea

On May 6th and May 7th Yale hosted an international conference exploring the Conflict in the South China Sea. The successful event featured speakers from across the United States and around the world. The event was sponsored by Yale’s Council on Southeast Asian Studies, the Council on East Asian Studies, and the Institute for Vietnamese Culture and Education.

The conference program was organized into three panels. In the first panel, a series of experts commented on the history of the dispute in the South China Sea, also known in Vietnam as the East Sea, and in the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea. Presenters described the history of different claims to sovereignty in the sea, showed how various maps have been deployed to argue over sovereignty, and debated potential alternative modes for conceptualizing claims in the region. In the second panel, scholars presented papers on the geopolitics of the sea, focusing on why so many nations want to stake claims to it, and the various machinations they employ in trying to do so. In the third panel, a series of papers explored what organizers called “lawfare,” the use and abuse of international law to contest claims in the region.

Among the fourteen papers presented, guest-speakers came from the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as well as US-based scholars coming from Washington, DC, Maine, California, Boston, and Rhode Island. Moderators and discussants included members of the Connecticut Vietnam Studies group, with representatives from Southern Connecticut State University, Eastern Connecticut State, and Central Connecticut State. Other discussants and moderators came from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, as well as different Yale departments.

All of the events can be viewed at a dedicated playlist on Yale’s youtube channel. Several Vietnamese news media organizations were present and have reported on the proceedings in numerous articles published in Vietnam. Some representative articles from Vietnam about the conference, with translated titles in square brackets, include: