Maritime Security Strategy With Chinese Characteristics

As China continues to rise on the world stage,the need for China to gain as much discursive power as a great power increases.Obtaining discursive power that matches the great power status also benefits the successful implementation of China's maritime security strategy with the mission of firmly safeguarding China's sovereignty and security in the maritime sphere,which is an important component in the Maritime Power Strategy.It is based on the theoretical premise and foundation that discourse as social practice can not only define,describe,negotiate,construct,and interpret a nation's maritime security strategy,but also reflect and embody its cultural and historical characteristics.Therefore,studying discursive practices of a nation's maritime security strategy,offers a new perspective to understand and explain a nation's maritime security strategy.As a key component in implementing China's Maritime Security Strategy,the South China Sea issue has developed from a regional territorial dispute to an international concerns,through which process the discursive practices of multiple parties involved play a fundamental role.It is imperative to explore discursive practices on the South China Sea issue as communicative activities,which involve a range of communicative practices with particular kinds of cultural actors,channels,purposes and consequences etc.Therefore,this dissertation aims at studying China's discursive practices on the South China Sea security issue adopting Cultural Discourse Studies as theoretical and methodological framework.China's discursive practices in the South China Sea are explored through a three-dimensional framework,including a holistic study on China's government discursive system on the South China Sea issue,an examination of the development of China's South China Sea security policy discourse,and lastly,a comparative media study on Chinese and the U.S.news discourse on the issue of Freedom of Navigation in the South China Sea.Exploring China's South China Sea discursive practices from a culturally critical perspective,the study offers a new framework to probe into China's maritime security strategy's discursive patterns and cultural characteristics,and investigate problemsand limitations of its discursive construction.The study endeavors to rectify some Westcentric misunderstandings about China's maritime security strategy,illustrating its unique cultural characteristics from a cultural critical perspective,so as to better communicate China's maritime strategy and strategic culture,obtain international discursive power that matches China's great power status in the maritime sphere.Research findings show that different from traditional maritime strategy with an ultimate goal of gaining control of the entire territorial waters,China's maritime security strategy has its own cultural characteristics,which is deeply influenced by factors including China's unique geopolitical environment,strategic intentions and goals and cultural values.With peaceful development and cooperation as its core,China's maritime security strategy is guided by the Concept of a Community of Shared Future for Mankind and New Asian Security Concept,holding on to the principle of harmonious and inclusive relation and mutual understanding,advocating on shared maritime future for mankind and objecting cold war mindset and zero-sum game.China evolves from a relatively passive and weak speaker to a strong one on international maritime issue with a more refined and robust discursive system,which in turn helps to propel and maintain peaceful and stable environment in the maritime sphere.Major contributions of this research lie in three aspects: 1)The research is devoted to understanding and interpreting China's maritime security strategy from a cultural discourse perspective.Exploring discursive interaction between different parties involved on the South China Sea issues as communicative event,the study offers a new theoretical perspective to probe into China's maritime security strategy's discursive patterns and cultural characteristics,and investigate problems and limitations of its discursive construction in order to better communicate China's voice and identity on maritime security issues;2)The study offers a new framework to explore China's discursive practices of maritime security strategy through a three-dimensional framework that combines synchronic and diachronic studies,macro-and micro-level studies to examine China's discursive practices of maritime security strategy holistically and systematically;3)Adopting Cultural Discourse Studies as its theoretical framework,the research tries to enrich the methodological toolkits by combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies,and utilizing multiple corpus tools,including natural language processing with python,WORDij,AntConc etc.to compare and contrast the features and patterns in China's maritime security discourse.