Never Ending Story: Islands Disputes

Never Ending Story: Islands Disputes

INTRODUCTION

The Spratly Islands (南沙群島) and Diaoyu Islands (釣魚台) conflict also are the long standing sovereignty disputes. We adopt three conflict management styles to illustrate the Spratly Islands dispute between China and four member-states of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (東南亞國家聯盟) with four different perspectives: teamwork, trust, negotiation, and cooperation. Meanwhile, the conflict of Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan is used for comparison and we draw a recommendation with appreciative inquiry approach finally.

First style: COMPETITION A desire to satisfy one’s interests, regardless of the impact on the other party to the conflict.
Spratly Islands The Spratlys are one of three archipelagos of the South China Sea which comprise more than 30,000 islands and reefs which claimed or occupied in whole or in part by six states. They are China, Taiwan and four member-states of ASEAN: Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. The reason of the competition is not only for the natural resources surrounded the islands, but also the military reasons.	Diaoyu Islands Diaoyu Islands in Chinese (includes Taiwan) or Senkaku (尖閣諸島) in Japanese, has brought China and Japan into a bitter dispute since early 1970s2 when the countries made ocean claims in the East China Sea. Why they compete? It is because they need to reveal the sovereignty and there are the suspected natural oil and gas in the seabed surrounding the islands.
Second style: COLLABORATION A situation in which the parties to a conflict each desire to satisfy fully the concerns of all parties.
Teamwork Teamwork is a cooperative effort by a group of members to achieve a common goal. Why is teamwork so important? Generally speaking, teams make better decisions which easier to satisfy the majority of team members. Besides, team members can gain collective power, share information and coordinate tasks. For high performance teamwork, there are two major elements: mutual support and straight talk.
Spratly Islands There are four small countries, namely Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Philippines claim that they own part of Spratly Islands. It is obvious that they have a common voice on the same issue. Besides, they know that individually they have little strength but if they stay united, they can be a formidable political force. Source：http://61.19.247.254/~inspect2/index02.php Therefore, they made use of a formal geo-political and economic organization ASEAN, as a team for mutual support and collective power to against China, who claim over a major portion of the South China Sea, to pursue their ambition on claiming Spratly Islands. There are many regular meeting to facilitate a straight talk between all members. One of the major meeting is the “ASEAN Leaders' Formal Summit”, where heads of movement of each member meet to discuss and resolve regional issues, as well as to conduct other meetings with other countries outside of the bloc with the intention of promoting external relations. The other is the “ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)”, is a formal, official and multilateral dialogue in Asia Pacific region. In order to solve the Spratly Island conflict, ASEAN and China tended to work as an informal team with common goal. As early as 1991, ASEAN made China a dialogue partner and issued a declaration of principles on the South China Sea in which the organization urged “all parties concerned” to exercise restraint to create “a positive climate for the eventual resolution of all disputes”. In 1999, ASEAN leaders in the Philippines agreed to increase cooperation with China in an "East Asia Forum" known as ASEAN+1 and to move toward a common concern. Source: http://www.amchamchina.org/article/6294	Diaoyu Islands However, in the Diaoyu Island dispute, it is not easy to find the teamwork with mutual support and straight talks between China and Japan for conflict resolution. There were only informal team works from local members, which were useless for solving the conflict. In recent decade, a series of civil actions to protect Diaoyu Islands have been launched in China, including mainland and Hong Kong. Source: http://www.diaoyuislands.org/march04/marchN.html In 2004, a group of Chinese activists from the PRC planned to stay on the Islands for three days. The seven people who landed on the islands were arrested by the Japanese for illegal entry. The Japanese Foreign Ministry made a complaint to the PRC government and the PRC government demanded the release of the activists. This kind of teamwork made the matter worse that affected the Sino-Japanese relationship.
Trust Trust is essential is any human relationship.  It is an expressional of confidence in another person or group of people that you will not be put at risk, harmed, or injured by their action (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).  After the team is formed, building trust can move the team to the higher performance collaboration.  Identification-based trust is grounded in complete empathy with another person’s desires and intentions (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).  The four members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have built this type of trust. They understand and know the expectations of the others.  They start to seek for the mutual benefit solution and over time are able to develop a collective identity. Source: http://firstinsights.motionfirstnow.com/?p=328
Spratly Islands There are three ways to build mutual trust among the different teams. Agree on a common goal or shared vision Shared goals do not imply homogeneous thinking, but they do require everyone to share a vision (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).  States must understand the motives and the reasons behind the policies of other states.  Then they can find the common goal or the shared vision.  For ASEAN, their common goal is to obtain the natural resources in a peaceful way.  In July 1994, first ASEAN Regional Forum held at Bangkok, Thailand. China joined the forum as Consultative Partner.  Both China and ASEAN are satisfied with the outcome of the forum.  The common goal is to rule out the use of force to settle the South China Sea disputes. Find a shared problem or a shared enemy A common goal, or common enemy, removes the perception that parties’ interests are completely opposed and builds a new value that represents a higher-order principle that all parties find motivating (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).   In 1995, the Mischief Reef incident broke out and it escalated the tensions over South China Sea.  The passage of shipping in the South China Sea is threatened by this issue.  The stability of the South China Sea affects the economic of both ASEAN and China.  Once China identifies this shared problem, China starts to consider the possibility of “shelve disputes and facilitate joint development”.  Besides, China also promised to keep the passage of shipping free. Focus on the future It is difficult for negotiators to agree on what happened in the past, but if they can forgive and forget and focus on their future together, they can go a long way toward building trust (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).   On 6 November 2001, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China are signed the Free Trade Agreement.  China and ASEAN agreed to a China-ASEAN free-trade area to be implemented in stages up to 2015.  With this agreement, China starts to focus on the future development of the economic development among Asia.	Diaoyu Islands For the Diaoyu Island dispute, the situation is different.  China and Japan don’t trust each other.  One of the biggest treats to trust in a relationship is a breach, of defection.  A breach occurs when one of both people violate the trust that has been build between them (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).   Source: http://www.usasialaw.org/?p=4582 Miscommunication is more likely when parties are not in regular contact, especially when they have little face-to-face contact.  Neither China nor Japan has accepted other countries as the mediators to organize the discussion of this dispute.  They don’t have a channel to build up the trust.  In a team or group, one person may have a reputation for being less trustworthy, tougher, or less easy to work with than other members of the group (Leigh L. Thompsn, 2009).  Since Diaoyu Island has a very rich resource for seafood, many fishing boats are fishing at that area.  They go into other’s clamed area very easily.  Their action is considered as the violation of sovereignty.  These create non-stop conflicts between China and Japan.  Under these circumstances, China and Japan cannot build the mutual trust.  Source: http://dndleung.posterous.com/2010
Negotiation Negotiation is the process whereby two or more conflicting parties attempt to resolve their divergent goals by redefining the terms of their interdependence. Some writes suggest that negotiations are more successful when the parties adopt a problem-solving style, whereas others caution that this conflict-handling style is sometimes costly.
Spratly Islands Kipnis and Schmidt (1988) and Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson (1980), they introduced 7 meaningfully distinct influence tactics on negotiation: reason, coalition, ingratiation, exchange, assertiveness, higher authority, and sanctions. At the very beginning, China has developed a more powerful framework in negotiation, she claimed that the large majority of the south china sea is belonged to her since 200BC. With the rise of the both economically and militarily, China plays the game with higher authority. One of the negotiation tactics, coalition, (Lax & Sebenius, 1991, 2006) negotiators will often aim to build strong coalitions to weaken the other party’s alternatives, to engage in exchange to create value (Pruitt & Lewis, 1975; Walton & McKersie, 1965). The ASEAN (10 East Asia Countries) which was formed since 8 August 1967, they collaborate to empower each other by changing the structure of the game to confront the biggest game player (China).  Source: http://spratlyforthephilippines.wordpress.com/	Diaoyu Islands Due to the historical conflict with strong nationalism between China and Japan since from World War II, it is hard for them to solve their problems through dialogue and negotiation. Many times, they had scheduled to have a face dialogue but fail after either one party infuriating the other. In 2010, China has decided to postpone a negotiation with Japan on the East China Sea issue as part of its response to the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on 10, Sep, 2010. Source: http://chinafilmbiz.wordpress.com/
Cooperation Collaborative theory maintains that people should surface their differences and then work on the problems until they have attained mutually satisfactory solutions. For Spratly Islands, China and ASEAN work together as a team with trust, the countries negotiated for several times in the ASEAN conference meetings to cooperate with others so as to make use of the resources in Spratly Islands. However, there is little cooperation between China and Japan on the Diaoyu Islands due to the history background.
Spratly Islands China and ASEAN were motivated to expend the time and energy for problem-solving activities because they tried to maximize the possible mutual gains of the parties in the disputes and viewed the conflicts as a creative force pushing them to achieve an improved state of affairs to which both sides are fully committed. source: http://www.asean-cn.org/UploadFiles/XWDT/2010/12/2010122174151.jpg In 2002, China signed a landmark agreement with ASEAN that China and ASEAN (Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam) adopted the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties on the South China Sea. This was to set the stage for possible commercial cooperation and establish the long-term stability to avoid conflict. Although Indonesia objected and Taiwan was barred from signing, the ASEAN group including Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, Thailand and Myanmar held a conference in Cambodia and representatives from China, Japan, India and South Africa was invited to the conference. Later in 2005, oil companies from China, Vietnam and the Philippines signed a deal to jointly protect oil and gas resources in the Sea.	Diaoyu Islands China would like to have a peaceful relationship with Japan with the perquisite that sovereignty of Diaoyu Islands is owned by China. However, it is difficult for China and Japan to cooperate due to the history background. This is a power game between China and Japan as they would like to have autonomy power which they need to be in control of oneself and to minimize unwanted influence by others. Source: http://www.news.cn In March 2012, China sent maritime patrol boats Haijian 50 and Haijian 66 to patrol near the Senkaku Islands, with foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin announced that the move was to help safeguard China’s territory and that the islands were part of China's territory. The crew of a nearby Japanese coast guard vessel stated that the Haijian 50 entered Japanese territorial waters for 25 minutes and warned the ship to leave. Both China and Japan would like to have the sovereignty of Diaoyu Islands and minimize the influence by the other.

 

Third style: COMPROMISE Compromise through negotiation which is seeking to most of what they want, but will give something up to achieve a solution. Compromise is not a win-win negotiation, as the pie is divided.

Spratly Islands According to Pruitt (1981) who suggested that when negotiators sequentially discuss the issues, they tend to resolve the issue with compromise concessions regardless of whether an issue is of high or low value to them. In the Spratly Islands dispute, after the long time discussions and summits, they have different compromising among the nations.    Source: http://adultadhdrelationships.blogspot.com/2011/05/love-means-sometimes-saying-youre-sorry.html Pie is divided within the ASEAN In Sep, 2011, AESAN compromise with Philippines to agree a joint economic development in disputed parts of the South China Sea. The Philippine delegation at the ASEAN meeting submitted a plan that proposes creating what it calls a “zone of peace, freedom, friendship and cooperation” in the South China Sea. The idea is to isolate the islands that multiple countries are claiming, and jointly turn them into economically viable sites that all claimant nations can benefit from. Pie is divided Between China and the member of ASEAN Rather than nothing to obtain, in July and Oct, 2011, China and Vietnam has discussed joint development of the South China Sea even they have a long-standing dispute over sovereignty of the Paracel and Spratly island groups. China and Vietnam have compromised to maintain friendly relations with each other and are becoming increasingly interdependent, especially in the areas of trade and investments.

Diaoyu Islands Over the dispute of the Diaoyu island issue, China and Japan both are stance a very strong and clear that they would not compromise on the sovereignty of the islands. Chinese people are with very strong emotion on the Diaoyu Island to fight for their sovereignty. Source: http://leiontheway.blogspot.com/ Source: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/journaleditorialreport/042205/photoessay1.html

Game

Rules Game Rules: Please divide into 6 groups. Each group will be assigned a set of tangram (七巧板) with 7 pieces. Please use the tangram to build the below house, however, one of seven pieces is overlapped.          4.  Please build at least 3 houses from all of you within 5 minutes.     5.  After 5 minutes, more houses, more chocolates; no house, no chocolate and all of you are failed in this game.  ~ TRY HARD ~

Possible Solutions Collaboration Teamwork can be found in 2 levels: Group members within the individual group can work as a team to achieve the common goal in building a house within the individual group. Cooperative effort by the whole class (6 groups) to achieve the common goal in building as many houses as possible. To achieve the goal, trust is important if the groups would like to exchange the pieces with other groups. Also, negotiation is required when working with other groups so as to achieve the win-win outcomes (i.e. every group has at least one house). Competition To maximize the benefits of the individual group, competition may happen so that the group can build more than 3 houses to become the only winner. The group can steal the pieces from other groups or send a spy to the other group for getting the missing piece. However, conflict between groups will be increased and there may be tension between groups. Creativity Creative solutions can be used in the game as the rules are not strictly mentioned. For example, the group can cut the shape of the missing piece to build the house. The group can prepare their own Tangrams and build many houses to win the game. As a result of creative ideas, the group can build the house by using less time and the number of houses can be built is infinity. Lose-Lose Situation The group does not collaborate with other groups and not able to build its house. Since the group keeps one overlapped piece which is needed by the other group, one of the other groups is not able to build the house as well. As a result, both groups will lose. This problem can be solved by cooperate with others, however, there should be some parties not will to cooperate in reality and leads to a situation that harm the others without gaining anything in the process. (損人不利己)

 

SUGGESTION
Appreciative Inquiry Appreciative inquiry is primarily an organizational development method which focuses on increasing what an organization does well rather than on eliminating what it does badly. It attempts to use ways of asking questions and envisioning the future in order to foster positive relationships and build on the present potential of a given situation. AI reframes conflicts as an opportunity for creating an ideal relationship. The “4-D-Cycle” will be used in AI Process for reframing conflict in Spratly Islands and Diaoyu Islands:      1.     Discovery – the best of what is?      2.     Dream – what it might be?      3.     Design – what should be the ideal of effective communication?      4.     Destiny – what should we do to sustain the change? Source: http://www.dunya.be/uploads/public9/images/AI.JPG
Spratly Islands Discovery China and ASEAN have collaboration since 2002 with a landmark agreement being signed and set the state for commercial cooperation, long-term stability and avoiding open conflicts. The level of conflict was stable and kept at low level from 2002 to 2009. Dream The Spratly Islands is an archipelago of approximately 100 islands and islets between the Philippines and Vietnam. The tropic archipelago has its tourism potential. It has coral reefs and beautiful sea life that make it interesting for divers. At present there is virtually no economic activity taking place on the Spratly Islands but it may change in the future. Design To transform the Spratly Islands into a tourism destination, the army would participate in the transformation and the navy would transport tourists in there. There are good diving sites, however lacks tourism infrastructure e.g. hotels or resorts. The area will be interested for eco-tourists who would enjoy the pristine nature of the island. It will become a unique tourism destination offering wonderful experience to divers and eco-tourists. Destiny China and ASEAN maintain good relationship so that every country can gain from Spratly Islands from its tourism, rich fishing ground, gas and oil. Source: http://www.chinatraveltrends.com/2011/01/senior-officials-of-asean3-pledge-to-intensify-tourism-cooperation/	Diaoyu Islands Discovery Although China, Japan and Taiwan claimed that says that the Diaoyu islands have been part of its territory. Since the external relationship, military power and political power of China are not powerful enough to get the whole sovereignty of Diaoyu Islands. Therefore, China will avoid open conflict with Japan when handling the Diaoyu Islands disputes even there is no cooperation between the two countries. Dream China and Japan to start negotiation and discussion on the resources in Diaoyu Islands so as to cooperate and agree on how to maximize the mutual benefits. Design China and Japan should cooperate with each other so as to mutually agree on how to get used of the resources of Diaoyu Islands just like for Spratly Islands. Destiny China and Japan should have regular meetings on building relationship with each other and increase the trust so as to cooperate well. Also, they can use the Spratly Islands as an example to increase the “benefit” to the countries with collaboration such as the rich fishing ground and oil deposits. Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PG3ew_iFi3A/SxNFZ319uQI/AAAAAAAAP0c/BS11FRrQ2g8/s1600/photo1.

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