China’s Legal Diplomacy

Abstract China is engaging in a broad and systematic effort to align its legal capabilities with its strategic goals in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and could do so outside of Asia, in places as far afield as the Arctic and Antarctic, in order to reshape and, in some cases, fill gaps in international law. Yet, while China’s assertive ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’ has received considerable attention, its legal diplomacy has largely gone under the radar. Despite their insistence on the importance of the rules-based international order, the United States and other Western powers have been less proactive and methodical in their use of international law as compared to China. In an age of great-power competition, countries are drawing on a diverse range of tools – military, diplomatic, economic, developmental and intelligence – to gain strategic advantage. Countries that fail to bolster their own legal capabilities and to integrate legal diplomacy into their national-security strategies may surrender the power of legitimacy to China, even if, particularly in the South China Sea, Chinese actions have indubitably contravened international law.