Making a spectacle of fisheries: Framing sovereignty in the South China Sea

Edyta Roszko

Durham University/University of Copenhagen

Making a spectacle of fisheries: Framing sovereignty in the South China Sea

The global impact of China’s economic growth and its expanding cultural, political and military influence in various regions—including the South China Sea—has recently been a focus of public debate and political contestation giving rise to speculations over the global and local consequences of this competition.  Two locations where the competition for marine and submarine resources has erupted in conflict and where we can already clearly see local consequences are Ly Son Island (Vietnam) and Hainan Island (China). These islands are in Vietnam and China respectively considered as historic and contemporary stepping stones to the Spratlys and Paracels, and are therefore designated border zones, in spite of their proximity to the mainland. Shifting the gaze from the geopolitical conflict between China—the dominant force—and Vietnam—its main challenger—to its effect on fisheries I analyse how fisheries in those countries are construed as a spectacle of sovereignty that extends their national maps to uninhabited stretches of sea and turns fishermen into heroic vanguards of national sovereignty and the sea into legible territory.