Forging a new narrative for the South China Sea: Peace, stability, cooperation and friendship

As the world undergoes unprecedented changes at an accelerated pace — marked by escalating local conflicts, intensifying global challenges, and China entering a period where strategic opportunities coexist with rising risks and unpredictability — the South China Sea issue has also taken on new dimensions.

Some countries have repeatedly launched "cognitive attacks" against China, with a discourse dominated by the United States, its Western allies, and certain claimant states. This narrative often prioritizes positions and emotions over facts. Central to this narrative is the "China threat" trope, built on prefabricated talking points such as "safeguarding freedom of navigation and overflight", "the 2016 arbitral ruling is binding" and "opposing Chinese maritime coercion and bullying". Such narratives, however, are riddled with deliberate distortions, misreadings, and malicious attacks on China's legitimate claims and lawful actions in the South China Sea.

It cannot be denied that, among maritime governance issues in China's neighborhood, the South China Sea stands out for its uniquely complex international political ecology. On one hand, economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN countries remains robust and dynamic, yet territorial disputes and overlapping maritime claims between certain claimants occasionally resurface, often influenced by geopolitics. On the other hand, the region's supply of international public goods in non-traditional maritime domains — such as marine environmental protection, conservation of living resources, navigational safety, search and rescue, and disaster prevention and mitigation — falls short of the growing needs of coastal states.

History and reality have amply demonstrated that the more complex the issue, the more imperative it is for all parties concerned to engage constructively with China, set aside distractions, seek common ground while narrowing differences, jointly uphold the broader trend of peace and stability in the South China Sea, and collectively inject a narrative of peace, stability, cooperation, and friendship into the international discourse.

Crafting such a narrative is an inevitable corrective to the current international discourse that excessively amplifies friction and skews facts with clear bias. Overall, when China and the countries concerned handle territorial and maritime rights disputes, safeguarding legitimate rights is the bottom line, managing differences at sea is the norm, and peace and stability remain the overriding trend and mainstream reality. For more than two decades, China and ASEAN countries have worked tirelessly to fully implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), establish bilateral consultation mechanisms on maritime issues with claimant states, and achieve full coverage of institutionalized dialogue with all South China Sea claimants. Thanks to joint efforts, consultations on a Code of Conduct (COC) have accelerated, restoring confidence of a consensus among parties.

Regrettably, these facts have rarely been reflected accurately or adequately in the Western-dominated narrative. Sensationalizing friction for clicks and twisting facts to take sides do nothing to resolve the issue; instead, they fan the flames, erode mutual trust among regional countries, and undermine the environment for peace and stability.

Crafting a narrative of peace, stability, cooperation, and friendship is also an intrinsic requirement for breaking the West's monopoly on agenda-setting and deepening practical regional cooperation. "Freedom of navigation and overflight" is a recurring theme in South China Sea discourse. The prevailing international narrative maliciously smears China's necessary measures to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights as "threats to navigational freedom". Influenced by this framing, non-traditional factors affecting navigational safety — frequent severe weather, generally weak and uneven navigational-aid capabilities among coastal states — have long been overlooked, and practical cooperation in these areas has progressed slowly.

Yet, contrary to the "South China Sea freedom of navigation crisis" painted by the West, the South China Sea is in fact one of the freest, most open, and safest maritime and air corridors in the world. Statistics show that more than 500,000 merchant vessels pass through the South China Sea and adjacent straits annually, roughly 40 percent of global merchandise, and over a million commercial flights operate overhead each year — making it the busiest sea-and-air highway on the planet.

Finally, crafting such a narrative is a historical inevitability that aligns with regional public sentiment, serves common interests, and resonates with shared cultural traditions. The current narrative — one-sidedly stressing friction and conflict while foregrounding geopolitical rivalry — is neither transparent nor objective; it deviates sharply from how ordinary people in the region actually perceive the South China Sea issue.

For centuries, China and its neighbors have lived in peace, producing countless stories of friendly exchange imbued with ideas of harmony and cooperation and the aspiration to build a shared beautiful common home. Since modern times, China and Southeast Asian nations have shared similar historical experiences; after achieving national independence, these experiences and shared values coalesced into the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the Bandung Spirit.

A South China Sea narrative centered on peace, stability, friendship and cooperation accords perfectly with the region's cultural tradition of seeking common ground while respecting differences and valuing harmony. It is a return to truth based on the region's overall peace and stability, a positive response to widespread regional expectations, and the concrete practice of the concept of a maritime community with a shared future in the South China Sea.

Achieving lasting peace and good-neighborliness in the South China Sea requires both trust and rules. On this issue, China has consistently upheld its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights, insisting that directly concerned parties resolve disputes through negotiation and consultation, committing to effectively implementing the DOC, and steadily advancing COC consultations — making relentless efforts and vital contributions to regional peace and stability.

Shaping the narrative of peace, stability, cooperation, and friendship is not only about defending China's legitimate rights and interests but also about fostering the sound development of regional rules and order and translating the vision of a shared future into reality. By continuously injecting positive energy of peace, stability, cooperation, and friendship into the South China Sea narrative, the international discourse will gradually emerge from the shadow cast by years of Western framing. The South China Sea will truly become a platform for shared construction and shared benefits for all parties, laying a solid cognitive foundation for enduring peace and the realization of a maritime community with a shared future.

Ding Duo is the director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

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