The book The South China Sea Arbitration: A Chinese Perspective, edited by Stefan Talmon and Bing Bing Jia, presents a Chinese perspective on the legal issues involved in the South China Sea dispute between the Philippines and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The setting of the book is the decision of the Philippines to institute arbitral proceedings against the PRC under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) with regard to disputes between the two countries in the South China Sea. The PRC announced that it would not take part in the arbitral proceedings. As a consequence, the Chinese position will go unheard. The book aims to advance possible legal arguments on behalf of the absent respondent rather than the official position of the Chinese government.

The introduction outlines the geographical setting and main issues of the dispute and of the decision to submit the case to arbitration. The chapter by Stefan Talmon discusses whether China's rejection of arbitration is justified in international law and the possible political motives of the Philippines for instituting arbitral proceedings. The chapter by Michael Sheng-ti Gau addresses the consequences for the arbitral tribunal of China's refusal to participate in the proceedings. Bing Bing Jia's chapter discusses the question of whether the arbitral tribunal has jurisdiction to deal with the claims advanced by the Philippines, arguing that in this case the tribunal does not have jurisdiction. As such, it cannot proceed to deal with the merits of the case at hand. In their chapter, Haiwen Zhang and Chenxi Mi argue that the Philippine action in bringing its bilateral dispute with China in the South China Sea before an arbitral tribunal is not in accordance with the principles and spirit of international law. Instead, bilateral negotiations as advocated by China are appropriate for achieving a peaceful and definitive settlement of the disputes. The book contains useful annexes on the Chinese and Philippine claims in the South China Sea and the exchanges leading up to the Philippine action to bring the dispute before an arbitral tribunal, a select bibliography on the South China Sea disputes, and a glossary of place names in the South China Sea.

The book is partially successful in achieving the aim of presenting a perspective on the legal arguments of the PRC. The arguments of the book are well documented, and the authors make appropriate use of judicial methodology. Moreover, the book covers the main legal issues of the bilateral dispute between the PRC and the Philippines. As such, the book constitutes a valuable contribution to the field of international law and the law of the sea. The debate on the maritime disputes in Asia suffers from insufficient presentation of the Chinese case. Examples of issues that are largely missing from the debate are arguments on the PRC's interpretations of international law and Beijing's use of these to justify China's claims as well as the political and historical reasons for China to adopt its particular view on the maritime disputes.

The authors' efforts to present a Chinese perspective on the South China Sea arbitration case deserve to be acknowledged and taken into account by practitioners and academics in the field of international law and the law of the sea. However, that being said, a few caveats should also be mentioned. Most importantly, the South China Sea disputes are heavily politicized. The book does not explicitly address this political context since it only promises to look at some of the main legal arguments from a Chinese perspective. This choice limits the relevance of the book to an audience of predominantly legal experts. To reach a wider audience interested in the political aspects of the maritime disputes, it would have been useful to link the legal arguments to issues such as the changing role and positions of the United States on the disputes and how Washington's position is related to the freedom of the high seas. Another interesting topic that could have been addressed is the issue that the provisions of the law of the sea concerning semi-enclosed seas is largely limited to requesting the parties to peaceful negotiations on delimitation issues, in practice encouraging political rather than legal arguments to dominate settlement processes. A more thorough understanding of the diplomatic, strategic and historical issues that influence the legal arguments and how they are used to defend claims would have required embedding the legal arguments in a political contextual discussion. The fact that it is in practice impossible to present a Chinese perspective as distinct from the views of the Chinese government and from the political aspects of the South China Sea disputes becomes clear in the book's treatment of topics such as the possible Philippine motives for instituting arbitral proceedings and the arguments in favour of bilateral negotiations as requested by the PRC. The book's arguments would have been more convincing if these political aspects had been dealt with explicitly. Despite these caveats, the book is valuable as a thorough and well-documented presentation of a Chinese position on the main legal issues to be addressed by the tribunal.