The subject of the research is the mechanisms of crisis communication between the PRC and ASEAN countries in the South China Sea, including political consultations, norms for preventing maritime incidents, hotlines, confidence-building measures, and negotiations on the Code of Conduct. The main focus is on their practical role in maintaining conflict manageability and reducing the risk of escalation. The study analyzes how these tools are integrated into the regional interaction system between China and ASEAN, which combines multilateral diplomacy, asymmetry of political and military-strategic resources, and differences in approaches to security provision. A key issue is why the development of these mechanisms does not lead to a definitive resolution of the dispute but only restrains the growth of tensions. The research covers the political and normative levels of interaction. It is based on a neo-institutional approach, comparative political analysis, and analysis of official international political documents. Elements of process tracing are used to track the evolution of crisis communication mechanisms from the 2002 Declaration to the negotiations on the Code of Conduct. The novelty of the study lies in substantiating the thesis that crisis communication between the PRC and ASEAN countries forms not a full-fledged conflict resolution regime but a regime of limited stabilization aimed primarily at reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation. The work shows that existing institutions and channels of interaction indeed contribute to reducing the likelihood of uncontrolled tactical clashes, maintaining a minimally necessary level of predictability in the behavior of the parties, and creating procedural frameworks for responding to crisis episodes. At the same time, they do not eliminate the underlying causes of conflict, including the strategic asymmetry of participants, differences in their foreign policy priorities, and normative discrepancies regarding legitimate ways to manage the disputed waters. The conclusion is made that the institutionalization of trust in this case is selective and functionally limited: it is effective as a tool for de-escalation and tactical deterrence of incidents, but does not evolve into a stable legal-political conflict resolution regime. Thus, crisis communication emerges not as a mechanism for resolving contradictions but as a way to control their reproduction within the regional order, where stability is maintained without achieving a final political-legal consensus.
Nosov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.