Maritime-based transition and US-China maritime dynamics

The evolution of the 21st century international system towards a complex and chaotic system, due to the simultaneous global and regional transition of power between China and the United States, has made the seas more prominent in the process of order transition. Such a transition can be seen in Indo-Pacific maritime tensions, especially in the South China Sea. Such a multi-level transition has brought new challenges to the traditional model of power transition theory and it’s necessary to adjust it within the framework of complex systems. This paper examines the role do seas and oceans play in the transition of power in complex international systems? The author argues that competition to dominate the seas and oceans can be the point of transferring systemic pressures to the branches of the regional order and changing its security architecture towards a new maritime-based security order. The paper, using the multi-level power transition theory, contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics surrounding maritime competition and contestation between China and the United States in the process of power transition from a systemic perspective. The research method is deductive-inductive based on inference and synthesis. In this regard, at first the principles and rules of transition in complex and chaotic systems are extracted, then by combining them, the bifurcation transition model and comprehensive network control system is presented.