In April 2016, the collection “South China Sea Principle”, edited by Professor Shen Guchao, Deputy Director of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies of Nanjing University, was published and released by Nanjing University Press. The book covers the latest research results of dozens of well-known scholars and experts in the fields of history, politics, international relations, law, ocean, economy, military, geography, information and other research fields at home and abroad. The book is written in four sections: rights and interests research, cooperation and development, sea border perspective, and essays on the South China Sea, and fully elaborates on current hot topics in the South China Sea such as island construction, South China Sea rights maintenance, economic cooperation in the South China Sea region, and relations among neighboring countries.
The South China Sea and its surrounding waters are a sea area with many islands in the world, an important channel to communicate with the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and has many sea channels; the South China Sea stores a large amount of oil and gas resources and has rich fishery resources; the South China Sea is not only an important channel for world trade, but also a military strategic route, and maintaining the security and stability of the South China Sea and the surrounding waters is of strategic importance to China’s economic and social development, the Asian region and global security. However, the South China Sea is also the most complex area of global sovereignty disputes, involving six countries and seven parties (mainland China and Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei). Meanwhile, extra-regional powers such as the United States, Japan and India have also been involved and intervened in the South China Sea region to varying degrees in the name of counter-terrorism, economic and military, from the perspective of safeguarding their own interests and strategic needs in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, the Philippines unilaterally declared the existence of a sovereignty dispute with China in the South China Sea in January 2013 and submitted it to international arbitration, posing a challenge to China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea. China was the first country to discover, develop and operate, govern and travel to and from the islands in the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, and has undisputed sovereign rights and interests in the South China Sea.
This book is another attempt of cross-disciplinary synergy. In the past, single-discipline research on the South China Sea has revealed institutional problems, severed the inner connection of objective development, and failed to form organic integration, rational flow and shared use of innovative elements such as talents, capital, information, and technology, making it difficult to give full play to the respective advantages of research subjects. This book reflects the current characteristics of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies - a cross-unit, cross-disciplinary and cross-regional collaborative research consortium divided into platforms by problems, linked by tasks and driven by cooperation by projects. It is both engaged in basic research and countermeasure-oriented applied research; there are teachers from universities and research institutes, as well as military and government cadres; there are scholars with poor experience and military personnel who have been stationed on islands and reefs. Different research and work experiences, different educational and disciplinary backgrounds bring to this collection the most distinctive features that distinguish it from similar research collections.
The South China Sea essay shares the experiences and insights of the delegation of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies led by academician Wang Ying, director of the center, who visited Dalhousie University, Bedford Institute of Oceanography and University of Waterloo in Canada. The exchange and establishment of formal collaborative research relationships between Canada and China have helped to promote research on China’s southeastern maritime boundaries, the training of personnel for the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies, and the provision of advice on appropriate ways to resolve disputes over maritime rights and interests.
Disciplinary crossover and synergy is a new topic. It is quite difficult to collaborate among multiple institutions, to intersect among different disciplines, and to synergize among different organizational cultures, philosophies, institutions, and resource elements, and it is difficult to avoid the same problems with the collected journals that reflect their research results. The real synergy we would like to see is not only the combination of manuscripts from different disciplines and styles, but also the transplantation of theories, the exchange of equals, the collision of ideas among various disciplines, and the promotion and defense of academic diversity with their own distinctive research orientations; and innovation, the discovery of new ideas, the filling of gaps, the correction of prevailing statements, and the addition of previous ideas ......