Elleman, Bruce A., Stephen Kotkin, and Clive H. Schofield

Summary
China shares borders with 20 neighboring countries–more than any other country in the world, by a factor of two. Each of the neighbors has its own national interests, and in some cases, that includes territorial and maritime jurisdictional claims in places that China also claims. Most of these 20 countries have had a history of border conflicts with China; some of them never amicably settled. This book brings together some of the foremost historians, geographers, political scientists, and legal scholars on modern Asia to examine each of China’s twenty land or sea borders. The alphabetically arranged chapters cover Afghanistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, and Vietnam. Each chapter details the history and status of boundary setting and the ongoing management of transnational interactions–trade, resource exploitation, fishing rights, and population movements. An introduction and a concluding chapter draw out the implications of the book’s twenty case studies. Issues examined include: the early history of setting the border with China; the ways in which China has acquired “new” boundaries as a result of changes in the international law of the sea; the type and intensity of China’s border conflicts with its neighbors; successful efforts to delimit official borders; unsuccessful efforts to delimit borders; and areas where future border disputes could arise.