Chinese Border Disputes Revisited: Toward a Better Interdisciplinary Sythesis

China has long been embroiled in a wide array of territorial disputes and has occasionally flexed its military muscle in the process. Its conduct in such situations has been of great theoretical and practical relevance and has attracted considerable attention from scholars across the socio-legal spectrum. Researchers in the field of international law have carefully surveyed official and semi-official Chinese pronouncements and practices, while their social science counterparts have rigorously dissected key behavioral patterns. This is an inherently complex subject that this two-pronged approach has not yet been able to comprehensively address, however, because scholars engaged in the enterprise have only completed a partial exploration of a multifaceted phenomenon and insufficient interdisciplinary alignment. A potentially richer investigative platform, and more effective conceptual bridge building, may help narrow the gaps in the explanatory architecture