Presentation for ICAS 2021 - The South China Sea Disputes: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Since its first emergence as a flash point in the Asia-Pacific region in the late 1970s, the South China Sea disputes have become more complicated and attracted significant attention from both academics and policymakers worldwide. This study notes the voluminous research on the topic as well as the absence of a systematic review of the research landscape over the years. Upon an extraction of 457 articles sourced from the Web of Science database on the concerned topic between 1970 and 2020, the study manually screens for relevant articles, conducts a full-text reading of 344 articles, and categorizes their contents along three dimensions: environment, law, and security, in addition to evaluating the methods of data collection and data analysis. The aims of this systematic review are threefold: (i) to map major research trends, themes, different research areas and changes over the years, (ii) to identify the potential gaps, convergence, or divergence of ideas, and (ii) to note the turning points in research on the South China Sea dispute and relate academic publishing with the actual unfolding of the conflict.