Introduction -- Critical Realism and the Morphogenetic Approach -- A Critical Genealogy of the Emergence of South China Sea as a ‘Complex’ in International Relations -- The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) and China’s Assertion of the U-shaped Line -- Conclusion.

This book offers an innovative approach to the analysis of the current crisis in the South China Sea. Moving beyond the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the mechanisms of which are limited to physical geography, it demonstrates how epistemological insights from the field of critical realist philosophy can reveal the importance of cultural and structural conditioning processes in social interactions, processes which shape the conditions for the emergence of crisis points along a spectrum of conflict and cooperation. The potential for conflict resolution and the emergence of new regions in Pacific Asia much depends on the nature of such interactions at many levels (political-economic, semiotic and cultural) based on perceptions of what constitutes the "common" versus a Sinicised version of "Lebensraum".