Bitter maritime disputes between China and its neighbors have recently sent fighter jets scrambling, ignited violent protests and seen angry fishermen thrown in jail. But beneath all the bellicose rhetoric and threatening posture, China also has been waging a quiet campaign to bolster its territorial claims with ancient documents, academic research, maps and technical data.
The frenetic pace of such research — and the official appetite for it — comes after decades of relative quiet in the field and has focused heavily on the two hottest debates: China's quarrel with six other nations over a potentially oil-rich patch of the South China Sea and its tense feud with Japan over a small sprinkling of land called the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese and the Senkaku Islands by the Japanese.
For some Chinese academics, the now-heavy demand for such work marks a near reversal of what they experienced early in their careers. In past decades, some say, territorial disputes were often considered too sensitive a topic because China was leery of disrupting its relations with its neighbors.