Jing Liu

近年来，北美地区的中国和亚洲研究期刊十分关注当代国际秩序与中国对外关系中的新变化与新形势。对这些研究进行归纳分析，可以帮助我们更好地了解变动中的中国与世界。学者们首先讨论了传统中国对国际体系的认知以及中国的历史经验与当前国际秩序的关系，这反映出他们在不同学科背景下进行的差异性思考。从现实角度出发，学者们还着眼于21世纪中国崛起的国际影响，重视中国外交政策的转型、目标与实践，对其影响力和制约因素进行了分析。除了关注中国在对外关系中的合作与互动，学者们也重点分析了中国在国家与领土安全方面与他国的冲突与协商。这些研究的特色有三：第一，将中国放置在全球化与跨区域研究的背景下，分析中国对外关系的动态变化和在具体情境下的不同表现；第二，重视其他国家和非政府机构与组织在中国外交政策中的角色及其产生的复杂影响；第三，在探讨中国增强区域影响力的同时，凸显了其与他国之间的张力。

万历援朝战争( 1592—1598) 是 16 世纪末在东亚影响深远的重要历史事件，与之相关的《华夷沿海图》的编纂，在地图学研究中的学术意义亦值得探讨。通过综合分析中朝文献，重点发掘朝鲜王朝实录和地理书籍等资料，可以发现:《华夷沿海图》及相关地理论述对中国北部与朝鲜沿海形势详加说明，是当时两国间地理知识交流大为增强的证明。明朝东征经略宋应昌主持创作该图时，除了既往知识和经验积累外，还融汇了自己在朝鲜的见闻，对特定地理信息的选择与处理也有的放矢。因此，《华夷沿海图》有很强的时效性和准确性。他对特定地理信息的选择与处理背后有着深刻的内涵。即使看似微小的信息的呈现与解读也能成为表达政治立场、阐明军事思想的有效工具，并能反映出战时明朝经略渤海、黄海思想之转变。

This research examines the agency of local societies of the Sino-Korean maritime frontier in the circulation, utilisation, and management of intelligence that was intertwined with Chosŏn Korea’s subtle central-local relations in the international environment of northeast Asia during the Ming-Manchu conflict. It argues that the enhanced mobility of coastal populations in a highly pivotal sea space contributed to their multilateral espionage activity, within which their individual influence developed and deviated from state interests. This is exemplified by the wartime career of Ch'oe Hyoil, a Korean military man and intelligence agent residing on the Ŭiju coast, who shifted political identities and connected with multiple powers to acquire and transmit intelligence within the Ming-Manchu confrontation. His premediated escape to the sea in 1639 particularly illuminates the connectivity of coastal communities and the various roles of administrations at different levels in handing border espionage.

This article investigates the growth of cross-border movement and migration in the northern portion of the Yellow Sea during the sixteenth century, which generated ongoing interactions and tensions with the coastal governance of Chosŏn Korea and Ming China. The fluid flow of private seafarers reconnected the northern Yellow Sea and revitalised its maritime economy, making this space an integral part of wider trade networks. Meanwhile, the Chosŏn and Ming authorities also attempted to discern, categorise, and institutionalise this transmarine mobility in their discursive, administrative, and geographic spaces. Instead of considering the two polities as land based and inward looking, this article foregrounds the dynamics of their coastal control mechanisms, while at the same time paying close attention to their constraints on filtering and scrutinising maritime violence.

(This paper is not allowed to be uploaded online. Please contact me individually if you need the full copy of it). This article examines how, under the impact of the Imjin War (1592–1598), the maritime orientation of China and Korea’s northern space, and the penetration of power and expansion of the Ming coastal forces in this region, mutually influenced each other. It first investigates two remarkable changes in the Ming state’s maritime practice within and its perception of this region, which encouraged its development from being separated to integrated and from being circumscribed to becoming inclusive. The article then demonstrates how the presence of the Ming southern forces facilitated the coastal militarization of Northeast Asia by looking at an insignificant southern officer’s political career. While the Ming southern soldiers were appointed as coastal defenders, their violent tendencies and cross-border mobility also culminated in illegal transmarine activities that challenged state control over the peripheries.

This study investigates the transformation of the lower Yalu River from an ambiguous to a contested boundary and its partial linearization as the consequences of dynamic border interactions between Chosŏn Korea and Ming Liaodong. The establishment of an uninhabited region between Liaodong and Korea enabled the Chosŏn state to flexibly perceive and exert influence over the vacant Yalu River islands before the late fifteenth century. Its territorial tension with Ming China was then sharpened by the inflow of the Liaodong population into this area. The joint exploration of these islands under the impact of the Imjin War soon impelled the deter-mination of a distinct boundary line in the early seventeenth century. While expansive state powers, their competing resource exploitation, and multilevel negotiations together shaped the fluidity of the Chosŏn-Ming boundary; it was also in this interactive process that their boundary-making activities and territorial conceptions were refined.

This dissertation interweaves the maritime dynamics of Ming China and Chosŏn Korea’s northern sea space, the Bohai Sea and the northern Yellow Sea, with the Northeast Asian transition of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This region formed an arena in this time period that allowed various players to communicate, negotiate, and contest. It also established a linkage between Northeast Asian terra-centered states and maritime East Asia. A systematic investigation of this particular region is thus essential to improving our understanding of interactive territorial and maritime relations. This dissertation investigates the increase of maritime commerce, wartime logistics, and military intervention in the Bohai Sea and the northern Yellow Sea. In this context, it also focuses on the relations between China-Korea maritime interactions and the two states’ border control practices. It further analyzes the interplay between the maritime expansion of Chinese regional military powers, and the Ming and Chosŏn authorities.

This study argues that the China-Korea northern space experienced a remarkable maritime orientation and witnessed the development of regional maritime powers. This transition and its interconnection with state control of maritime peripheries played important roles in influencing the Northeast Asian history of this period. The prosperous maritime economy and the successive military operations in China and Korea beginning in the sixteenth century encouraged transmarine mobility and regional integration of their northern littoral across state boundaries. This tendency increased government attention to this area and strengthened state involvement in cross-border affairs. Maritime policies between the Ming and the Chosŏn showed much plasticity and permeability, which benefited their transregional and large-scale deployment of resources, secured their northern coasts, and expanded state influence to the sea. However, these practices also generated tensions with the two authorities’ attempts to distinguish their maritime frontiers and control their coastal people. This problem not only existed within China and Korea but it also greatly influenced their relations. Porous and adjustable coastal control in the circumstances of the quickening maritime integration of China and Korea enabled Ming regional military men to grow their individual power across the sea. The establishment of Mao Wenlong’s military regime in the early seventeenth century represents this tendency. While Mao’s utilization and mobilization of coastal resources furthered his flexibility and semi-autonomy in a changing international environment, this trend also intensified his conflicts with neighboring continental powers and caused his followers to shift their stances between the Ming and the Qing.