Knowledge of Chinese practice in international law bears no relation to its immense potential international significance. China has the biggest navy in the world, and the third largest submarine fleet. It has six thousand miles of coastline and the China Seas cover around 3.9 million square kilometres. Yet there is little writing in English on the subject by Chinese lawyers, and very few Western lawyers read Chinese. Only a handful of scholars have any direct knowledge of Chinese practice; and one of the most thorough and accomplished of them is the author of this book. Those who know her earlier monograph, China and the Law of the Sea, Air and Environment (1979) will expect much of this new study. They will not be disappointed.

After a brief introduction to Chinese legal history and to the main sources of Chinese international law writing, and a chapter on China’s maritime interests, the book begins its systematic account of current practice. Successive chapters deal with: bays and straits; the territorial sea; the contiguous zone, fishing and exclusive economic zone, and high seas; the continental shelf and its delimitation; island disputes; offshore oil exploration and production, and scientific research; the international seabed area; and the Chinese position at UNCLOS III.

Dr Greenfield has done much more than assemble Chinese practice, invaluable as her trawling of many hitherto obscure Chinese language sources is to the scholar. She has produced a book of considerable critical trenchancy, setting the practice against the background both of positions taken by Chinese lawyers in international fora such as UNCLOS III and the International Law Commission and of the principles of the Law of the Sea as they are commonly understood in the West (although not all of her views would go unchallenged among