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Territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS) have recently attracted serious attention from policy makers and scholars alike, raising important questions about the role of international law. The four volumes reviewed here bring a range of existing and new perspectives to bear upon the debates surrounding tensions in the SCS. First, Power Politics in Asia's Contested Waters mostly focuses on state actors and their interactions regarding the SCS disputes. Second, Major Law and Policy Issues in the South China Sea and, third, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the South China Sea go beyond the state level of analysis and bring international legal regimes and rules to our attention, and relate them to states' practices. Last, The South China Sea Maritime Dispute seeks to combine various levels of analysis in order to situate the SCS disputes within the political, legal, and regional dynamics. The various contributors further extend their research by suggesting practical solutions, including promoting regional common heritage, the Spitsbergen model, and the shared sovereignty model. The books under review are not only highly pertinent to the current debate on the SCS disputes, but also suggest multiple levels and frames of analysis, as well as proposing some innovative solutions to this thorny problem. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

In the context of intensifying nationalism and protectionism and a reconfiguration of the global value chains, the worlds leading economies find themselves confronted with significant challenges. To address these issues, this book builds on conceptual and empirical analysis and makes a case for interdisciplinary research that connects International Business (IB) and International Security (IS) domains. Employing the concept of geostrategy and using multi-level approaches to explain the interaction among various players in IB and IS, the authors examine the implications that IB and IS disciplines provide to each other. This book is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in international business, international relations, international security, and international political economy and answers the growing call for an interdisciplinary research approach to promoting critical thinking in the rapidly evolving international business and security environment. Dr Jiye Kim is an award-winning Assistant Professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan and a researcher afliated with the University of Sydney in Australia. Dr Arpit Raswant is an award-winning Assistant Professor at Deakin University in Australia and a Visiting Researcher at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

This article examines how the Indo-Pacific powers, China and India, respond to international law and evaluates how effectively international law influences each state's behavior. The role of norms and international legal regimes in the major Indo-Pacific flashpoints has become an inseparable justification of contestants' claims over the years. We suggest that a state actor's response to international law can be assessed using three criteria: the internalization, interpretation, and implementation of international law. The article investigates China and India as state actors and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as a case of international law. We assess these criteria by comparing the development of domestic laws by China and India in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (internalization), their declarations submitted to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provisions (interpretation), and their reaction to third-party arbitrations (implementation). By connecting the domestic and international legal actions of rising powers in the Indo-Pacific region, the article suggests that a state actor's internalization, interpretation, and implementation of international law significantly indicate how international law impacts an individual state's behavior in the international security arena. Thus, this article establishes critical connections between emerging security order, regional politics, and normative developments in the Indo-Pacific. (Pac Rev / GIGA)

This article contributes to the current discourses on China's diplomacy in the South China Sea disputes by asking: What does China want to achieve in the various negotiations? By comparing different versions of the multilateral Code of Conduct negotiations between 1992 and 2016, the authors find that the sovereignty issue has been shelved throughout the negotiations. We identify three factors that may account for this finding: the inconsistency of China's official claims over time, China's increased bargaining power, and the importance of the shelved sovereignty axiom since the era of Deng Xiaoping. The authors conclude that the normative game continues in the shadows of international norms represented by invalid sovereignty over the contested waters. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

This article examines the new prominence accorded to the "Indo-Pacific" (IP) concept in the strategic narratives championed by the US and its closest allies, (Japan and Australia), and then juxtaposes this with the responses of other key regional powers. To this purpose, Part I distils a concise conceptual model encompassing three interlocking facets – mental maps, political/ideological drivers, and visions of regional order – designed to structure the following empirical analyses. Part II then accesses this model to reveal how these facets are reflected in the discursive and policy-making practices of the US and its close allies, as embodied in their (combined) regional strategies. Next, Part III considers how a cross-section of major states in the region – India, South Korea, and China - have responded to this enterprise, to determine the degree to which they have adopted, accommodated or opposed the IP concept, or otherwise propose national alternatives to the US-centered project. It concludes that the IP concept is not simply an objective geopolitical descriptor, but rather a controversial and contested discursive field, subject to multiple interpretations. Such a polarizing concept will likely contribute to further sharpening of strategic mistrust and geopolitical competition amongst the region's major powers. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. ; Abstract Background In the biorefinery utilizing lignocellulosic biomasses, lignin decomposition to value-added phenolic derivatives is a key issue, and recently biocatalytic delignification is emerging owing to its superior selectivity, low energy consumption, and unparalleled sustainability. However, besides heme-containing peroxidases and laccases, information about lignolytic biocatalysts is still limited till date. Results Herein, we report a promiscuous activity of tyrosinase which is closely associated with delignification requiring high redox potentials (>1.4 V vs. normal hydrogen electrode [NHE]). The promiscuous activity of tyrosinase not only oxidizes veratryl alcohol, a commonly used nonphenolic substrate for assaying ligninolytic activity, to veratraldehyde but also cleaves the 4-O-5 and Cα–Cβ bonds in 4-phenoxyphenol and guaiacyl glycerol-β-guaiacyl ether (GGE) that are dimeric lignin model compounds. Cyclic voltammograms additionally verified that the promiscuous activity oxidizes lignin-related high redox potential substrates. Conclusion These results might be applicable for extending the versatility of tyrosinase toward biocatalytic delignification as well as suggesting a new perspective for sustainable lignin utilization. Furthermore, the results provide insight for exploring the previously unknown promiscuous activities of biocatalysts much more diverse than ever thought before, thereby innovatively expanding the applicable area of biocatalysis. ; This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (NRF-2009C1AAA001-0093286), and Korea Evaluation Institution of Industrial Technology funded by Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (10049675). This work was also supported by the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST) granted by the Korean government (MSIP) (No. CAP-11-04-KIST).