Hi,
I would like to ask you guys to help me out with my bachelor thesis topic. I have chosen to write about the South China sea dispute. But as you know, the bachelor thesis is supposed to be smt about 50 pages. And I am afraid professor will not pass my topic proposal (can submit just once) if i were to write about it all (long) or maybe just generally (what is actually is about). Thus I was hoping you would help me out with zooming this topic if possible (but still with good information access). I was thinking about something like "the development of the dispute for past 10 years" or something like that. Also I was wondering what the aim of the thesis actually would be.
Thank you in advance a lot.
PS: Another topic was China's foreign policy. But that i put into a second place (even bigger). But still would appreciate any comment.
This is a problem that you would find with any subject.
I know nothing (literally, nothing-- I just googled it) about the South China Sea Dispute and undergrad theses can be quite broad, but I think the "last ten years" I feel is still FAR too broad.
My strategy for "zooming" any subject has been to do a lot of reading around and in the subject until something strikes my interest. This doesn't have to be super in depth, but I suggest you accumulate a variety of sources and quickly read through a bunch of them: popular culture, news, journal articles, political documents.
In doing this, there are two possible approaches:
You narrow not only by time period, but also by geographical/political area and by specific kind of dispute. You write a straightforward paper telling that small story with reference to the larger context.
You stumble across something in the dispute that catches your interest. Perhaps a particular body of people who have been involved, or a particular strategy one country has engaged in and how that has changed, or a relevant political law/agreement/document that has influenced the dispute with regards to a particular country or pair of countries, or a specific dispute between a pair of nations. There also might be an opportunity or two to write from a technological, scientific or artistic point of view. Then, you write about the role of that thing in relation to the South China Sea Dispute.
If you read a relevant language, I would make use of that skill to see if there are published documents or a series of news articles that give some interesting insights. If you only read English, I would approach from a direction that you know is going to yield English-language primary documentation.
Honestly, just reading the Wikipedia article I see all kinds of candidates for specific relationships, specific party interests, specific outside influences and other little key features that you could write about, depending on your particular interests.
I'm not going to enumerate them for you because I am not doing your homework for you, haha.
But yeah, I wouldn't pass "the last ten years of the South China Sea Dispute" as a proposal, even at undergrad. Look at that Wikipedia article, decide what you think interests you and sounds promising, and then springboard off those into journal articles and primary sources.