On March 20th, 2023, Professor Han Dongyu from Northeast Normal University gave a lecture titled "The Dispute over Rites in East Asia" at the academic lecture hall C212 in Xingwen Building, Tianjin Normal University. The event was hosted by Hou Jianxin.More than 100 teachers and students ofIECand the School of History and Culture attended the lecture.

Professor Han Dongyu is the vice president of Northeast Normal Universityand the convener of the subject evaluation group (world history) of the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council. He is also a distinguished professor of the Changjiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education, a national candidate of the New Century Millions of Talents Project, and a member of the evaluation committee of the National Social Science Fund Project. His main research interests are Japanese history, the history of East Asian thought, and the history of international relations in East Asia.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Han Dongyu introduced the basic direction of world history research and proposed the idea ofacademic border defense. He pointed out that people engaged in research on national borders, neighboring countries, and regional relations should consciously shoulder academic responsibilities, safeguard national sovereignty and regional security, and that academic border defense work has strong practical significance.

Han Dongyu believes that the pre-modern East Asian world radiating from the core of Chinese civilization had bonds connecting East Asia internally such as the "Huayi" (Chinese-barbarian) divide, the "Zong-Fan" (centralizedpower-periphery) relationship, and the "Ci-Gong" (tribute-gift) system, forming a "Huayi Order" with China at its core. The "ritual dispute" between East Asian countries is a value competition within the pre-modern East Asian world. He used newly released documents from the Tokugawa Museum to argue and interpret examples of disputes over rites between envoys and monks from Japan and Korea, highlighting that China's cultural standards had formed a consensual rule in international relations at that time. The rhetorical dispute over the titles between the two sides was actually a dispute over the "Huayi Order" derived from the perspective of the Chinese dynasties, and he summarized the development trend, results, and influence of the "ritual dispute" in East Asia.