As part of the visit of the Department of Politics and IR to our partner university in Xiamen, we held the first XMU-Cardiff Symposum on Maritime Security. The objective was to share Chinese and European perspectives on the challenges of maritime security, how can they be theorized, and how the challenges that arise in the South China Sea in particular can be managed. The first section of the event investigated maritime security from a birds eye perspective in explore the role of justice, power and history in understanding contemporary maritime security relations. This was followed by a section that aimed at conceptualizing the concept of maritime security and its links to human security as well as disputes and fishery conflicts. The following section zoomed in on a range of cases, including the paralells between african maritime security cooperation and Asian, and the importance of bilateralism in addressing the disputes in the South China Sea. Taking together the symposium revealed, firstly, the importance for devoting more intellectual attention to maritime security and the importance that the maritime will hold in the 21st century. Secondly, the symposium documented how productive it is to leave a euro-centric perspective and scrutinize maritime security from a broader perspective which takes into account different intellectual traditions, disciplines as well as combinin theory with detailed empirical knowledge.