Theory and application of multiobjective optimization in China—a survey

The study of multiobjective optimization (MOO) in China began at the beginning of the seventies, when some researchers in Beijing and Shanghai adopted techniques in this field to deal with practical problems arising from industrial designs and management sciences for achieving good results. Subsequently, theoretical studies began. A seminar on MOO was organized by members of the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1977. Meanwhile, studies of the theory and applications of MOO were developed in many universities. Related seminars were held and courses were offered to graduate students at these universities. At the same time, many managers and industrial designers had tried to use the techniques of this branch of OR to solve practical problems arising in a variety of fields. In 1981, 1984, 1987 and 1989, national symposiums on MOO were held, each of which had approximately 100 participants; about 300 papers and reports were presented. Up to the present time, about 200 papers on MOO by Chinese scholars have been published in China or abroad. The sphere of application becomes broader and the scale of problems being solved becomes larger. In China today, there are groups of experienced researchers working in this field, in particular at the Institute of System Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Jiangxi University, the Jilin Technical University, the People's University, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In this paper, we will give a sketch of the results obtained by our colleagues since 1979. The paper consists of seven parts.