Taiwan has long viewed the Pratas Islands as an important bastion against Chinese forces in the South China Sea. The archipelago, consisting of Pratas Island and two coral reefs submerged at high tide, is about an hour's C-130 plane ride or 384km from Kaohsiung. It is only 224km from Hong Kong and thus provides Taiwan with at least five additional minutes of warning against air attacks.
The 1km2-island's 300-odd man garrison is dotted with concrete block buildings and bunkers laid out in seemingly ad hoc fashion amid the sandy landscape of scrub pines and scrawny palm trees. The island's white sand beaches are bordered by razor wire and concrete structures that are supposed to prevent enemy troop landings.
But the fortifications are rather decrepit after decades of being ravaged by sand and salt, blazing sun and batterings by countless typhoons. And in the modern era of high-tech aircraft and missiles, the island is virtually indefensible. Thus, in late 1999, when tensions rose between China and Taiwan, and analysts speculated that Pratas and Taiping (太平), a Taiwan-occupied island in the Spratlys group to the south, might be targets for China's military, the responsibility for Pratas and Taiping was promptly transferred from the Ministry of National Defense to the Coast Guard, [a non-military unit under the Ministry of the Interior].
The KMT government seemed on the whole to be more preoccupied with the latter concern, somewhat to the detriment of progress in the Indonesian-sponsored workshops designed to build confidence among the claimants to South China Sea territories. Further complicating Taiwan's role in the South China Sea issues have been its attempts to use its claims and participation in the informal Indonesian workshops to push for recognition as a legitimate state and its inclusion in formal interstate forums like the ASEAN Regional Forum, while the PRC has worked even more strenuously to oppose this objective. ASEAN claimants have understandably been wary of getting caught in the middle of this "domestic" dispute.
Taiwan has also seemed at times to have an identity crisis in relation to the South China Sea disputes. On the one hand, it has been vehemently opposed to almost everything China says and does. But when it comes to the South China Sea disputes, the KMT government sometimes sided with China. This vacillation has made ASEAN claimants suspicious about Taiwan's intentions towards them and their claims.
What can Taiwan do now, given its fundamental dilemma? Regarding its territorial and maritime claims, it could differentiate its position from that of the PRC by publicly clarifying and modernizing its claims in accordance with international law and the Law of the Sea.
First, it should reaffirm its claims in appropriate nationalistic rhetoric to some or all South China Sea rocks and islands, based on discovery, use and continuous effective occupation and control (and possibly acquiescence by other claimants as well) -- at least of Taiping Dao. Taiwan could even suggest that the ownership of these features should be decided by third party arbitration.
Then it should promptly renounce the 9-dashed line (which first appeared on an ROC Ministry of Internal Affairs map in 1947), any claims to submerged features like Mischief Reef, which is occupied by China, and any claims to historical waters in the South China Sea. Since only a historical waters claim might threaten freedom of navigation, outside maritime powers, especially the US, would welcome its repudiation.
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