The South China Sea has been the focus of much tension of late. There have been Vietnam’s live fire drills in the Paracel Islands (which are also claimed by Taiwan), the joint military exercises between the US and the Philippines in the region, the presence of a Chinese fleet around the Pacific islands and Taiwan’s blue-water naval drills.
In the wake of all this activity, some of the countries in the South China Sea region met in Bali late last month and agreed on a set of guidelines to to mitigate conflict. On the surface it appeared that a step had been made in the right direction for a peaceful resolution of the tensions, but US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying that the US had strategic interests in the South China Sea, joined Philippine Secretary of National Defense Voltaire Gazmin in accusing China of double standards, making the situation as precarious as ever.
The South China Sea combines various geological and climatic conditions, with an abundance of biodiversity and rich natural resources. The coral reefs around the large number of islands, islets and their peninsulas, together with the monsoons and marine currents, all provide excellent conditions for a rich marine ecology, giving the sea one of the greatest concentrations of natural habitats and breeding grounds for marine life, and making it one of the most valuable fishing grounds in the world.
The populations of Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines all rely on this region for fishing, shipping, marine oil and natural gas exploration, tourism and tourism-related jobs. Following the establishment of the 1994 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the various countries in the area have separately claimed economic zones in the area and attempted to -control and develop the natural resources in them.
So who has the right to administer the South China Sea and control the natural resources there?
I would say the answer to that is the true inhabitants of the area, the various organisms living in the South China Sea. What the countries in the region should absolutely not be doing is making pronouncements about sovereignty or developing or arguing only about their own interests. Instead, they should be working together to maintain the autonomy of the region itself, protecting their most valuable asset: a sustainable natural resource.
First and foremost, this will depend on putting aside the various points of contention and concentrating instead on issues that everyone can agree on, thereby promoting a harmonious environment with no borders that will both be useful and will promote regional peace. And with this, all the countries concerned can work together in a constructive way.
The number of people living along coastal areas has grown and fishing techniques have improved. The South China Sea is shared by all these areas, and consequently overfished, which has led to the exhaustion of fish stocks. The countries in the region could use this as a starting point, working together on conservation and fishing resource management, and from there, go on to cooperation in other areas.
For example, more than half of the world’s 10 largest container ports are located on coastlines in the South China Sea and more than half the world’s traffic of commercial ships and oil tankers, in terms of tonnage, passes through its waters every year.
Unfortunately, this makes it rich pickings for pirates. In the past 20 years, many incidents of piracy have occurred in this region, something that is just begging to be addressed with a concerted effort by the surrounding countries. They could start by establishing a South China Sea security system, incorporating intelligence sharing and a database accessible to all members.
Furthermore, pollution and global warming mean that many forms of ocean life are in real danger of extinction. Dying corals and invasive species are threatening biodiversity, there are expanding areas devoid of life in developed oceans, toxic red tides — or algae blooms — are forming, and numbers of large fish are declining rapidly.
These problems are getting worse, and quickly. If something is not done soon, the South China Sea may lose its capacity to sustain life.
There are many areas of research on these issues on which the countries in the region could work together. To name a few, the impact of South China Sea ocean currents on climate change; pollution in the South China Sea, marine climate and ecology, and how to manage a healthy regional ecology.
The problem of trans-global haze pollution caused by frequent forest fires is yet another issue on which these countries really need to cooperate. The 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on March 11 this year serve as more proof that these countries need to set up a database that will facilitate disaster prediction systems.
The call to put aside differences and cooperate with each other is nowhere more pressing than with the issue of oil and gas exploration and development. Despite a decade of continuous calls, results have been limited. This is partly due to interference from transnational oil companies, but also because individual countries are reluctant to share the benefits of such exploration with others, and any interest in joint exploration is gradually dissipating. In the future, rather than continuing to develop oil and gas, it would be better to pursue cooperation on developing clean marine sources of energy, such as ocean currents or waves.
After all, the far-reaching guarantees that each country stands to gain from maintaining sustainable sea life easily outstrips the short-term, shallow profits to be gained from competing with each other in grabbing whatever they can get.
Whatever shape or form the talks between neighboring countries take and what issues are discussed, they should be conducted with political wisdom and foresight, with the South China Sea placed at the center.
They can also benefit from the experience of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. There is no reason why various non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, businesses and local communities cannot establish a favorable cooperation mechanism so that the countries concerned and the South China Sea itself can achieve a win-win situation that everyone can be proud of.
That would do justice to the name we give to one of the Spratly Islands: Taiping Island (太平島), “the island of peace and security.”
Hua Jian is a professor of marine engineering at National Taiwan Ocean University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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