Taiwan is one of seven nations laying claims of one kind or another to islands in the South China Sea. “Islands” is hardly the correct term — they are in reality sand-banks, atolls, shallows and coral reefs, but they have many natural resources and lay astride major shipping lanes. China has claimed that they all lie within its territorial waters.
These islets are in two groups, the Paracels (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) to the north and the Spratlys (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) to the south. Taiwan’s interest is largely in the Paracels, as is that of the Philippines, with Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia focusing on the southern region.
MARINE DEGRADATION
But this book isn’t primarily political in its focus. Rather, it’s concerned with marine degradation in the whole region as observed by the author from his experiences on a Vietnamese fishing boat, or “cruising yawl” to use a phrase mariners of Joseph Conrad’s generation would have been familiar with.
This important book appears just as 100 nations agreed at the Brest Summit to take action to curb illegal fishing and the plastic pollution of the world’s oceans.
Shao Kwang-Tsao (邵廣昭), a retired researcher at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center, has studied the “coral cathedrals” beneath the Spratleys, prompting former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to propose a “Spratley Initiative,” which would have recognized the entire area as an environmental protection zone.
James Borton’s approach is at times colloquial as well as being invariably well-informed, leading him to declare in a Hanoi bar that his researches had led him to an excessive thirst.
The South China Sea is 1.4 million square miles in area and, according to the author, contains a greater range of marine bio-diversity than almost any comparable ocean on the planet.
As for China, it’s estimated that its annual fish catch is 20 percent of the world’s total, and is responsible for a third of the world’s plastic pollution. Relations between Vietnam and China go back 2,000 years, so the current conflict over the South China Sea’s islands is in a way paradoxical. Xi Jinping (習近平) has referred to Sino-Vietnamese relations as a “special friendship between comrades and brothers.”
Over 300 million people live on the South China Sea’s periphery and are used to enjoying its resources. China’s so-called “nine dash line” marks its claim to sovereignty over almost all this contested area, but fish catches are dwindling for everyone — according to some estimates by 70 percent over the past 20 years.
Almost 55 percent of the world’s fishing vessels, many of them small, operate in the South China Sea. Song Yann-huei (宋燕輝), a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, believes in a shared and sustainable future for the islands, embracing China’s much-vaunted concept of an “ecological civilization.” Even so, few deny China’s current “hard-power maritime expansionism” with its ramming of foreign fishing boats, harassing of oil exploration surveys and building of military outposts on reclaimed land.
“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” declared former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. But the islands’ oil and gas reserves make them highly desirable conquests. Similar conflicts are imminent, incidentally, in the Arctic region.
Meanwhile, few would have predicted the victory of the Philippines in the unanimous arbitration of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague over the South China Sea’s Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) in 2016.
Dispatches from the South China Sea is a very thoroughly researched book, with many more areas of expertise than it’s possible to indicate here, stretching from whales and dolphins to tuna and coral reefs. Some 160 square kilometers of reefs have been destroyed through base-building and clam hunting and these reefs, some of the most spectacular in the world, can never now be replaced.
Furthermore, Borton writes that many species of reef fish are non-migratory, and the destruction of their reef habitats often spells their extinction.
TAIWAN ANGLE
The Hague arbitration specifically designated Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島), administrated by Taiwan, as a “rock” and hence not available for consideration as part of China’s continental shelf. Last year, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) proposed the establishment of an international scientific research station on the site. Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) earlier called on its other claimant nations to combine and share resources there. Rising sea levels nevertheless threaten the site’s very existence. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s approach gets high praise throughout this book.
Taiwan, Borton argues, is a highly responsible player in the South China Sea game. He comes to the surprising conclusion that “Taiwan’s complex cross-strait relationship with Mainland China under-scores that sovereignty and security form the core of their relationship. Despite missed opportunities, missteps and suspicions of bad faith, there is a peaceful coexistence marked by negotiation and rapprochement.”
In an Appendix Borton describes a visit to the Cham Islands, close to the coast of Vietnam. They pose, he says, an enviable example of the potential of all these South China Sea islands to become tourist attractions, and hence centers for international cooperation and marine research. He concludes the book by stating that even half a degree of ocean warming will spell disaster for many already threatened coral systems.
A sunlit seascape, a profusion of marine life, surrounding countries devoted to its resources — this is a grand and poetic vision. That it is marred by political rivalry is one of the tragedies of the age.
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
There is considerable frustration and confusion among many, both in Taiwan and abroad — including in Washington — as to why the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seems so dead set on using their legislative leverage to slash defense spending and disrupt the ability of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration to function. Are they pawns of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Are they traitors? In reality, there are multiple reasons. In the first column in this series on this subject, “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How and why the TPP and KMT help Beijing” (Sat May 16, page 12), we examined three
It took 12 years and months of standing in the same mountain location for director Liang Chieh-te (梁皆得) to capture a few seconds of footage: Taiwan’s largest resident raptor locking talons with its mate and spinning through the air in a courtship ritual. With only about 1,000 left in the wild and very short flight windows, the mountain hawk-eagle remains among Taiwan’s most elusive birds. The species generally produces only one offspring per year. Using forest cameras, the film crew and research teams document the arduous process the monogamous pairs go through for the chick to hatch and grow up, weathering
RSS