A lawmaker has proposed a legal amendment to transfer authority to demarcate prohibited and restricted waters off Taiwan proper and Taiwan-controlled outlying islands from the defense ministry to the Ocean Affairs Council (OAC), saying that it would augment law enforcement in those areas.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Yeong-kang (陳永康) crafted the draft legislation and held a public hearing on Friday.
In a written explanation accompanying the bill, Chen said that after the fatal capsizing of an unlicensed and unregistered Chinese speedboat in prohibited waters off the Kinmen Islands in February, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office publicly rejected the legality of the Taiwan-controlled prohibited and restricted waters off the Kinmen Islands.
Photo courtesy of the Mainland Affairs Council
Kinmen and the city of Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province are separated by less than 10km.
Chen said that under the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Ministry of National Defense is mandated to declare the scope of the prohibited and restricted waters.
However, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA), an OAC agency, is designated as the competent authority and tasked with patrolling and law enforcement in those areas, he added.
Since the purpose of delineating prohibited and restricted waters is to maintain order on the sea, not national defense, that task should be undertaken by the CGA, Chen said.
Tamkang University Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies associate professor Alexander Huang (黃介正) said that transferring the task from a military agency to a law enforcement agency would not only signal that Taiwan has sovereignty over the overlapping waters, but would also de-escalate tensions.
However, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said the proposed amendment “would not make much difference.”
Liang added that the prohibited and restricted waters have been enforced for more than three decades based on a tacit understanding between Taiwan and China, and that it is inappropriate to seek the other side’s validation through negotiations over the scope of the Taiwan-controlled water due to unforeseen incidents.
The capsizing of the Chinese boat on Feb. 14 occurred after a high-speed chase by a Taiwanese coast guard vessel which resulted in the death of two Chinese crew members.
Beijing criticized the Democratic Progressive Party’s “brutal” handling of the incident and on Feb. 19 China Coast Guard personnel boarded a Taiwanese cruise ship.
In the month following the incident, China Coast Guard vessels frequently entered Kinmen’s prohibited waters, saying it was conducting “legal” patrols, but were expelled by vessels dispatched by its Taiwanese counterpart.
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