Asia-Pacific News
China sends more ships to patrol disputed islands
May 19, 2009, 6:32 GMT
Beijing - Two Chinese ships were scheduled to sail from the southern island of Hainan on Tuesday to beef up patrols near disputed islands in the South China Sea, state media said.
The official China Daily said the two fishery administration vessels would head towards the Xisha islands, which are also known internationally as the Paracels, and in Vietnam as the Huyen dao Hoang Sa.
The 15-day mission is 'aimed at curbing increasing illegal fishing activities in the area,' the newspaper quoted Zhu Yingrong, an official with the fishery administration, as saying.
Zhu said the ships will conduct a 'routine but intense' mission, including patrolling China's exclusive economic zones, protecting Chinese fishing boats, curbing illegal fishing and 'reinforcing the protection of China's rights and interests.'
Last month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry protested Vietnam's 'illegal' appointment of a governor for the disputed islands.
The island group includes more than 30 islets, sandbanks and reefs spread over an area of about 15,000 square kilometres.
China Daily in March quoted a senior fisheries official as saying the government faced new 'challenges and complications' in the South China Sea, pointing to recent claims by the Philippines and Malaysia to disputed islands and standoffs with US naval surveillance ships.
In mid-March, China sent its largest and fastest fisheries ship, the Yuzheng 311, to patrol the Xisha group and nearby disputed islands.
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ASEANMay 19th, 2009 - 22:51:15
China claims not only the islands in the South China Sea, but also a vast body of water surrounding the islands, a claim that has nothing to do with the islands themselves. In fact, China’s maritime claim is made over and against the rightful sovereignty of the Southeast Asian countries who are entitled to their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in accordance with the stipulations of UNCLOS. However, China seems to be of the view that the countries in Southeast Asia cannot be entitled to their exclusive economic zones because they overlap with China’s jurisdiction over parts of the sea. If China gets its way, all of the Southeast Asian countries surrounding the South China Sea are left with only about 20 percent of the sea to share among themselves while China alone controls a whopping 80 percent.
Looking at China’s claim, one will see that the U-shaped line drawn by China in the South China Sea has no integral relationship to the claim of sovereignty over the islands. It neither delimitates the 12 nautical mile territorial sea nor the 200 nautical mile EEZ around the islands. It is merely an arbitrary line that China decided to draw in the South China Sea since 1947, long before UNCLOS was ever established.
China is quite clever in claiming both the islands and jurisdiction over this area of water. If China manages to get the islands, it will be guaranteed at least the territorial sea. It will, of course, fight to get at least a EEZ around the islands (although claiming EEZ around these mostly tiny, uninhabited features that cannot support an economy in their own is preposterous). On the other hand, if the islands or the EEZ fails to be achieved, China still has the water marked by the U-shaped line as insurance. The grounds for this claim is even more preposterous than the claim of EEZ around features that China stole from its neighbors. But for a country driven by the need for natural resources and an unstoppable desire to recapture the former glorious past, no reasoning is too absurd.
vietwill.org
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