A Chinese patrol and law enforcement operation in the Taiwan Strait could indirectly expand Beijing’s jurisdiction to the median line of the Strait in an attempt to eliminate jurisdictional gaps, Taiwanese experts said.
The operation, jointly launched by the Chinese Ministry of Transport’s Fujian Maritime Safety Administration and its East China Sea Rescue Bureau, was conducted from Saturday to Sunday, after China’s three-and-a-half-month fishing moratorium concluded on Friday last week, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The operation — which Beijing said is designed to “enhance traffic management and emergency rescue capabilities in the Strait to ensure the safety of vessels, facilities and personnel” — involved three public service ships, lasted 30.5 hours and covered a total distance of 413 nautical miles (765km), Xinhua reported.
Photo: Still frame grab from a video on the CCTV Video News Agency’s YouTube channel
A new Web site under China Central Television also reported that the operation went as far as 2 nautical miles east of the central part of the Taiwan Strait, while the southernmost point reached the Taiwan Shoal, claiming to cover “a wider area than in previous years.”
The Taiwan Shoal, southwest of Penghu County and near the median line of the Strait, falls within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone, encompassing approximately 8,800km2 with a water depth ranging from 8m to 40m, according to the National Academy of Marine Research.
The report also said that the operation was “a further extension of regularization,” with departments in China having established a data system for more comprehensive management of the Strait.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the government-funded think tank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said Beijing’s move to include the Taiwan Shoal and waters near Penghu as part of the patrol area might indirectly expand its area of jurisdiction to the Strait’s median line, an attempt to turn the Strait into “quasi-internal waters.”
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Taiwan Strait is not considered internal waters — waters on the landward side of the baseline of a nation’s territorial waters, Su said.
Therefore, Chinese authorities have adopted a “salami slicing” strategy to gradually assert jurisdiction over the Strait, he said.
Criticizing the operation as indirectly eroding the sovereignty of the Republic of China, he said that such actions could occur more frequently and their scope gradually expanded.
Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Taipei-based Association of Strategic Foresight, said the operation reflected China’s view of the Taiwan government as a “local government” with no authority to issue laws governing traffic in the Strait.
“On one hand, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to eliminate the gap in jurisdictional areas, and on the other, it is denying our laws and orders through these actions,” he said.
The Chinese authorities have been pursuing a legal battle in the Strait since June 2022, with the key objective to claim jurisdiction over most of it, he said.
He cited an incident in February in which two Chinese fishers died when their boat capsized off Kinmen County while being pursued by Coast Guard Administration (CGA) personnel.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office at the time said “there is simply no such thing as so-called prohibited or restricted waters.”
Prohibited and restricted waters are designated by the Ministry of National Defense in accordance with 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), with waters around Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties delineated using a polygonal method, the CGA said.
Under the act, no Chinese vessels, civil aircraft or other means of transportation are allowed to enter Taiwan’s restricted or prohibited waters, including those in the outlying islands.
Regarding the patrol and law enforcement operation carried out by the three Chinese vessels, the CGA on Sunday said that the ships briefly crossed the median line by 3.2 nautical miles at 12:25pm on Saturday before heading back toward China.
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