The Philippines has been increasingly challenged by Mainland China’s expansion in the South China Sea in recent years. Following the Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012, they submitted the dispute for international arbitration at The Hague the following year. Their goal is to prove that the South China Sea islands are all “rocks,” thereby drastically shrinking the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) rights each island can claim.
The reason Taiping Island, belonging to the Republic of China, has been innocently caught in the crossfire is that the Philippines specifically made Taiping Island a primary subject of arbitration in their application against Mainland China. Simply put, if they can prove Taiping Island is a rock, then all other islands smaller than it will naturally be classified as rocks as well.
Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, a rock can only claim a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea. Therefore, once the islands owned by the ROC and the PRC in the South China Sea are turned into rocks, the economic waters and national borders both countries can claim will be drastically reduced, with profound consequences.
Especially since the EEZs of neighboring countries already partially overlap with our islands, losing the right to claim “island” status will make it much harder for our fishermen to operate in the South China Sea. Furthermore, the natural resources hidden beneath the seabed will be snatched away by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other nations—interests totaling hundreds of billions of dollars.
Therefore, the editor was shocked today to hear the newly elected DPP legislator from Taiwan Province, Lin Chun-hsien, shouting that “Taiping Island is so far away from us, it’s impossible to defend”—an absurd statement abandoning our sovereignty, made merely to belittle Ma Ying-jeou’s visit to the island to assert our rights. He even claimed Ma would become a historical joke.
With legislators like this in our country, nations like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam are truly laughing all the way to the bank.