Taiwan pushes island credentials of South China Sea outpost
Recognition Taiping is not just a rock would bring rights to resource-rich but contested waters
As the C130 Hercules makes a bumpy landing on
-controlled Taiping island, a small tropical outcrop little longer than its 1.2km runway, mobile phones receive a text message from a Vietnamese network that says “Welcome to Vietnam”.
In the geographical heart of the South China Sea, the location of one of the world’s most troubling territorial disputes, nations are using what means they can to push their claims to this 0.5 sq km island, the largest natural feature in the southern Spratly chain.
Vietnam is projecting its military-owned mobile phone network, while buying submarines and fighters from Russia to transform its attack capabilities. Mighty China is investing even more on its armed forces, buying hardware and building and fortifying its own artificial islands.
The Philippines is pinning its hopes on the vagaries of international maritime law, bringing an arbitration case against Beijing.
But Taiwan, which cannot use international law because most countries do not recognise it as a sovereign state, is turning to more prosaic weapons to support its claim to Taiping and the potentially resource-rich sea around it: the availability of fresh water, free-roaming goats and bird faeces.
“From this layer of historical guano, you can see that our soil has the potential for agriculture and that means we can support human life,” says Wang Mao-Lin, commander of the Taiwanese coast guard unit that runs Taiping, as he shows around the first group of journalists allowed on the island.
That the fight over some of the world's most important waters, which contain rich fisheries, large potential oil and gas reserves and key global shipping routes, could be decided on such matters seems absurd.
But back in Taipei, outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou explains the importance of Taiping’s soil quality, livestock and groundwater that is “close to the quality of Evian”.
He says this is proof that Taiping can “sustain human habitation and economic life” and therefore should be considered an island under the UN convention on the law of the sea, granting it a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone that includes the rights to exploit fishing grounds and hydrocarbons.
Taiwan has stepped up its efforts to show off Taiping, which lies 1,500km from Taiwan but only 500km from Vietnam and the Philippines, since the Philippines claimed last year during its arbitration case against China that it was just a “rock” that cannot support life and so should only generate 12 miles of territorial waters rather than the expansive economic zone.
Over a lunch of locally grown coconuts, chicken and other Taiping ingredients, Bruce Linghu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, says his government must fight to influence public opinion because it is excluded from The Hague arbitration court hearing the Philippines case and other international bodies at the behest of China, which claims self-governing Taiwan is one of its provinces.
Ian Storey, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, says one of the ironies of Taiwan’s position on Taiping is that it supports China’s increasingly assertive efforts to dominate the waters.
Beijing and Taipei make similar “U-shaped line” claims to almost the entire South China Sea, although China is using its growing military and economic power to enforce its interests, while Taiwan only occupies one island, using its coast guard rather than armed forces.
“Taiwan has to be careful in the South China Sea because they don’t want to be viewed as China’s proxy and they don’t want to alienate the US or anger other Southeast Asian claimants who they want to trade with,” says Mr Storey.
If Taiping is officially an island and none of China’s occupied features are … it could throw the whole focus of the South China Sea disputes back to cross-Strait relations
Jonathan Spangler, South China Sea think-tank
After condemning what it calls China’s efforts to militarise these waters, the US government also criticised Mr Ma’s focus on Taiping, saying it is “extremely unhelpful” and urging Taiwan and all claimants to “lower tensions, rather than taking actions that could raise them”.
Jonathan Spangler, director of the South China Sea think-tank in Taipei, says the fight over Taiping’s status has much wider implications because it is the biggest natural feature in the Spratlys and the only one with a serious claim to be an island in international law.
He points out that while China has built a much bigger air base on reclaimed land at nearby Fiery Cross Reef, such man-made features cannot generate an exclusive economic zone.
“If Taiping is officially an island and none of China’s occupied features are considered islands by international law, it could throw the whole focus of the South China Sea disputes back to cross-Strait relations,” he says.
