Move beyond conflicts: experts
Joint marine research needed in South China Sea
Fishery cooperation in the South China Sea should move beyond the idea of disputed areas and regard fish protection as the primary goal of cooperation, Chinese analysts said on Sunday.
Countries surrounding the South China Sea can launch “joint marine scientific research” in the region as a form of pure environmental cooperation, Chinese analysts reached by the Global Times said on Sunday.
Migratory fish know nothing about the controversial boundary, and regional fishery management cooperation should be conducted based on the waters’ overall ecology, rather than limited by controversial islands and reefs, Cao Qun, a research fellow from the center for maritime security and cooperation at China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Designating specific responsibility areas in the South China Sea, such as cooperating within a certain radius of controversial islands and reefs, is not meaningful for fishery management cooperation as few fishing boats access waters of controversial islands and reefs, Cao said, adding that sovereign and jurisdiction rights would also be a problem, Cao said.
An article written by Stein Tønnesson, a researcher from Norway, published by the Washington-based think tank Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in January, gave several suggestions on fishery management in the South China Sea, including building a joint management zone surrounding Huangyan Island that covers the island of Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, and discussing fishery quotas accordingly.
Cao said that the suggestion ignores two problems: first, Huangyan Island is the territory of China and totally under the administration of China; and second, the involvement of the island of Taiwan in the cooperation would violate the one-China principle. He also noted that multilateral cooperation should focus on non-controversial topics.
Current fishery management cooperation in the South China Sea is still at a very low stage and is mainly bilateral – between China and Vietnam or the Philippines – and deals mostly with law enforcement management and training on fishery techniques, said Chen Xiangmiao, a research fellow at the Hainan-based National Institute for the South China Sea.
Maritime countries have different definitions of the fishing off-season and fish-ban policies, which has caused overfishing and prohibited countries from carrying out efficient fishery cooperation, analysts said.
According to China’s Ministry of Agriculture, China’s fish-ban area covers the sea that extends north from the 12th parallel north latitude to the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong provinces. In 2018, the ban lasted about three months since May.
Unclear maritime boundaries have also caused maritime conflict, which analysts suggested could be addressed based on the experience of cooperation between China and Japan in the East China Sea. The two countries should respect the rights of fishermen from both sides rather than enforcing domestic laws against foreign fidhermen.