Mutual respect
Last April, Palau police on spotter planes opened fire on Chinese vessels in Palau waters, killing a fisherman. Before the other Chinese were apprehended, they set fire to their main ship. Palau said warning shots were fired at the fishermen and the killing was an accident. Palau is the first country to declare its waters as a shark sanctuary, and the fishermen appeared to be after sharks, whose fins are prized delicacies in China.
This week the Russian coast guard also opened fire on Chinese vessels that entered Russia’s exclusive economic zone in its far eastern Primorsky region, according to Chinese news reports. The Russians detained 36 Chinese fishermen and seized two boats.
The two incidents provide lessons on how China reacts when its intrusions into others’ territory are challenged. In the waters around China, its fishermen are increasingly being seen as instruments of Beijing in enforcing its territorial claims. Countries with strong naval forces such as Japan and South Korea stand ready to defend their territorial integrity. China’s behavior toward states with weaker defense capability gives the world an idea of its future behavior on the international stage.
China has prospered in the past three decades by building friendships and playing by international rules, even as it pursues its own political system and ways of governance. The world has become a global village, with international rules governing the ways by which states deal with each other. One does not claim territory arbitrarily, especially when others are challenging the claim.
It would be in China’s interest, if it wants to continue winning friends, to seek an international mechanism that will govern maritime territorial disputes and their settlement. China, like the Philippines, is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which provides coastal nations with a 200-mile exclusive economic zone from their shorelines. Nations with shared EEZs can negotiate and settle overlapping claims. The Philippines and China do not have a shared EEZ. The Philippines does its best to respect its neighbors’ economic zones. China should do the same. If it did, it wouldn’t find its fishermen being fired upon by other countries.