AS PARTING gestures go, it was a risky one. Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, leaves office in May, having lost an election on January 16th. But rather than slink out quietly, this week he visited Itu Aba, known in Chinese as Taiping, the biggest natural island in the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, garrisoned by Taiwan but also claimed by China, the Philippines and Vietnam. The Philippines and Vietnam were incensed, China much less so: it appreciates Mr Ma’s adherence to the fiction that there is but “one China”. From its point of view, Taiwan’s territorial claims in the much-disputed sea are its own.
Besides reasserting Taiwan’s claim, Mr Ma wanted to rebut arguments made by the Philippines, in a case it has brought before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. This argues that under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Itu Aba is a rock that cannot sustain human life. So it is entitled to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters, but not the 200-mile exclusive economic zone accorded to habitable islands. Mr Ma also possibly hoped to advertise his own “South China Sea Peace Initiative”, which he announced...Continue reading
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