By Cain Nunns
The Republic of China maintains sweeping claims to the South China Sea. But is it needlessly alienating much-needed potential friends?
If only Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs could rack up allies as quickly as its scandals or neighbor alienating territorial claims.
A statement released by the ministry this month – the ninth such missive in the past 18 months – called for competing nations to respect the “Republic of China’s unwavering sovereignty over the South China Sea.”
The Republic of China – Taiwan’s official name since Chiang Kai-shek’s battered forces cemented control of the island following their civil war loss to Mao Zedong’s troops – claims about 3.5 million square kilometers of the oil and gas-rich body of water based on “historical evidence” that Chinese fishermen once plied its waters and trade routes and desolate outcrops were established.
Taipei makes its claim under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which would be fine if it was a party to UNCLOS, or any other U.N. body or agreement. But the Republic of China was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, when the General Assembly recognized “the Peoples’ Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations.”
While Beijing’s oft-criticized “nine-dotted line” claim has been ridiculed by its Association of Southeast Asian Nation neighbors, Taiwan’s virtually identical declaration has been hammered as “frivolous” and “out of touch with Asia’s diplomatic reality.”
“I wish they would shut up. There isn’t a single Asian country that even recognizes them. How are they relevant?” asks one Southeast Asian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They lost their war 65 years ago and they still act like they are a great power. You would think show some humility where these frivolous claims are concerned. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that.”
Critics of Taiwan’s handling of the situation say Taipei should duplicate its position on its other constitutionally enshrined and often bizarre Asian land claims – by ignoring them.
Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat