It’s widely accepted that the South China Sea is a geopolitical flashpoint that could inadvertently trigger a regional, even international conflict.

But how did it get to this point?

Broadly speaking the South China Sea dispute boils down to the question of how borders should be delineated in the absence of bilateral agreement between two countries. This discussion is given further impetus by the importance of the region. The South China Sea is as economically lucrative as it is geographically significant. There are hundreds of billions in mineral and energy wealth locked away under its waters, and the South China Sea is both a key global trade conduit and a gateway into China’s backyard. Given the economic and geopolitical stakes, it’s not surprising that the region has become a volatile frontier of global competition.

This series will examine the claimants in the South China Sea dispute: China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines. We now end with Taiwan which, as the heir to the legacy of the Republic of China, is actually the original source of China’s nine-dash line claim. Taiwan’s South China Sea presence is minimal compared to other claimants, but the Taiwanese government does control the largest naturally occurring island in the Spratlys: Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island).

Background

The historical origin of Taiwan’s roundabout claim

After losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government fled across the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan, and the conflict was subsequently frozen when the US Seventh Fleet moved in to block of the waters following the advent of the Korean War in June, 1950. Thus the Republic of China (ROC) survived in exile on Taiwan as a competing entity to the victorious People’s Republic of China (PRC), and ROC leaders began to dream of the day they would return to the mainland and topple the communists who had usurped their rule over China. The dream was sustained in the years that followed by operating a parallel national administration in a bizarre political pantomime. Even though the ROC was restricted to Taiwan, it continued to convene all of its national political institutions – at least until the delegates began to pass away with no hope of convening new elections in far-flung places like Chongqing and Guangdong.

Similarly, the Republic of China government on Taiwan continued to press its historical claims in the South China Sea, claims that stemmed not from the geographical position of Taiwan – which is thousands of kilometers from the Paracels and Spratlys – but rather from the ROC’s presumed status as the “rightful” government of China in its entirety.

Fast-forward a few decades and the historical legacy of the Republic of China is fading in Taiwan due to democratization and a growing nativist movement. Elementary school students are no longer pledging to ‘retake the mainland!’ every morning before class starts. This has resulted in an interesting dynamic in the context of the South China Sea dispute: the ROC and PRC claims are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though they are being executed by governments and militaries that are very much separate if not openly antagonistic. In addition, Beijing tends to take a softer line toward Taipei’s claims in the South China Sea because they harken back to the legacy of the Republic of China, which continues to bind Taiwan to China’s political orbit, contravening narratives of Taiwan’s political independence.

It was the Republic of China that created the eleven-dash line in 1947; the line lost two of its dashes in 1952, when Mao Zedong abandoned China’s claim to the Gulf of Tonkin in a gesture of friendship toward the Vietnamese communists. The sweeping U-shaped nine-dash line started showing up again in 2009 after it was included in a Chinese submission to the United Nations in its dispute against Vietnam. Now it serves to buttress any and all of China’s SCS claims, and frequently shows up in any supporting documentation coming out of Beijing.

Taiwan advances a sweeping claim of the waters of the South China Sea similar to that of Beijing, one that includes the Spratly, Paracel, Macclesfield, and Paratas islands. Originally the claim included the waters surrounding the features in question, but Taipei has since moderated its stance to focus on the islands and features themselves.

Taiwan’s South China Sea presence

Taiwan’s South China Sea presence is limited to Itu Aba Island, the largest naturally occurring feature in the Spratlys. The Nationalist warship Taiping visited the island in 1946, after Japanese forces had surrendered and vacated the island, and regular occupation by the ROC began in 1956.

It was previously believed that the island may be large enough to generate its own EEZ under UNCLOS regulations, but a 2016 decision by the Court of Arbitration ruled otherwise, stating that a feature’s classification as an island depends on its ability to sustain a local population and economic activity above and beyond military and government personnel. Like China, the Taiwanese government rejected the legality of the ruling.  However, unlike China, Taiwan is not a party to UNCLOS or any other UN regimes due to its vague international status.

Itu Aba Island features a long runway that was built in 2007 and further expanded in 2012. Its residents number in the hundreds; they are comprised of coast guard, navy, military, medical, and supporting personnel. The militarization of Itu Aba has advanced in-step with China’s island-building push in the area. In 2017, the island was reinforced with new deployments and rocket launchers and automatic gun emplacements meant to deter a sea landing by enemy forces. These additions come after anti-aircraft systems were installed in 2016. The island also features a deep-water pier that can accommodate naval warships.

Taiwan’s South China Sea strategy

Taiwan has remained on the outside looking in on the South China Sea dispute due to its marginalization in international forums and China’s successful efforts to block Taipei from taking a place at the negotiating table. Beijing’s strategy follows an obvious if debatable logic: since Taiwan is a part of China, any and all of its South China Sea claims should fall under the banner of the PRC’s diplomatic and military efforts.

The Taiwanese government has made several attempts to escape from its diplomatic straitjacket.In 2015, former president Ma Ying-jeou launched the South China Sea Peace Initiative, which aimed to bypass the more long-term and intractable issues of ownership in order to make real progress on environmental conservation (particularly in terms of fish stocks) and cooperative development of SCS energy resources. Like many of the other multilateral mechanisms aimed at deescalating tensions in the South China Sea, the initiative failed to gain traction. Current President Tsai Ing-wen has been less overt about advancing Taiwan’s claim on the word stage, preferring instead to increase Taiwan’s military budget in anticipation of future clashes in the SCS and elsewhere in the region.