China Being A Maritime Power under the UNCLOS: Issues and Ways Ahead

Abstract

China has recently established a strategic goal of building herself into a maritime power. China's pursuit of this goal is interconnected with the UNCLOS. However, China faces increasingly serious challenges resulting from the application of the UNCLOS, especially the provisions in relation to the EEZ and the new continental shelf, which were strongly supported by China herself at the UNCLOS III. Drawing lessons from the participation in the UNCLOS III, this article argues that the only option for China in response to the challenges is to transform her traditional position of a coastal State into that of a maritime power by actively applying and defending the relevant UNCLOS regimes as well as taking future law-making seriously on marine biodiversity, including the marine genetic resources, beyond national jurisdiction. At the same time, China should hold an open attitude in the revision of national laws which are arguably incompatible with the UNCLOS.

Conflicts and Challenges of Sustainable Fisheries Governance Cooperation under the Securitization of the Maritime Commons

“…The three major countries in the region have different motivations for securitizing the waters. China's motivation is increasing attention to the role of the ocean in national development and its influence in the maritime realm [91]. Japan regards maritime order as the foundation of the country's peace and prosperity and safeguarding its interests in the maritime commons as one of the core preconditions of its national security strategy [64], which are the driving forces for Japan to participate in the securitization of the Northeast Asia Pacific.…”

The Voice of Science on Marine Biodiversity Negotiations: A Systematic Literature Review

“…With 49 publications, 35% of publications in the literature sample focus on the overall BBNJ process and cross-cutting issues (see Table 2). Research in this regard includes: analyses of discussions before (Campbell et al, 2013;Houghton, 2014) and during formal IGCs (Vithanage, 2017;Tiller and Nyman, 2018;Mendenhall et al, 2019;Tiller et al, 2019;De Santo et al, 2020); the role of NGOs in the negotiations (Blasiak et al, 2017); summaries and relevance of workshops and meetings concerning the BBNJ negotiations (Rochette and Bille, 2008;Houghton and Rochette, 2014;Goodman and Matley, 2018;Sun, 2019); and publications on current or recommended positioning or the role of certain states and country blocks in the negotiations, such as China (Zhu, 2009;Yu, 2014;Ma, 2018), Brazil (Barros-Platiau et al, 2019, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (Hassanali, 2018).…”

Evaluation of China's maritime power construction index and policy textual analysis

“…(2) Administrative and Legal Challenges Studies in this category, such as those by Yu (2013), Wang and Wang (2014), Yu (2014) and Hu (2014Hu ( , 2017, delve into the administrative reforms and legal aspects of the CMPS. While these works address the complexities of implementing the strategy, they often overlook the interplay between administrative reforms and geopolitical considerations as well as the interaction between international and domestic laws.…”