Taiwan's fishermen call the tuna — but will they pay the piper?｜Economy｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com

Actually not a bad article that pinpoints one of the major reasons why we are seeing an increasing number of maritime disputes:

There are over 800 Taiwanese fishing boats operating in the waters around the Diaoyutai (Senkaku or Diaoyu), the islands at the center of a three-way territorial dispute in the East China Sea. The combined catch of the fishing fleet amounts to 40,000 tonnes each year. After Taiwan and Japan signed a fishery agreement last month, Taiwan’s fishermen have been granted access to an additional 4,530 square kilometers of ocean around the islands controlled by Japan.  Tuna is the most popular catch between March and June, and crews have been known in the past to trespass, sometimes resulting in their boats being detained by a foreign country’s coast guard.

Taiwan’s fishermen have naturally been very pleased at the recent agreement with Japan. But Hu Nien-tsu, a professor at National Sun Yat Sen University in Kaohsiung, said that Japan is likely to be stricter in securing its maritime borders after the agreement, and will not show as much forbearance as it did in the past when Taiwanese boats would venture beyond their bounds.

Hu is not wrong.  Japan has just detained the third Taiwanese vessel in ten days, after they were caught poaching.  What is interesting here is the way the Governments of Taiwan and China (and no doubt other maritime nations) prop up and subsidise their fishing industries, and the impacts this has:

Taiwan’s authorities grant large amounts in loans to let fishermen refurbish their vessels. As a result, the country’s fishing fleet has become ever larger and competition between crews ever more intense, with fights reported between local fishermen and with fishermen from Okinawa. It is difficult to determine whether the recent agreement will prove positive for both Taiwan and Japan, the China Times wrote.

As the fleet becomes better equipped, it potential catch size increases, the number of expeditions goes up and the the stress on marine wildlife multiplies exponentially.  As a direct result of over fishing (and that’s not even discussing the waste of fish when far less than 100% of a catch is saleable and an even smaller percentage of what is sold is actually consumed and not thrown out after reaching its sell by date) fish stocks are massively depleted.  Ask any very old fisherman and he will likely tell you about when Blue Fin and Yellow Fin tuna were plentiful and prices relative low.  With waters immediately around Taiwan either protected by law or lacking enough catch for industrial fishing methods, Taiwanese fishermen are going further and further to secure their livelihoods.  As too are Chinese fishermen.  Both are building a pretty terrible reputation for themselves.

One difference between the Taiwanese and Chinese fishermen though is the extent to which politics influences their actions.  The Taiwanese government subsidises the fishermen (although they constitute a small part of the agricultural sector of the economy that totals about 2% of GDP annually) most likely in order to keep the politically active and influential Fishing Associations happy.  It then has to pay again to clean up the mess when this subsidisation brings the nation into dispute with its neighbours.  

In contrast, China appears to be using parts of its fishing fleet, backed up by its ‘Maritime Surveillance’ ships,  as a kind of pseudo-advance annexation squad for the PLAN.  Aside from constantly provoking Japan around the Senkaku Islands, this advance guard has secured major maritime victories in the Scarborough Shoal, allowing the PLAN a way in to add a seal of permanence to the annexation.  Emboldened, and seeking to extract great gains from ASEAN’s arguably weakest member whilst it is licking its wounds over Scarborough and embroiled in a dispute with Taiwan, China is as I write literally testing the waters around the Second Thomas Shoal as it seeks to evict Filipino military presence from the Spratlys altogether.  

The obvious question then begs itself. Once China has bullied the Philippines out of a significant chunk of its marine territory, who is next?  Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand will be asking whether they will be similarly tested.  Japan, having somewhat stupidly played into the hands of Chinese chauvinism by nationalising the Senkaku Islands and not removing the remains of war criminals from the Yakushini Shrine, is now constantly looking over its shoulder at Chinese maritime encroachments that could even begin to push towards Okinawa.

For now, Taiwan does not appear to be using its fishing fleet to expand its claim on waters and, aside from diplomatic idiocy like sending warships and coast guard vessels for drills in or near Filipino EEZ waters or to engage in CGA peeing contests with the JCG (despite Ma promising he would not provoke or create regional tensions via stupid symbolic gestures as he like to blame Chen Shui-bian for), outside of their fishermen, the Taiwanese Government is not overtly acting as a catalyst of regional maritime disputes in either the South or East China Seas.  How much long that will remain true, given President Ma’s strongly pro-China policies and his oft stated claims that the PRC and its territory are constitutionally included in the sovereign area of the Republic of China (they’re not), remains to be seen.  

The waters of East Asia are boiling with regional nationalisms rubbing up against each other in the worst possible way.  What is necessary is for all maritime nations to discuss the issue of fishing stocks and enforcing law on the seas, including clearly defining EEZs and what measures Coast Guards and maritime forces can take in the event of apprehending and neutralising poaching.  Unfortunately Taiwan needs to be central to these discussions.  President Ma and Xi do not represent the political wisdom and reform, or have the political capital,  that is so urgently needed to make this inclusive round table a reality.  It may come to pass that, by locking Taiwan into a non-state position of inevitable antagonism, the One China policy, if it is not directly the spark that ignites the fire, may prevent the parties involved from finding a joint solution to an intensifying problem.

Not Taipei: A Real Taiwan Trip to Green Island

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This weekend, myself, EVA, former student leader at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and Chinese dissident academic Wang Dan (王丹) and nineteen other mostly Chinese exchange students took a trip to Green Island (綠島) in a much needed break away from the cabin fever of the recently perennially wet Taipei basin.  Although a major feature of the trip was to visit the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park (綠島人權紀念公園) I will save my review of that fascinating and thought provoking for another separate post. First, let’s just recap where Green Island actually is … (it’s the little island to the right, the top two of the islands, the other larger one is Lanyu or Orchid Island.)

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煞車 轉舵 再加速: A Note On Conservation Of Endangered Species

Michael Fagan responds to Flora Faun’s letter to the Taipei Times on conservation and biodiversity.  Although I don’t entirely agree with Michael’s rights-based individual freedoms approach he does make an important point in noting that the blanket conservation to maintain biodiversity is, although well intentioned, an erroneous strategy.  In the field of ecological science, biodiversity as an indicator of habitat ‘health’ has long been regarded as a reductionist taxonomic way of looking at the extremely complex and shifting relationships between species and their environment.  Accordingly, many ecologists now talk of biointegrity - how healthy a system is in regard to the balance of the food chain and its habitats.  Michael is therefore right to say …

However the sheer scale of this claim about biodiversity and global ecosystem collapse necessarily subsumes much uncertainty about the variety of consequences that may occur at far lesser orders of magnitude; for example, the trophic cascade effects of apex predators occur in some ecosystems, but are comparatively absent (pdf) in many others. To take that floating abstract claim about the importance of biodiversity generally as the basis on which to conserve any particular vulnerable or endangered species is simply risible: not all species of animals or plants are equally consequential for the ecosystems in which they are found.

He is also right to point to the often ‘anthropogenic’ aspect of conservationism - or at least that which emerges in its most visible campaigns.  It is much harder to convince people to take action to save a particular species of bacteria, insect or flora when it doesn’t have two big eyes, soft fur, or colourful blooms.  An example here are the campaigns to save sharks.  Sharks are an apex predator and widely confirmed to play a very important role in ocean habitat biointegrity.  But when you talk to people about sharks all they can think of is Jaws and stories from the news of people who made themselves very attractive targets for hungry sharks in their own habitats.  And so soup bowls in Taiwan and China continue to be filled with tasteless fin cleaved from still living sharks.  I wonder if Taiwanese would be as interested in eating dolphin fin soup?  The answer is of course not - dolphins have only positive adjectives applied to them.  Boat tours leave Hualien every day to go and watch them.  There are no boat tours to watch sharks.  Yet both dolphins and sharks are both predators and both play an important role in ocean biointegrity.  That we hail one as cute and intelligent whilst slaughtering the other in some vain and entirely symbolic attempt to demonstrate social prestige and status speaks to the limited cognitive capacity of our own species rather than the value of dolphins or sharks.  There is a grave danger in letting aesthetics dominate our understanding of how we should manage the environment  - efficacy based on a deeper multilayered appreciation for the immense complexity of ecological systems. 

Nomad Film Festival

Yesterday, EVA and I attended the Nomad Film Festival at Huashan Creative Park to watch three films:

  • You’ve Been Trumped
  • GodSpeed Taiwan
  • A Fierce Green Fire

The first film, YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED,  charted the insidious way Donald Trump, with the help of Alex Salmond and the local Police, rode roughshod over the concerns of local residents in destroying wild dunes on the coast near Aberdeen - a Site of Scientific Interest - in order to build a golf course.  Even though I was familiar with the Trump brand owing to his regular flatulent outbursts to media as a gambit for feeding his ego, even I was a little shocked to be witness to the method by which he blatantly lied and bought his way towards his objectives, whilst slandering anyone who raised objections, and I was deeply disappointed that Alex Salmond betrayed local residents over overriding the local council’s initial decision not to give planning permission.  The documentary was well edited and really needed little in the way of flourishing touches to show Trump as the sleazy indifferent corporate windbag that he is.  It is just surprising to me that someone so financially unsuccessful can continue to pull off the bluff to the opposite. I guess one should be grateful that, at least in this film, he appears to have absolutely no charisma, people skills or the ability to take any kind of feedback that doesn’t involve kissing his behind.

I went into the second film, GODSPEED TAIWAN, with a misperception.  I had not noted that it wasn’t a finished project.  I had intended here to write at length on my impressions but I think I will save that for when I am able to view a finished version.  I would only say that it appears others in the audience, and judging by the tweets many Taiwanese viewers, may have made the same mistake I did in expecting a finished documentary and were therefore also puzzled at how incomplete and incoherent the editing / story arc was.  As a post-production strategy, I feel it may have been a mistake to show this rough cut version, especially considering the number of notable Taiwan hands, including J. Michael Cole and Joseph Wu, who attended the screening and perhaps who were also expecting more than they saw.  I wish the producers luck and I hope they can raise funds for full post-production editing and finalising but I would say that they have a lot of work ahead of them before they have a meaningful product, and they face many pitfalls between now and then.  My first question to them would be: Who is your audience? Taiwanese or those not familiar with Taiwan? Pick one and build a story for them.

The third and final film, A FIERCE GREEN FIRE, was a brief history of Environmental movements in the USA and around the world.  At two hours and fives acts, it covered a huge range of topics and incidents, many of which were new to me such as the 1978 Love Canal controversy.  It highlighted the role of the US and other countries in blocking effective action on climate change at Kyoto and Copenhagen and demonstrated that if humanity is to address its negative ecological footprint on the world, it cannot look to politicians and states for top down solutions but must work as networks working on botom up solutions tailored to individual contexts, but which take into account issues of historical injustice, economic and social justice, gender and class. Above all, it was reminder that you will never convince a man of your argument if his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.  Its final message could be summed up as think globally, act locally.  My only critique of this film is that the first few parts of the film were heavily US-centric, they made no mention of developing world environmental stalwarts such as Vandana Shiva, there was too little intersectional acknowledgement of the role of class and gender in environmental issues and they needed to admit and deal with the racist origins of European and American land conservation movements in the early part of the 20th century.   

Taipower Changes President - Chu Vows Better PR

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Former Taiwan Power Co president Lee Han-shen, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Francis Liang and Taipower’s new president Chu Wen-chen, left to right, take part in a handover ceremony in Taipei yesterday.May 03, 2013

Photo: CNA

Tatung University president Chu Wen-chen (朱文成) yesterday became the first outsider to become Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) president in the state-run company’s 60-year history, but he is facing a long list of challenges.

These challenges include the controversial construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), losses of NT$193.6 billion (US$6.56 billion) and the rising cost of fuel and electricity.

“Taipower must operate more efficiently to rebuild its broken image,” Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Francis Liang (梁國新) said yesterday at a handover ceremony.

“We expect Chu to run Taipower from a new perspective and with a new approach,” Liang said.

Reading this, made me hopeful for a few seconds until I read further …

Chu replaced Lee Han-shen (李漢申), who retired yesterday.

Chu said he agreed with Lee’s business philosophy that Taipower should operate effectively to achieve sales growth without being hindered by a bureaucratic system.

So the new President essentially agrees with the old President’s business philosophy?  That doesn’t much speak to a ‘new approach’. So what is new? Well, it appears that Chu feels Taipower’s image could do with a make oover - it needs some good PR to counteract all the criticisms it has been facing over the 4NPP, various pricing scandals in the courts and random price rises that seem to hit the smallest consumers hardest …

“Taipower is in the service sector, not the manufacturing sector. Taipower’s duty is to provide satisfactory service to its customers. The company should work to achieve this goal,” Chu said.

Chu said his priority after taking office is to improve communication with the public.

Taipower needs to publicize information about electricity supplies as soon as possible to clarify misunderstandings, he added.

“Taipower has to fix many of the ways its business performs, but it was never as bad as some have claimed,” Chu said.

We often see this in Taiwan from Government officials - the problem is not the problem at hand but the fact that it has only become a problem because of problematic communication and misunderstanding on behalf of the public.  In other words, “Your grievance is illegitimate because it is an artificial and contingent by product of our bad information control. We apologise for poor communication leading you to draw false conclusions.”

In another sign that Chu taking the helm with likely change absolutely nothing, Chu’s response to a question over the 4NPP neatly clarified his support for the government’s position:

Asked by reporters for his views on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, Chu said: “Taipower will seek alternative solutions if a referendum shows a majority of people do not want a new nuclear power plant.”

“We don’t mean to threaten the society. The problem is that if the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant does not become operational, everyone will have to suffer an electricity supply constraint, but we are confident we could solve the problem,” Chu said.

Taipower will not seek alternative solutions because it has bet the house, the horse and Grandma on getting the 4NPP up and running and generating some profit to pay off a proportion of the huge debt incurred to build it.  Chu is quite aware, as are the anti-nuclear activists, that the referendum will fail and the Government will immediately declare this a mandate to give the green light to start the plant.  

It is also revealing that Chu’s scaremongering over electricity shortages pretty much mirrors the Government’s own propaganda (‘Prices will rise!”), and it lets me know that this change of the guard is a way to give former President Lee a break (thanks for taking most of the flack here’s a payoff enjoy your retirement) whilst giving Taipower a little breathing room to kickstart its PR. As for ‘not meaning to threaten society’, Chu and the Government might start by not ‘making an offer we can’t refuse’. 

Shooting for the stars - Taipei Times

Not many Taiwanese novels become big sellers overseas, but a new book being promoted by a savvy literary agent in Taipei might break the mold.
Novelist and nature writer Wu Ming-yi (吳明益) is a soft-spoken, writerly Taipei native in his early 40s who first published The Man With Compound Eyes (複眼人) in 2011.

In the story that Wu weaves, “Taiwanese people are too interested in developing the east coast [in 2029] to clean it up,”

Critic Antonio Chen (陳建忠): “Trash, resource shortages, and the destruction of Taiwan’s coastline as a result of the pursuit of unenlightened self-interest are unremarkable raw materials, but [Wu] mashes them into art. Seen through his compound eyes, daily life is dramatized and fictionalized, and the reader [is] inspired to feats of imagination and action.”

Taiwan - Japan Fisheries Agreement

News today that after seventeen years of negotiations, Taiwan and Japan have finally inked an agreement on fishing rights in waters close to both countries. The Taipei Times handily provided a historical timeline as context to yesterday’s agreement:

Taipei and Tokyo initiated fishery talks following incidents of Taiwanese fishing boats being seized, detained or expelled by the Japan Coast Guard after Tokyo ratified the UN Law of the Sea Treaty in 1996 and set up a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone that included waters surrounding the Diaoyutais. 

First two rounds of negotiations, 1996: Both sides insisted on their respective sovereign claims over the Diaoyutai Islands and did not have substantial discussions about fisheries issues.

‧ Third round of negotiations, 1997: Working-level discussions began about fishing grounds, but delimitation was not discussed.

‧ Fourth, fifth and sixth rounds of negotiations, 1998 to 2000: Taiwan proposed that a commission be set up to co-manage fisheries in the area and that fishing grounds be delimited based on “equitable principle.” Japan rejected the proposals.

‧ Seventh to 15th rounds of negotiations, 2000 to 2005: Taiwan demanded co-management of waters below 27o north latitude and that Taiwanese fishermen have the rights to fish in waters between 27o north latitude to 29o18’ north latitude, because this is within Taiwan’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Japan rejected the proposal and wanted to negotiate based on the principle of a “geographic median line.” It also rejected Taiwan’s claim to fish in waters above 27o north latitude because the area was marked as a zone of joint control between China and Japan in their bilateral fisheries agreement signed in 1997.

‧ Sixteenth round of negotiations, 2009: Consensus was reached on four general principles to deal with disputes on fisheries issues. No substantial discussions on delimitation were held.

Note: China also claims sovereignty over the Diaoyutais. Japan and China signed a fisheries agreement in 1997, which took effect in 2000, under which both sides co-manage waters above 27° north latitude.

So what’s in the deal? Here are the key points:

  • Assures Taiwanese vessels an intervention-free fishing zone in waters between 27° north latitude and the Sakishima Islands, Okinawa Prefecture, and gives Taiwan an additional fishing zone of 1,400 square nautical miles (4,800km2) outside Taiwan’s temporary enforcement line.
  • Fishing vessels from both countries can operate in a large area within the designated zone without being subject to the jurisdiction of the other side, while a smaller area of the zone, where Japanese fishing vessels frequently operate, is under joint management by the two governments.
  • Provisions under the agreement do not apply to waters within 12 nautical miles — a state’s territorial waters — surrounding the Diaoyutai Islands, because the islands are claimed by both Taiwan and Japan, which calls them the Senkaku Islands.

Something that should be made clear amongst talk of ‘maintaining peace and stability in the East China Sea’ is that the agreement is NOT saying that the Diaoyutai / Senkaku Islands are off limits to Japanese and Taiwanese fishing, just that provisions under the agreement do not apply to this location.  Which is why …

Coast Guard Administration Minister Wang Jinn-wang (王進旺) called on Japanese and Chinese fishing vessels not to operate in waters within the 12 nautical miles surrounding the Diaoyutais and vowed to adopt appropriate measures against Chinese and Japanese fishing vessels to protect the rights of Taiwanese fishermen.

In other words, Taiwan is going to continue its game of pretending to exercise sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands and to continue provoking Japan by sending Coast Guard vessels to the area acting as escorts for Chinese nationalist territorial forays disguised as ‘fishing expeditions’ - an act that necessitates Japan also sending their own vessels with all the attendant water hose contests that entails.  As far as I am aware Japanese fishing vessels do not operate around the Senkakus so Wang’s call on them not to do so is smoke and mirrors, as is his call to ask Chinese vessels not to do the same.   Wang will do nothing about either because the former is not a real concern and the latter is too hot a political potato to handle.

So what has been achieved? Well, basically Taiwanese fishing operations now have a larger area in which they can unsustainably plunder the resources of the sea relatively unimpeded. The Ma administration has a symbolic political and diplomatic victory that will cement its patron links with the politically powerful Fishing Associations which also functions as handy ‘evidence’ (for when elections roll around) that it is protecting ‘Taiwanese’ sovereignty.  The fact that China is not happy about the agreement works in the Government’s favour at this point too:

Meanwhile, China yesterday expressed concern about the new agreement.

“We are extremely concerned about Japan and Taiwan discussing and signing a fishing agreement,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hong Lei (洪磊) told a daily news briefing.

“We hope that Japan earnestly abide by its promises on the Taiwan issue and act cautiously and appropriately,” she said.

Note that they did not mention the Diayoutai Islands nor their own 1997 agreement with Japan nor even fishing rights of Chinese fishing vessels.  They only got bent out of shape about Taiwan acting as a sovereign nation by signing an agreement with another sovereign nation - thereby illustrating once again that Ma’s so called ‘Diplomatic Truce’ is a figment of only his imagination.

It also demonstrates that the Chinese well understand that this agreement is not a harbinger of ‘peace and stability in the East China Sea’ and does not alter the new status quo of China constantly testing and pushing at Japan’s maritime sovereignty and undermining Taiwan’s security around the Senkaku Islands.  In other words, this changes nothing on the ground with the exception that there will likely be even less fish in the sea. 

More layered analysis here from The View From Taiwan

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