There’s even a subsidy specifically for Chinese fishermen to work the waters around the contested Spratly Islands, more than 500 miles to the south of China’s southernmost point (a port on the island of Hainan).
It has consolidated the coast guard, militarized fishing fleets, and promoted its subsidies for fuel and better boats.
Meanwhile China began bolstering its claims by aggressively supporting its fishermen. When coastal waters became depleted, many fishermen were forced to venture beyond national limits and into disputed areas to make a living. “We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of species that will collapse, and they could collapse relatively quickly, one after another.” Fishermen on the Front Lines “What we’re looking at is potentially one of the world’s worst fisheries collapses ever,” says John McManus, a marine ecologist at the Rosenstiel School at the University of Miami who studies reefs in the region. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION OCEANASIA 2015, REPORTED AND ESTIMATED UNREPORTED CATCHES RANDALL AND LIM, 2000 CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES MONICA SERRANO, NG STAFF SOURCES: COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS U.S. Every other country in the South China Sea dispute, including the Philippines, bases its claims on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the international pact that defines maritime zones and first went into effect in 1994. It has demarcated a broad, U-shaped area that it says has historically been China’s but that under international law includes the waters of other nations (see map). But after decades of free-for-all fishing, stocks are dwindling, threatening the food security and economic growth of the rapidly developing nations that rely on them.Ĭhina asserts a right to almost the entire sea. The South China Sea is one of the world’s most important fisheries, employing more than 3.7 million people and generating billions of dollars every year. That’s why the dispute has commanded worldwide attention.Īnother serious yet less publicized threat looms: overfishing. If a military conflict were to break out, it could involve two world powers, China and the United States, a longtime ally of the Philippines. Of those, seven-Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam-have competing claims. JON BOWEN, NG STAFF SOURCE: CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES That’s because about eight years ago China took a more assertive posture in the region, ramping up its intimidation of other fishermen and eventually building military installations on contested islands. He’s one of the more than 320,000 fishermen in the Philippines who have traditionally made their livelihood from the South China Sea-and one of a growing number who are now fishing in other, less ecologically rich waters. Tubo lives in Puerto Princesa, a city of 255,000 on Palawan, a long finger of an island that faces the Sulu Sea and the Philippine archipelago to the east and the contested South China Sea to the west. Glancing at his wife, Leah, and the other children, he says, “It’s just chance, whether or not we can feed our families now.” Worn T-shirts and shorts flutter on clotheslines behind them. One of his four kids wraps an arm around his leg. Tubo sits on a wooden bench in front of his home, which is perched on stilts above the bay.
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