The Study on the Legal Regime and Practice for Taiwan’s Law of the Sea under UNCLOS

• Main Authors: YIH-GANG HWU, 胡意剛
• Other Authors: Lih-Torng Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/07623242393197457810

碩士 === 國立臺灣海洋大學 === 海洋法律研究所 === 94 === “The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea” became effective after November 16, 1994. Thereafter all nations have made great efforts to develop maritime affair and strove for the marine resources. Our country announced “Law of Chinese Territorial Waters and Contiguous Zone” in January 21, 1998, and, on February 10, 1999 announced “The first batch of territorial waters baseline, the territorial waters and the external line of the contiguous area in the Republic of China”. The internal waters, territorial sea, and the contiguous zone is about 106,804 square kilometers in area (not to contain Jinmen, Mazu and the Nansha Islands) , and is approximately 2.97 times of territory, from the basic point “a Senkaku Islands row islet” to the northern 200 nautical miles, the exclusive economical sea area may reach to approximately north latitude for 29 ' 18 '', to east 200 nautical miles to east longitude 128 ' 20 '', if established provisionally holds the normal computation, the area amounts to 548,898 square kilometers approximately. Furthermore, sea area of our country, besides the main island and the off-shore islands, still included the Taungtha and the Nansha Islands. The Dongsha Islands is apart from Gaoxiong 240 nautical miles (approximately 438 kilometers), the Nansha Islands are farther amount to 860 nautical miles (approximately 1,600 kilometers), i.e. the territory of our country’s blue water is extremely broad. Recently the Taiwan peripheral sea area circumstance was very complex, overlapped with the neighbor countries; hence the sea sovereignty and the resources dispute was unceasing. All these are closely related to the international law of the sea and the national law execution. For example, the competition for Chunxiao oil field turning white-hot; the disputation of the Senkaku Islands sovereignty; the Chinese exploration ships haunting the peripheral sea area; the mainland fishing boats crossing the border; Taungtha sea area ecology destruction; the disputations in South China Sea; Taiwan sea area being overlapped with Japan and Philippines and causing serious dispute frequently. The two sea fundamental laws has been announced and executed for 7 years, during which the international and domestic sea affairs has happened unceasingly, revealing the influence of maritime affair to be increasing day by day. At this critical moment, it is necessary to inspect how the domestic legal system corresponds. This discusses mainly divides into eight chapters: Chapter one discusses the regulations about territorial waters and the contiguous zone in the international conventions, covering historical development, scope, boundary marking system, jurisdiction and the disputation settlement. Chapter two discusses our country territorial waters legal system, delimits from the baseline supposes, marks off principle, the jurisdiction connotation, innocent passage system, and practice of the correlation legal system. Chapter three discusses the legal system of our contiguous zone, covering jurisdiction connotation, the related historical relics and the vestige ownership, tightly pursue and boarding, and the legal system and the practice. Chapter four discusses the regulations about Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf in the international conventions, covering historical development, scope, boundary marking system, jurisdiction and the disputation settlement. Chapter five discusses the legal system of our Exclusive Economic Zone, covering marks off principle, the jurisdiction connotation, the maritime science and technology, the environmental pollution, the provisional law enforcement line, and the practice of legal system. Chapter six discusses the legal system of our continental shelf, covering the marks off principle, the jurisdiction connotation, and he practice of legal system. Chapter seven discusses cross-strait people relationship regulation and its bylaw about the special legislation of sea area standard, from legislation background and evolution, legal status, applicable scope to legal system and practice. Chapter eight discusses the future revision direction of our two sea area laws, from the present amendment to the other correlation legal systems, for the purpose of refining our country sea law to coincide with international environment, and furthermore striving for our country sea rights and interests. Keyword: Internal Waters, Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, Exclusive Economic Zone, Continental Shelf, Jurisdiction, equitable principle, provisional arrangement, equidistance principle, special circumstance, agreement, Normal baseline, Straight baseline