The 28th meeting of the Standing Committee of China’s 13th National People’s Congress recently passed the newly revised Maritime Traffic Safety Law. Taiwan scholars analyze that the Chinese Communist Party is using the law to expand the space for conflicts in gray areas, and countries are worried that it will become an untimely bomb for maritime conflicts.
The official website of the Chinese National People’s Congress announced that the newly revised “Maritime Traffic Safety Law” will come into force on September 1 this year, with 10 chapters and 122 articles. According to a report by the Central News Agency, the Chinese Communist Party’s revision of the maritime traffic safety law is said by scholars to expand the gray conflict zone.
According to Article 53 of the new Maritime Traffic Safety Law, the competent transportation department of the State Council of the Communist Party of China, in order to maintain the safety of maritime traffic and protect the marine environment, may, in conjunction with the relevant competent departments, take necessary measures to prevent and stop the non-harmless passage of foreign vessels in the territorial waters. Article 54 stipulates that specific ships shall report to the Chinese maritime administration when entering or leaving the Chinese territorial sea, and shall be in possession of relevant certificates and subject to instructions and supervision.
Article 92 stipulates that if a foreign nationality ship may threaten the safety of China’s internal waters or territorial sea, the maritime administration has the right to order it to leave. If a foreign ship violates Chinese laws and administrative regulations on maritime traffic safety or prevention of ship pollution, the maritime administration may exercise the “right of hot pursuit” according to law. The “right of hot pursuit” refers to the right of the competent authorities of the coastal state to chase a foreign ship to the high seas, arrest it and bring it back to its port for interrogation, if they have sufficient reason to believe that it has violated the provisions of its own laws.
According to the report issued by the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People’s Congress of China on the results of the deliberations on the “Draft Revision of the Maritime Traffic Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China”, as the “Maritime Police Law” and the “Marine Environmental Protection Law” have also used the term “jurisdiction”. The “Coastal Waters” in the “Maritime Traffic Safety Law” was amended to “Jurisdictional Waters” because the expression “Jurisdictional Waters” was also used in the “Maritime Police Law” and the “Marine Environmental Protection Law”. “Jurisdictional sea area”.
According to an analysis by Su Ziyun, director of the Institute of Military Strategy and Industry at Taiwan’s National Defense Security Research Institute, in a telephonic interview with the Central News Agency on Friday, both the Maritime Traffic Safety Law and the Maritime Police Law are tools of the Chinese Communist Party’s administrative declaration to safeguard national sovereignty and development interests. The Chinese Communist Party uses the law to expand the space for gray conflicts, which makes countries worry that it will become an untimely bomb for maritime conflicts. Su Ziyun pointed out that the CCP’s “jurisdictional waters” refers to “the internal waters, territorial waters, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, and other waters under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China,” which is a broader definition than “coastal waters. The definition is broader than that of “coastal waters” and is an expanded application of official documents and legal terms. However, the Chinese Communist Party has built many artificial islands in the South China Sea and claimed that the surrounding 12 nautical miles are all territorial waters, forming a mandatory exclusivity, giving the Chinese Communist Party a pretext to enforce the law when countries carry out their freedom of navigation missions, “which is the part of the international community that is more confusing.
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