Abstract: China has a long coastline of approximately 18,000 kilometers and hence an extensive continental shelf as well as an EEZ. Its coastline is said to be the tenth longest coastline in the world. The total sea area in the China Seas is about 4.7 million square kilometers. Despite these advantageous circumstances in geography, China failed to become a maritime power like Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and the UK. So it remained a land power for a long time except when Zheng He, the great seafarer in Chinese history, led the greatest ocean-going fleets of the world of that time, sailing to the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the years of 1405–1433. As a result, China suffered foreign invasions several times from the sea, being defeated in the Opium War as well as at the Sino–Japanese War in the nineteenth century.
It is only natural that China has opposed the traditional freedom of the seas claimed by the maritime powers since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. When China took part in all the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) sessions, its policy and position on the major issues were almost identical with those of the developing countries: creeping jurisdiction policy. With regard to the breadth of the territorial sea, China supported and complied with the 12 nautical mile territorial sea. It has established straight baselines since it proclaimed territorial sea in 1958. Also it argued that several disputed islands were its territories by the 1958 declaration as well as by the 1992 law on the territorial sea. China’s policy on the law of the sea, however, might change dramatically in accordance with the general trends of the law of the sea. China ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) in 1996, 14 years after signing it. Thus China has committed itself to developing its domestic laws and regulations on maritime affairs in accordance with the 1982 LOSC and to meet the demands and changed circumstances in the use of oceans. Given the foregoing, this paper attempts to provide China’s policy on the territorial sea in the context of its change in the law of the sea. To be more specific, it examines relevant issues on the breadth of the territorial sea, baselines as well as innocent passage of warships in terms of U.S.–China relations, with special emphasis on the comparison with Korea’s relevant policy on the law of the sea.
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