The sovereignty fraud: Taipei is now cheering its own carve-up - as long as it annoys Beijing

If you understand this story, you’ve understood much there is to understand about geopolitics around Taiwan.

Here is what happened.

So recently, May 28th, Japanese PM Takaichi and Philippines President Marcos Jr. issued a joint statement announcing they would open negotiations to delimit their overlapping EEZ and continental-shelf boundaries.

As a reminder, an EEZ - Exclusive Economic Zone - is the area extending 200 nautical miles from a country's coastline within which that country has exclusive rights to exploit all natural resources.

And, famously, EEZs in East and South East Asia pretty much all overlap each others. In this instance not only does Japan’s EEZ overlap the Philippines’ (hence the negotiations) but they also overlap with China's, both from Beijing’s standpoint and Taipei’s, as the EEZs in question are less than 200 nautical miles from Taiwan’s coastline.

Japan's and the Philippines' overlapping EEZ claims - note how both extend into the waters east of Taiwan. Source: Nikkei Asia

As such, unsurprisingly, soon after Japan and the Philippines’ announcement that they were opening these negotiations, Beijing objected loudly, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserting China enjoys sovereign rights there under its domestic law. As they wrote in the statement:

The area the two countries announced they will delimit is east of China's Taiwan island. According to China's domestic law and international law including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China has exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in this area.

So far, all pretty expected.