Opinion | China and Indonesia can find common ground over a shared interest: fishing
- Chinese vessels’ activities off Borneo relate not to Indonesia’s Natuna Islands but to the Spratly archipelago, claimed by Beijing
- The potential mutual benefit to be gained from enhanced fishing governance offers a solution
For a long time, Chinese fishers have continuously carried out their activities in the sea’s southwestern fishing grounds, an area with a flat seabed, few reefs and shallow waters. At the same time, their country’s maritime forces have carried out activities for the protection of that fishing and for exercising the jurisdiction over waters that it claims.
But the two countries’ differences are not very prominent relative to the overall context of the complex and difficult disputes that continue to develop in the South China Sea, and have not caused significant interference in the overall bilateral relations and maritime cooperation between China and Indonesia.
The occurrence of fishery disputes between countries is relatively common, and these disagreements can normally be managed and resolved through dialogue and negotiation. If they cannot be resolved immediately, some cooperative transitional arrangements can be made for a certain degree of temporary mitigation of such disputes.
In fact, neither China nor Indonesia lacks experience of handling similar situations successfully, and there have been many cases in the region and internationally that can be used for reference.