Brief Introduction

Mainly including the territorial sovereignty, rights of judicial management, rights of marine resources exploitation, rights of the usage of the marine space, rights of jurisdiction of pollution, rights of marine scientific research etc., marine rights and interests refer to the lawful rights and interests for a country in the field of sea and ocean.

With the newly-developed result of the ¡°United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea¡± issued in 1982, the international law of the sea is the basic principles for lawful marine rights and interests.

The marine rights and interests of a nation can be divided as following: Rights and interests in inland sea and territorial sea; rights and interests in contiguous zone; rights and interests in continental shelf; rights and interests in high seas.

The problems existing with regard
to safeguarding the nation's marine
rights and interests in China.

According to ¡°United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea¡±, China enjoys the equal rights within the field of the inland sea, territorial sea and all rights provided in the convention about the Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf. However, for various military and economic reasons, presently, China only enjoys the rights in territorial sea. With regard to the new international law system of the sea, China is standing too far apart from the task of rights and interests provided by ¡°Convention¡± in the present world¡¯s new situation that both the range and the content of the national marine rights and interests have been extended.

Simultaneously, the task becomes much more arduous and complicated because of the Chinese geographical conditions.

1. No precise boundary of the sea area management

Among the eleven countries which are surrounded by China Seas, all but China have announced the sea area management systems and extended the rights of sea area by means of announcing the sea area, the continental shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone within 200 sea miles. Compared with neighboring countries, our country is at a disadvantageous position in the aspect of extending the rights of marine management. Concerning the proportion of sea area to land area, many neighbor countries, such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, are all many times higher than that of China. Therefore, when delimiting the precise boundary of sea area with these countries, we should adhere the policy of ¡°contesting every inch of land¡±.

2. the exploitation of natural resources within Chinese jurisdictional sea area, and the necessity of safeguarding our sovereignty.

Because of the affect of sealing island chains, in order to enter the world ocean, we have to pass such sea area as Chosun Haehyop, Osumi Kaikyo, and Okinawa islands, and such sea passageways as Taiwan Strait, Min Doluo Strait, Malacca Strait, Sund Strait. If a tense situation occur and the above mentioned important international sea-lanes be under control by the superpower neighbor countries and some relative neighbor countries, it would be difficult for China to enter the sea-lanes worldwide. With the development of the international economic and trade relations, the entrances to the ocean passageways hold more and more important positions.

The Measures of safeguarding the marine
rights and interests of our country

1. Strengthening the marine law system

The expansion and safeguarding of the marine rights and interests need legislative procedure. For those coastal nations, to stipulate all kinds of law and to guarantee to fulfill all kinds of rights and obligations defined in the Convention have been exactly and clearly demonstrated in the ¡°United Nations Convention of Law of the Sea¡±. For example, (1) Law of territorial sea, including the laws and regulations of innocent passage; (2) Law of Exclusive Economic Zone, including laws and regulations of conservation of living resources; (3) Law of continental shelf, including the laws and regulations of exploration and exploitation of continental shelf resources; (5) Laws and regulations of marine environmental protection, including the content of controlling the pollution of the sea from the native vessels and installations and protecting the sea environment from the pollution from the dumping rubbish,; (6) Laws and regulations of security of sea transportation.

2. Investigation of marine environmental resources and preparing for the delimiting the boundary and management.

3. Strengthening the law enforcement power in the field of national seas.