Chinese Islands in the Pacific

Despite all the other things in the news (U.S. race riots, Brexit, Donald versus Hillary versus Gary, new Prime Minister of England), China has also managed to squeeze its way onto the headlines. What have our friends in the Orient been up to lately? They have been creating several new islands in the South China Sea, and, pretty much claiming that this entitles them to almost complete control of that large patch of the Pacific. The present paper is dedicated to an attempt to shed libertarian light on these occurrences.

What, exactly has the People’s Republic been doing? They land on tiny atolls and reefs in the Spratly Archipelago. They dredge for sand and coral on the close-by ocean floor, build up these outcroppings, and, viola! we have a new artificial island perched in the sea. At the time of this writing, they have done this in some half dozen places off their coast, but, in many cases, far closer to its neighbors, such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. They have also come into conflict in this regard with South Korea and Japan. As a result of these constructions, they claim, first, they are part of China, proper, and, second, control over vast reaches of ocean is now theirs, given that the reach of a nation extends some 200 miles in terms of influence and 12 nautical miles as far as territorial jurisdiction is concerned.  With more and more such islands, each giving their owner claims to 22.2 kilometers, or 13.8 (land) miles on all four sides of them, this country has come into conflict with its neighbors in terms of not only the land itself but also oil reserves, fishing rights, and safe passage.

However, when it comes to control or ownership of the surrounding waters, matters are very different. Here, the Chinese will have to be a bit disappointed with our libertarian analysis. Remember, property rights in the South China Sea supposedly stems from that “natural law” finding that a nation owns 12 nautical miles from its shores into the ocean. But from whence does this stem? It is based upon the length of cannon shot. Earlier on, when such military devices could only shoot a distance of two miles, that was the accepted degree to which a county’s “ownership” of the ocean extended. When this weaponry became more powerful, we moved up to 12 miles. Nowadays, in an era of ICBMs, this clearly would not work. But even in its heyday, still, this criterion has nothing whatsoever to do with libertarian homesteading theory, certainly not as laid out by stalwarts of our philosophy such as John Locke, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Hoppe. No. If we are to put this on a libertarian footing, then only those who homestead the actual water get to own that resource, and China has done no more of that than anyone else.

For a more detailed notion of how this process might function, the interested reading may wish to refer to this book of mine:

Block, Walter E. and Peter Lothian Nelson. 2015. Water Capitalism: The Case for Privatizing Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Aquifers. New York City, N.Y.: Lexington Books; Rowman and Littlefield. It will be coming out soon in paperback, at a fraction of its present price.

To conclude: The Chinese are the legitimate owner of their islands, but only of those small specks of land. Of nothing else.

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