Taiwan’s fishermen have been awash in a sea of trouble recently, amid their involvement in territorial disputes to the north and south of the nation.
First there was the spat with Japan over fishing rights and sovereignty vis-a-vis the Diaoyutais (釣魚台), which Tokyo calls the Senkakus. That conflict had barely been settled when the shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman occurred near the Philippines, where Taiwan’s claimed exclusive economic zone overlaps with that claimed by Manila.