The Concept Of Ocean Land From The Perspective Of International Law

With the 《United Nations Convention on the law of the sea》cominginto effect, marine interests and the waters in which our country hasjurisdiction expand. Some new concepts have been developed; ocean landor blue land is one of them. The formation of ocean land has many reasons,such as the development of the international law of the sea, the wakingof the marine consciousness, the realistic ocean situation. The processof the ocean land concept form produce to the development reflects thatthe understanding of the ocean deepens and marine practice developscontinuously.If we want to study the connotation of ocean land from the perspectiveof the international law, we have to separate territories from landcorrectly, and then define the proper meaning of land. In the fact theland is a national development space or resources. As the subordinateconcept of land, ocean land refers to a kind of marine resources and marinespace which is determined by the international or domestic law, and inwhich a coastal state has not complete sovereign or exclusive rights.A complete concept is a unified whole consisting of connotation andextension. Extension of ocean land is to explore the relation of the watersand ocean land systematically. There are some different views about theextension of the ocean land, the wide extension, the middle and the narrowextension. Most of the people advocate that we should take the territorialsea and exclusive economic zone into our ocean land range. Inland sea isa part of the internal waters, but because it is not the sea from theperspective of international law, so it is not our ocean land. Thecontiguous zone alone can not constitute a country’s ocean land, but thispart of the sea may be deemed our ocean land basing on the overlap causeswith the exclusive economic zone. The international seabed area is thecommon heritage of human property; therefore it can not be deemed our oceanland. The mining area in international seabed area can not be regardedas our ocean land.A reasonable definition of ocean land and an appropriate ocean landconcept can help us maintain our maritime rights and interests, so thatwe can fulfill China’s sea power dream.