Discussion Onthe Application Of Straight Baseline In China’s Mid-ocean Islands

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) lays down the rules of normal baseline, straight baselines and archipelagic baselines, and doesn’t specify how to apply the baselines of the territorial in their mid-ocean islands for coastal states, which is the key to solving the problem of maritime delimitation between the current coastal States. Currently, India, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Ecuador and other coastal countries have successfully applied straight baselines in their mid-ocean islands. They made domestic legislation and signed border agreements with relevant countries and through other ways to getother relevant countries’ recognize and legal convictions, and these practices are gradually developed into customary international law, whichprovides a very important reference for China to apply the straight baselines in its mid-ocean islands. I individually call this kind of particular straight baseline as “mid-ocean baseline”. There are currently four options applicablefor the specific operation of mid-ocean baseline: Monolithic type, Subregional type, Sporadic type, and the mix of Subregional type and Sporadic type. I support the last one with operational considerations.Based on literature and historical research, comparative analysisof some coastal states’ practices and other countries’ attitude, this paper tries to explore how to apply the straight baseline system in China’s mid-ocean islands, as Diaoyu Islands and Spratly Islands for example.