Written by Jess Marinaccio.
Image credit: “Aerial oblique view of HMNZS Taupo with the Taiwanese squid fishing boat Kin Nan, which was arrested after illegally fishing in the New Zealand economic zone. Taken from a No. 5 Squadron Orion. No. 75 Squadron Skyhawk fired live rounds across the bow to stop this fishing boat.” Source: RNZAF Official, license: CC BY-NC 3.0 NZ.
For clarity, this article uses “ROC” to denote the Republic of China government and “ROC/Taiwan” to designate the geographical territory of Taiwan under ROC administration.
After the Republic of China (ROC) government relocated to the island of Taiwan in 1949, fisheries became a critical industry that ensured economic development and sustenance for the population. Despite efforts under the ROC’s martial law period (1949-1987) to control the movement of fishing vessels so that fishers would not interact with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or Chinese communists, fishing boats were extremely difficult to control, and vessels implicated the ROC in disputes over illegal fishing with Australia, New Zealand, and other nations in the Pacific Ocean. The ROC enacted numerous laws to curb illegal fishing, but they were largely ineffective.
Due to illegal-fishing incidents, fishing vessels created contentious relationships between the ROC and Pacific countries that recognised it, as well as those that did not, impacting the ROC’s diplomatic history. In this case, “diplomatic history” and “diplomacy” refer not simply to the history of the ROC forming official relationships with countries in the Pacific Ocean but also the manner in which fisheries incidents required continued interaction between the ROC and Pacific countries even after Pacific nations had broken relations with and attempted to disengage from the ROC. This is similar to the “hybrid diplomatic practices” Bouris and Fernández-Molina (2018) refer to when they discuss how contested states can be recognised in unstructured, social, and relational ways through unofficial diplomatic practices–like negotiating for the release of detained fishing boats–even when legal recognition is absent.
Yet, fishers working on fishing vessels during the martial law period by no means envisioned these vessels as diplomatic tools. Instead, fishing boats were a source of income and, sometimes, a way of permanently leaving the ROC/Taiwan, which was difficult to do at the time. For example, in the 1960s, the ROC established a fishing base in American Samoa, a US territory in the Pacific, almost 9,000 kilometres away from Taiwan. The problem of fishers leaving their boats and taking up residence in American Samoa became so severe that, by 1974, at least 34 fishers had been imprisoned in American Samoa for violating immigration laws. Although some fishers, who left their jobs after experiencing problems on the fishing boats that employed them or realising they were not suited for life on the sea, stayed in American Samoa only temporarily until they could earn enough money to return to the ROC/Taiwan, others took up long-term residence.
A case from New Zealand in 1976 further demonstrates that, for some living in the ROC/Taiwan during martial law, accepting work on a fishing boat was one of the only strategies they could think of for building a new life outside of the ROC/Taiwan. I explore this case in my current research project, “Disputes at Port, Disputes at Sea: Taiwan-Pacific Diplomacy and Legal and Illegal Fishing in the 20th-Century Pacific”. As most materials about this case are contained in the Diplomatic Archives at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica (中央研究院近代史研究所), they cannot be included as source hyperlinks in the description below.
In March 1976, the fishing vessel Jinnan No. 1 (金南一號) was detained for illegal fishing in New Zealand waters (the English name for the vessel is also written as Kin Nan). The arrest of the Jinnan represented a major show of force by the New Zealand government. When the Jinnan had first been caught and ordered to follow a New Zealand patrol boat back to port, it had instead headed away from New Zealand toward international waters. The Jinnan was verbally requested to stop 14 times and was also shot at, but continued to flee. Finally, two Skyhawk strike aircraft from the New Zealand air force “shot 53 rounds of cannon fire, turning the sea around the Kin Nan [Jinnan No. 1] into a boiling cauldron” and forcing the Jinnan to finally head to port at Taranaki in northwest New Zealand.
The Jinnan incident highlights how illegal fishing became intertwined with the ROC’s diplomacy in the Pacific. New Zealand had already severed ties with the ROC and recognised the PRC when the Jinnan incident occurred, but the incident necessitated that the New Zealand government engage with the ROC–a country it did not recognise–to deal with the case, which led to the eventual release of the Jinnan and the return of most of its crew to the ROC/Taiwan. The incident also shows how efforts to control illegal fishing in the Pacific gave rise to an increasingly militarised region. Yet, what happened during the boat’s trial in New Zealand, which is contained in Academia Sinica’s Diplomatic Archives, also clearly demonstrates how fisheries had become a symbol of mobility for those living in the ROC/Taiwan at the time.
During the trial of the Jinnan, the boat’s cook, Zhang Songhuo (張松火), suddenly burst into the court, shouting, “Help!” He passed a note written in Chinese to a New Zealand sailor who happened to be sitting in the courtroom. The ROC’s de facto representation in New Zealand at the time, the East Asian Trade Centre in Auckland, was able to obtain the note and discovered that Zhang had asked New Zealand for political asylum. Zhang also refused to let anyone representing the ROC near him and would not return to the Jinnan.
At the time, the ROC’s representative in New Zealand lobbied against Zhang’s political asylum request, portraying Zhang as psychologically disturbed, a gambler whom his family had abandoned, and a loner who did not get along with the Jinnan crew. The Taiwan Garrison Command pushed for Zhang’s rapid repatriation and requested that the ROC media refrain from reporting on Zhang. Yet, in a 1977 interview, Zhang explained that he desired to leave the ROC/Taiwan not because of psychological distress or family discord but, instead, because of his impoverished upbringing and what he saw as the unjust treatment of the lower classes in the ROC/Taiwan. To realise his desire, Zhang spent NT$2,000 (equivalent to approximately NT$7,657 in 2025) to obtain a seafarer’s identity document (船員證) so he could get work on a fishing vessel and leave the ROC/Taiwan.
When, in May 1976, it became apparent that Zhang would not be allowed to stay in New Zealand, he attempted suicide and then went on a hunger strike. During that time, he was also able to contact the PRC embassy in New Zealand and arrange for asylum in mainland China. Much to the ROC’s chagrin, the New Zealand government was more than willing to let Zhang leave for the PRC because it meant that Zhang had finally chosen a destination that would accept him and did not have to be forcibly returned to the ROC/Taiwan. According to Zhang’s account, he had attempted to contact the PRC embassy since first requesting asylum in New Zealand in April 1976, but many of his requests had been denied or delayed until after his suicide attempt.
Although there is little information about Zhang’s life after he was granted asylum in the PRC, based on his 1977 interview, he eventually settled in Changde (常德) city in Hunan province, where he worked in a textile factory. Like fishers who left their boats to start a new life in American Samoa, Zhang saw employment on a fishing vessel as a strategy for leaving the ROC/Taiwan. While cases of this nature disrupted cross-border immigration and humanitarian law at the government level, necessitating diplomatic manoeuvres and engagement between the ROC and countries such as New Zealand and the US, fishers like Zhang and those in American Samoa used fisheries as a means of outward movement, even if fishing boats were often unsafe work environments.
In making working-class groups mobile even during periods when the ROC government might have hoped to limit movement and exert far-reaching control, fisheries became an uncontrollable and uncontained industry. For the ROC, fisheries shaped the direction of diplomatic engagement in ways the government did not expect–frequently requiring the government’s involvement in cross-border conflicts that were not of its own making–while also providing pathways for individual movement away from the ROC/Taiwan (sometimes permanently). Fisheries developed as one space where non-governmental and unofficial forces pushed back against and undermined the state.
This research was completed with support from the Taiwan Fellowship Program.
Dr Jess Marinaccio was most recently employed as an Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She also previously worked for Tuvalu’s Foreign Affairs Department as well as its Embassy in Taiwan. Dr Marinaccio researches Pacific understandings of diplomacy and Taiwan’s Pacific fisheries and has published in journals including The Contemporary Pacific, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, The Journal of Pacific History, The Journal of Global History, Nations and Nationalism, and Asia Pacific Viewpoint.
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out the author’s other article on Taiwan Insight.
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