Image credit: An Indigenous resident gathering seaweed on the northern coast of Taiwan. Photo by Shi Yeu Nga.
The sea is never simply its edge. In Taiwan, it is where people fish and work, where goods and travellers circulate, and where questions of jurisdiction and sovereignty repeatedly arise. Coast guard encounters and competing claims over maritime jurisdiction have drawn attention to the waters surrounding Taiwan, while debates within the fishing industry have raised a different set of questions about migrant labour, recruitment costs, declining catches and the future of coastal livelihoods. This special issue brings together viewpoints on Taiwan’s maritime borders, and what emerges is a picture of the maritime border not as a mere territorial line, but as something lived and continually made through movement, regulation, weather, historical memory, and everyday relationships with the ocean.
Shao-Yun Chang, Vanny El Rahman and Beatrice Zani begin from Taiwan’s fishing ports, examining the effects of the new zero-fee recruitment policy on vessel owners and migrant fishers. Their two-part contribution draws attention to an industry that depends heavily on workers from Southeast Asia: by the end of 2025, more than 32,000 foreign crew members were working across Taiwan’s coastal and distant-water fleets. Following recruitment between Taiwan and Indonesia, the fishing vessel is only one point within a much wider economy of brokers, agencies, fees, debt and aspirations for mobility. They question: what happens when much-needed labour protections enter an industry already struggling with shrinking catches, rising operating costs and an ageing generation of vessel owners?
The question of borders looks different from Kinmen. Chengyu Yang describes the island as a “breathing infrastructure,” continually receiving and releasing passengers travelling between Taiwan and China. When ferries, flights and roads move in rhythm, travellers pass quickly through. Fog, typhoons and transport disruptions, however, can interrupt that rhythm and leave hundreds of people stranded. Yang’s account brings the discussion of cross-Strait connectivity down to the scale of everyday island life, where residents and transit passengers compete for the same limited transport capacity.
Ming-hui Tang shifts from labour at sea to the politics of jurisdiction. Taking Chinese coast guard patrols east of Taiwan as his starting point, Tang argues that maritime pressure does not operate through vessels alone. Claims about law enforcement, fishery protection and sovereignty also circulate through state media, legal arguments and public narratives. Looking beyond Taiwan to the Philippines and Japan, he places these incidents within a wider regional contest over who has the authority to describe, document and ultimately define what is happening at sea.
Eric Siu-kei Cheng takes us further south and east, to Taitung and Green Island, where the maritime question becomes one of education, memory and cultural inheritance. Through teaching on fisheries, aquaculture, Indigenous food knowledge, environmental conservation, and White Terror heritage, Cheng asks what it means for students to learn to see Taiwan through its ocean and to recognise that becoming more attentive to the sea cannot be reduced to maritime security alone. It also means recognising the communities, ecological practices and difficult histories that have long shaped life along Taiwan’s coasts.
Staying Afloat in the Wave of Zero-Fees Policies: Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and its Impact on the Taiwanese Fishing Industry – Part I Written by Shao-Yun Chang, Vanny El Rahman, and Beatrice Zani
Staying Afloat in the Wave of Zero-Fees Policies: Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and its Impact on the Taiwanese Fishing Industry – Part II Written by Shao-Yun Chang, Vanny El Rahman, and Beatrice Zani
Islands as Breathing Infrastructures: Why Are More Visitors Making Livelihoods More Difficult in Today’s Kinmen? Written by Chengyu Yang
China’s Maritime Pressure Spans Sea and Screen: Taiwan Needs a Regional Evidence Network Written by Ming-hui Tang
Teaching Maritime Culture and History in Eastern Taiwan Written by Eric Siu-kei Cheng