Maritime Confidence Building Measures Across the Taiwan Strait: Technical Collaboration for Human Security at Sea

The concept of confidence building measures (CBMs) has been developed for decades to reduce military tensions and political uncertainties in the flash points of regional security concerns. Nevertheless, the perceptions of state-centered and military-based requirements for CBMs have hampered both Beijing and Taipei from taking proactive initiatives across the Taiwan Strait in the past. Increasing economic interdependence and social interactions since the 1990s have led both sides to establish joint efforts for ensuring peace for the prosperity and welfare of people across the Taiwan Strait. This study revisits the concept of CBMs in the context of cross-Strait tensions and suggests technical collaborations for human security at sea to tackle the fundamental difficulties in the initial stage of developing CBMs. A pragmatic framework for cross-Strait maritime CBMs, centered on a technical collaboration laboratory (TCL) model, is presented as a building block for security. Technologies could support cooperative measures, including cooperative detection of and collaborative response to human security threats at sea.