The Bashi Channel is a waterway between Mavulis Island of the Batanes Islands, Philippines and Orchid Island of Taiwan. It is a part of the Luzon Strait, with the Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the east, and the South China Sea to the west. It is characterized by windy storms during the rainy period, which lasts from June to December.

Etymology

The name "Bashi" (also spelled variously as "Basi", "Bassi", "Basy", "Baschi", "Bachi", "Bashee", and "Bachee") is from an old European name of the Batanes Islands given by the English explorer William Dampier in 1687. The name is derived from the indigenous alcoholic drink basi of the people of Northern Luzon, specifically the drink palek of the native Ivatan people of the Batanes islands.

Territorial dispute

The Bashi Channel has been disputed by Taiwan, and recently by China, due to the Treaty of Paris, entered into in 1898 by Spain and the United States, stating that "the northernmost part of Philippine territory ceded by Spain to the US ends at the 20th parallel, or south of the Balintang Channel." The Bashi Channel was not included here because original treaties signed in this period of time did not use latitude and longitude.

Despite these claims, the Batanes Islands, from which the Bashi Channel had been named after, had been part of the Philippines since 1686, when Spanish first claimed the islands for the Spanish Empire. It has been consistently included in Spanish maps (including the 1899 Atlas de Filipinas). During the American colonial period of the Philippines it was under the governorship of Otto Scheerer. By virtue of state succession and habitation, the Philippines has sovereignty of the islands, through an unbroken chain of possession from Spain to the United States and to the Philippines. Aside from the brief invasion of Imperial Japan in World War 2, neither Taiwan or China has ever exercised control of the islands or the channel.

Purpose

The Bashi Channel is an important passage for military operations. The Philippines and Taiwan dispute the ownership of the waters because both sides say the region lies within of their shores. The channel is also significant to communication networks. Many of the undersea communication cables that carry data and telephone traffic between Asian countries pass through the Bashi Channel, making it a major potential point of failure for the Internet. In December 2006, a magnitude 6.7 submarine earthquake cut several undersea cables at the same time, causing a significant communications bottleneck that lasted several weeks.

See also

• 2006 Hengchun earthquake

• Cape Eluanbi

• Qixingyan (Taiwan)

References

External links