TW-MainlandCN marine border for isls on the west side of the TW strait

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-11-26T08:45:01.000Z

As you might know, the government of Republic of China (Taiwan) that are currently located on Taipei is currently governing some islands inside the Taiwan Strait, including a number of islands that are on the western side of the Taiwan Strait Median Line.
And then, because of some sort of unwritten and unspoken understanding between the two government across the strait, the government of Taiwan still haven’t made any official announcement about the marine border of those islands on the western side of the Taiwan strait yet. Instead, the government of People’s Republic of China with its capital at Beijing have announced its territorial sea by using some of those Taiwanese islands as their base points.
Now the problem is, how to map them in OSM?
Currently the border for those islands are like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3777250 , some islands are currently mapped by using the island itself as border, some islands like Kinmen have also include a bit surrounding water (and the inclusion criteria seems to be arbitrary - please tell me if it is actually following some other sources), and then there are apparently some islets that are excluded (see next paragraph)
And then I found out that there is a document from Taiwanese government that detail zoned that exercise control and restrict/forbid non-Taiwanese subjects from entering: https://www.cpami.gov.tw/kids/filesys/file/chinese/new5/0930001493.pdf .
However, when I tries to map them onto JOSM, there seems to be a few problems. First, look at this image I have taken from JOSM around the Matsu area after attempted mapping those coordinates into it and then using the Taiwan village border map as base map: https://i.imgur.com/DSdT3Qx.png .
From the image you can see the orange dotted lines are existing border for these islands in OSM, whereas the grey lines enclose the area that correspond to the “restricted zones” in the document that I just linked.
As you can see, 1. there are a few small blue islets that are part of the Taiwan administrative map and thus supposedly part of Taiwan that are not included in part of the current OSM border for those Taiwanese islands. They should be included into Taiwan, but then how to map them and how to define relationship for them?
2. Those islets, and also a few others, are not in the restricted zone implement by Taiwanese authority either, despite those islands seems to be controlled by Taiwan. What does that mean to those islands?
3. If we look at Taiwan main island, and also description about implementation of the rules, it seems like those “restricted zone” are more like contiguous zone while “forbidden zone” is more like territorial sea itself, however in this case as those islands are directly bordering each other, and that supposedly those restricted zone are also control by Taiwanese authority, which line should be used as border between the two entities?
4. How can I represent these zones via relation? Strictly speaking they do not belongs to “ROC Fujian province” or any lower level district government, instead they are zones established by central government agencies.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-05T10:52:40.000Z

See: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/65184680

escada · 2018-12-05T11:15:12.000Z

there is a document on how we currently handle disputed borders: http://www.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf

There are some discussions on the tagging of disputed borders, see the tagging mailing list threads:

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2018-November/040858.html
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2018-November/041109.html
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2018-November/041122.html

I think is it better to avoid editing borders of countries without talking to the communities in all involved countries. Especially changing borders based on documents from one of the 2 claiming parties.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-05T12:40:59.000Z

These zones can be said as “disputed territory”, however they are just as disputed as the entire Taiwan or even the entire mainland China. I am not aware of any particular actions or claims that China would be making that made these islands/zones any more disputed than the entire area of Taiwan.
The zones I have added are technically not any form of official border. They are “restricted area” patrolled by the government of Taiwan in a way similar to contiguous zone for other more common area despite they themselves are not considered as such zone. Searching name of those area on Google can also yield reports of their law enforcement in these zones against Chinese civilian entered these area for economic purposes, and that there are also no opposition by Chinese government nor media when those news are reported by Chinese (mainland) media. Therefore it does not seems like there are really active dispute against the zone controlled by Taiwanese authority right now.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-05T13:34:29.000Z

Ah and also, it would be nice if I can get a chance to discuss with OSM community in Taiwan as well as Mainland China, however I am not sure how to get in touch with them, for instance my previous mail to the TW mailing list seems to be automatically rejected because I didn’t sign up for it, and then I don’t have the software used by Mainland Chinese community for communication either.

escada · 2018-12-06T08:15:20.000Z

If you would have read the proposals made in the links I added before, you would have seen that the whole of Taiwan is indeed a disputed area. Some of the examples show how it (Taiwan) should be mapped with the disputed area proposals.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-06T12:46:14.000Z

escada:

If you would have read the proposals made in the links I added before, you would have seen that the whole of Taiwan is indeed a disputed area. Some of the examples show how it (Taiwan) should be mapped with the disputed area proposals.

If you are talking about any and all claims then yes you can say Taiwan is claimed by China and China is claimed by Taiwan, and that doesn’t help the situation at all.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-07T17:51:39.000Z

Actually, come to think of it, because that maritime zone is only active under the “cross strait citizens relationship act” and is only effective against subjects of mainland China, does that mean it should use admin_level=3? But that would seems much more controversial than even what I have done there.

This_Is_A_Display_Name_Desu · 2018-12-30T17:22:53.000Z

Note: According to a message on the Taiwan mailing list https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-tw/2018-December/001373.html , the previous border was merely drawn “according to feeling” and thus the mapper there have retagged these area as the border of Taiwan