Taiwan and the Philippines are arguing again about fishing rights in overlapping waters of the Western Pacific. But the dispute that netted three Taiwanese boats in the 250-kilometer-wide Luzon Strait last month will stop short of a flare-up like that of two years ago when Manila’s coast guard shot a Taiwanese fisherman to death at sea. Taiwan and the Philippines want to stand together now in resisting a common threat. That’s China, Asia’s economic giant that is asserting itself in the air, seas and islets in between, sometimes thousands of kilometers off its south and east coasts. Taiwan and the Philippines may see resistance of China as an incentive to avoid their own spats. The likely outcome: an agreement on shared usage of the Luzon Strait.

At stake ultimately is access to gas, oil and abundant fisheries in the 3.5 million-square-kilometer (1.4 million square-mile) South China Sea.

That Taiwan-Philippine agreement would bring the two sides closer “in the sense that it stabilizes the border between the two,” says Ramon Casiple, Manila-based political commentator and executive director of the Philippine advocacy group Institute for Political and Electoral Reform. “Strategically speaking, there is little to be gained by both sides in making the issue bigger,” he says. “I would expect the fisheries agreement negotiations to be concluded in the near term.”

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2015/06/07/3177/