Our hardworking fishermen vs. their devious poachers. this is unironically the way its portrayed too, salmon prices collapsed this year to record lows due to decreasing demand and surplus of frozen fish leftover from last year's biggest-ever sockeye harvest in Bristol Bay and Trident (biggest processor here) sent a letter to the fleet in August justifying the lowest prices ever by saying that Russia had flooded the market with cheap fish to fund their genocide in Ukraine
That was very enlightening, this lead me to see France's EEZ as well, which was one of the most egregious claims that I've ever seen. Unsurprisingly the complaints about China are pure liberal projection.
What nobody ever talks about is that all the countries involved in the South China sea have maritime disputes with all the other countries. It's not just a China thing and there's many countries all over the world that have maritime disputes w others. It's a trivial issue that's being attempted to be brought to the international stage so the US has an excuse to increase its military presence in the area and to ratchet up tensions between countries.
Basically, China and Taiwan are completely aligned in their claims, China contests the Paracels with Vietnam (this claim is the most valid imo through effective occupation or conquest, take your pick), the Spratlys are contested by literally everyone, and Scarborough Shoal with the Philippines (by conquest). I'm sure I missed something, but at a high level those are the three big disputes.
China's primary justification is that these islands were historically Chinese (and, y'know, the Europeans just left chaos in their wake when the pulled out and Japan left even more chaos in its wake when it swept through Asia like a cancerous wildfire, and when it came time for peace talks the West decided not to invite China because "what China should we invite? Ah fuck it invite neither of them").
The islands are unpopulated and basically useless except to extend EEZ to the newly discovered oil reserves in the region.
The ROC also has naval bases in the SCS. It's not like how they still formally claim Mongolia, a claim which no one, including themselves, takes seriously.