Central and local governments over the years had issued dozens of regulations covering the use and protection of islands, but these rules were neither sufficiently comprehensive nor powerful, Wang said. A lack of planning and regulation, overpopulation, misuse of natural resources and pollution have caused severe damage to the fragile ecosystems of many islands.

Some officially uninhabited islands were actually being occupied and used without authorization, while others were connected to the mainland by piling earth into the sea, he said.

Over the past decade, according to government statistics, China's northern coastal province of Hebei lost 60 islands, or 46 percent of its total; the southern province of Hainan, itself a large island, lost 51 small islands, or 22 percent of its total. Wang said in some coastal provinces, such as Shandong and Zhejiang, local authorities had sold islands to businesses for tourism development or mining activities.

Professor Li Jinming from Xiamen University shares Wang's concern that the disappearance of isles will lead to changes in China's maritime borders and will also adversely affect the surrounding environment and fishing industry. Li told the Beijing-based newspaper International Herald Leader that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea guarantees coastal states sovereignty over their territorial sea and gives them the right to establish their maritime border up to 12 nautical miles from land. He said many of China's uninhabited islands are used as territorial sea base points. "If these islands are destroyed and disappear, we will lose the original territorial sea baseline we used to establish the border," said Li.

He also said islands of any size are valuable since coastal states are entitled to an exclusive economic zone out to a distance of 200 nautical miles from its coastal baseline. Within this zone, the country can engage in certain economic activities and has sovereign rights to the area's natural resources.

Wang Hanling, a maritime law expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said that China's maritime legal system developed in the 1990s, later than in most countries.

On September 4, 1958, the Chinese Government declared that China's territorial sea extended out 12 nautical miles. That declaration became the country's first marine legal document. It was not until the 1990s that China released the Law on China's Territorial Waters and Their Contiguous Areas and its Law on the Exclusive Economic Zone and the Continental Shelf.

Between 1989 and 1996, the Chinese Government conducted a nationwide survey that counted all of the country's islands and their surrounding resources and environment. With that information, the government built a database for the development of islands. In July 2003, the SOA, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the General Staff Department of the People's Liberation Army jointly issued administrative provisions on the protection and use of uninhabited islands.

"As a regulation, it lacks the legal authority of a law and cannot satisfy the practical needs of the work that needs to be done on the islands' protection and administration," Li Guoqiang, a scholar at the CASS Center of China's Borderland History and Geography Research, told the International Herald Leader.

In 2003, the NPC set up a leadership panel that was put in charge of drafting an island protection law. The Standing Committee of the 10th NPC, which lasted from 2003 to 2008, listed the law on its legislative plan. The six-year process to draft the law was longer than many had expected.

Lu Caixia, a senior official from the SOA, said the law would help to curb the rise in private occupation and development of uninhabited island that has been seen in recent years. Of China's 6,900 islands equaling or larger than 500 square meters, 433, or 6 percent, have residents, according to statistics from the SOA.

Li said the law might be able to overcome a chronic problem in China's marine administration—the lack of organized administration due to unclear duties and responsibilities between different government departments. "The law clearly defines the responsibility for each department," said Li from the CASS.

Media outlets in neighboring countries that have standing territorial disputes with China have propounded that the new law was created to reaffirm China's sovereignty over Diaoyu and Nansha islands. The NPC Standing Committee refuted this idea, saying that the new law is administrative in nature, is designed to protect islands under China's jurisdiction and doesn't involve issues concerning sovereignty of islands.

"While China's neighbors won't acknowledge the authority of a domestic Chinese law, the application of the law in controversial areas could trigger fresh tension and conflicts," said Li from Xiamen University.