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China’s coastguard boarded a Taiwanese tourist vessel near the Taipei-controlled island of Kinmen on Monday, raising concerns that Beijing could seize upon a nearby incident last week to try to establish full control of waters near the Chinese coast.
The rare boarding and inspection escalates tensions sparked by the drowning last Thursday of two Chinese citizens whose speedboat capsized while a Taiwanese coastguard vessel was chasing them out of an area close to Taiwan military installations.
Taiwan’s coastguard has defended its pursuit of the Chinese vessel, saying the boat trespassed into waters near Kinmen declared as restricted by Taipei. But at the weekend, Beijing accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party of “forceful” inspections of Chinese boats.
“Fishermen on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been operating in traditional fishing grounds [in the area] since ancient times, and there is no such thing as ‘prohibited or restricted waters’,” the Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office said.
China’s coastguard on Sunday followed up by announcing it would step up law enforcement with regular patrols in the waters off Xiamen, a Chinese city less than 10km from Kinmen.
Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said six Chinese coastguard officers boarded a tourist boat from Kinmen with 23 passengers late on Monday afternoon and spent half an hour inspecting its certificate, the licences of its 11 crew members and its course plan.
“We call on the mainland side to stick to peace and reason”, the administration said in a statement.
Taipei’s defence ministry said it spotted 17 Chinese military aircraft operating in the Taiwan Strait area over three hours starting at 4pm on Monday, 11 of which crossed the median line, an unofficial dividing line that both sides respected in the past but which Beijing has ignored in the past few years.
The events serve as a reminder of the fragile security situation around Kinmen, which along with the Taipei-controlled Matsu islands underwent years of shelling from China in the 1950s — the only direct military conflict between the two sides after the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949.
The incidents also highlight the risk China could further increase pressure on Taipei after the DPP won an unprecedented third term in office when voters in January elected its candidate Lai Ching-te the next president. China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory and insists it must come under its control eventually, detests the DPP for its stance that Taiwan is an independent sovereign country.
Taiwanese government officials have said they worry that China could further squeeze the country with piecemeal changes to the status quo. “They have done that by obliterating the median line and by frequently stating that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters,” said a senior official.
He pointed to Beijing’s practice of asserting its claims in territorial disputes with Japan over the Senkaku, or Diaoyu islands, or with the Philippines in the South China Sea. “Ship inspections are another obvious tool,” he added.
In April last year, when China conducted military exercises around Taiwan in response to a visit to the US by President Tsai Ing-wen, China’s Maritime Safety Administration said it would conduct inspections for three days of ships on select cross-Strait routes.
No such inspections were carried out then, but the possibility of Chinese interference with shipping remains something Taiwan national security officials worry about as it could disrupt supplies and undermine public confidence even without reaching the level of a full blockade.
The roughly 150,000 people who live on Kinmen and Matsu rely on ship transport from mainland Taiwan for most consumer goods, but they also receive fresh water from China and barter goods with Chinese fishermen.
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