On Wednesday afternoon last week, a Chinese speedboat left Weitou in China’s Fujian Province, crossing the maritime border into Kinmen County, where those aboard began to fish in the waters off Beiding Islet (北碇島). When the coast guard dispatched a patrol boat for an inspection, the speedboat fled, leading to a high-speed chase.
Unfortunately, the fleeing vessel capsized, sending four Chinese into the water, and two of them were unable to be resuscitated upon being sent to hospital.
Despite the coast guard personnel acting quickly to save them from drowning, this incident quickly touched a sensitive cross-strait political nerve.
However, as the incident involved Chinese citizens and Taiwanese law enforcement units without leading to a naval confrontation, there is little likelihood of this escalating into a conflict in the short term.
In 2022, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) said in a public statement that “the waters of the Taiwan Strait extend from both coasts of the strait and meet at the median line. In order, they are China’s internal waters, territorial waters, contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone.”
His statement has become an important part of discourse for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy in the Taiwan Strait.
Since Wang’s statement, the CCP has been carrying out displays of jurisdictional conduct in an attempt to show the international community that it does not affirm the status of Taipei’s exercise of jurisdiction over its own respective maritime territory in the Taiwan Strait.
Over the past few years, China’s coast guard has increased the frequency of its activities in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in neighboring waters.
It has gradually expanded its activities to the waters off Taiwan’s east and southwest coasts.
These activities show the gradual consolidation of China’s claim of sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait, and its attempt to salami slice away Taiwan’s sovereignty and rights.
The CCP could use the speedboat accident to bolster its claim to sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait. For example, it could attempt to refuse searches or patrols by the Taiwanese coast guard in the name of protecting Chinese fisheries, refusing to acknowledge the jurisdiction of Taipei’s investigations and searches when patrol vessels are dispatched.
Apart from this, the CCP could also use other means to tighten its grip over the Taiwan Strait, such as demanding the release of arrested Chinese citizens or by mobilizing personnel to exert pressure on Taiwanese.
Although the CCP’s goal in using maritime militia masquerading as fishers for harassment is to establish a favorable “status quo” that further supports its doctrine, if an accident occurs under a high-stakes situation, leading to damaged vessels or loss of life or limb, the authorities on both sides of the Strait could rapidly escalate the matter. As such, Taiwan needs to be prudent in its responses to avoid such a situation spiraling out of control.
The CCP’s use of lawfare in the Taiwan Strait is not a merely verbalized thing — it is a series of realized “gray zone” activities.
Last week’s accident could become an opportunity for the CCP to keep pushing its territorial claims.
Taipei must remain vigilant in its response, and defend its sovereignty and rights in the Taiwan Strait.
Gong Lin-dong is a research fellow who focuses on the Chinese Communist Party.
Translated by Tim Smith
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS