The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) was yesterday working with Chinese rescuers to find two missing crewmembers from a Chinese fishing boat that sank southwest of Kinmen County yesterday, killing two crew.
The joint operation managed to rescue two of the boat’s six crewmembers, but two were already dead when they were pulled from the water, the agency said in a statement.
Rescuers are still searching for two others from the Min Long Yu 61222, a boat registered in China’s Fujian Province that capsized and sank 1.03 nautical miles (1.9km) southwest of Dongding Island (東碇), it added.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration via CNA
CGA Director-General Chou Mei-wu (周美伍) told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that the boat sank about 555m inside Taiwan’s “prohibited waters,” an area in which coast guard vessels are authorized to control the activity of foreign vessels.
Both sides were striving to locate the missing crew within the “golden rescue time” of 72 hours, Chou added.
Four boats from the Ninth (Kinmen) Maritime Patrol along with six helicopters and three vessels from China were conducting a joint search within a 37km radius of where the boat capsized, the CGA said.
The four ships were dispatched after a request for assistance was received from the China Maritime Safety Administration shortly after 6am, it said.
Taiwanese authorities have not publicly commented on the cause of the boat’s capsizing at press time last night.
Sources with knowledge of the matter said that two of the crewmembers remained missing.
The Ministry of National Defense said it had asked the air force’s Combat Command, the navy’s Fleet Command and the army’s Kinmen Defense Command to keep monitoring the situation.
Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said that the two sides were working closely to rescue the crew of the lost vessel and were maintaining good communication.
“China has shown respect for the proper procedures and we are facilitating this process out of humanitarian concerns,” she said. “China’s coast guard displayed goodwill by avoiding [our] waters and we urge the public to avoid forming misunderstandings.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said it requested the help of Taiwan’s Chinese Search and Rescue Association after the boat ran into a reef off Dongding Island at about 2am.
Chinese rescue teams had taken surviving crewmembers and the bodies of the dead back, the Mainland Affairs Council said, adding that no demand for compensation was filed on the families’ behalf.
Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) praised the rescue operation, saying previous efforts “have shown that China and Taiwan can work together in humanitarian aid.”
Chou also recalled several previous joint rescue efforts by Taiwanese and Chinese authorities.
“In the past three years, we have had 17 cases like this where they [China] asked us for support, and we rescued 119 people,” he said.
Such cooperation between the two sides is common and close, but Taiwan has always adopted a policy of “rescue those in distress, and expel or ban those who violate the law,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) wrote on Facebook.
However, politicizing normal responses to illegal movement by unregistered and unflagged boats in a nation’s territorial waters should be condemned, he added.
From July 2016 to November last year, Taiwan penalized nearly 20 Chinese dredgers, confiscated 16 boats and more than 25,000 tonnes of illegally dredged sand, and chased away more than 9,100 boats from its waters, CGA data showed.
Separately, Kuan on Wednesday apologized for the CGA’s shortcomings in collecting evidence during a fatal boat chase off Kinmen last month, which left two Chinese nationals dead.
Amid public criticism of the council’s handling of the case on Feb. 14, Kuan told lawmakers that inadequate evidence collection had resulted in public concern and emotional distress for the affected families.
The council has directed the CGA to establish a committee to conduct a thorough review aimed at enhancing duty management, equipment installation and evidence collection, among others, she said.
Additional reporting by Hung Ting-hung and AFP
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS