The Ocean Affairs Council yesterday said that it has not ruled out the possibility that China is using maritime militias to provoke cross-strait conflict, even though the Ministry of National Defense said that a clash last month between Chinese fishing boats and Coast Guard Administration (CGA) vessels was an isolated incident.
At a cross-agency briefing for the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee, council Minister Lee Chung-wei (李仲威) said that Chinese militias were to blame when Chinese fishing boats rammed coast guard vessels attempting to chase off boats fishing in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone.
The majority of Chinese maritime militias are in the East China Sea, as well as the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) and the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea, Lee said.
Photo: CNA
These militias consist of vessels that are indistinguishable from common fishing boats, which allow them to harass and deter ships from other nations to try to assert sovereignty over the region, he said.
Lee mentioned previous incidents, such as when Chinese ships surrounded the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed surveillance ship, in international waters about 121km south of China’s Hainan Island in 2009; a standoff at Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) in 2012; when a Chinese oil rig clashed with Vietnamese vessels in 2014; and when 200 fishing boats, including seven China Coast Guard ships, surrounded the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列島) in 2016.
While there has been no sign that these tactics have been used in the Taiwan Strait, the possibility of Beijing harnessing informal forces to provoke conflicts at sea could not be excluded, he added.
The council instructed the CGA to keep in close contact with the Ministry of National Defense and intelligence agencies to keep abreast of Chinese activity, Lee said.
In the event that Chinese militia vessels are sighted, the CGA should dispatch ships to monitor the situation and contact the ministry, he said.
The government has also contacted representative offices abroad to facilitate talks with foreign coast guard units regarding peacekeeping efforts, he said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of National Defense Chang Che-ping (張哲平) said that the incident last month was an isolated case and that there is no evidence that it was committed by Chinese militias.
If China wanted to threaten Taiwan, it would have used its aircraft carriers or fighter jets, not fishing boats, he said.
However, the ministry would keep a close eye on future incidents, as able-bodied males in China aged 18 to 35 are considered part of the Chinese militia, he said.
The military and the CGA would take caution when handling similar incidents during the April-to-June fishing season and attempt to prevent an escalation of tensions at a sensitive time, he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods