Taiwan's defense ministry on Wednesday said it was monitoring the movements of seven Chinese navy ships around the island, in addition to four vessels from China's coast guard, the first time Beijing's powerful maritime law enforcement agency has been mentioned in Taipei's daily reports.
Taiwan's armed forces deployed naval vessels and "coastal missile systems" in response, the ministry said on its website, which reports foreign military activity up to 6 a.m. local time every 24 hours. For the third day in a row, no Chinese military aircraft were detected inside Taiwan's air defense zone, where years of sorties, totaling several thousand, have become the daily norm.
China claims Taiwan as its own, despite Taipei's repeated rejections—a decadeslong remnant of the Cold War. Chinese leaders have threatened to go to war if Taiwan's democratically elected government changes the island's present semi-recognized political status to declare formal independence, a move Taipei says it will not make.
In the meantime, Beijing has brought to bear all manner of economic incentives and myriad coercive instruments to force Taiwan's businesses and its people into its orbit, while the United States—Taipei's strongest international backer—prepares for a possible future conflict over the island, which is among its trade partners.
Since February, a new confrontation has been brewing in Taiwan's front-line Kinmen islands, just off China's east coast, where two Chinese fishermen died in a capsized speedboat while being pursued by Taiwan's coast guard over an alleged maritime intrusion.
The Chinese coast guard responded with a pledge to safeguard the interests of the country's fisherfolk, and soon began sailing flotillas of large ships through Taiwan's restricted and prohibited waters in the archipelago, a move analysts said was aimed at eroding Taipei's control over the remote territory.
The latest intrusion into Kinmen waters happened on May 14, according to Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration, which deployed six small boats to head off a flotilla of five Chinese ships.
Footage released by Taiwan's coast guard showed the Chinese maritime police vessel 14603 leading the pointed patrol through the sensitive waters for a record fifth time in the same month.
The Taiwanese coast guard said China's maritime activity was dangerous to safety at sea and "undermined peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."
Taiwan's defense ministry previous said the island's armed forces would stay out of the Kinmen dispute in order to de-escalate tensions.
A spokesperson reached by Newsweek declined to say whether the Chinese coast guard activity mentioned in its report referred to the waters around Kinmen or another part of Taiwanese territory.
The China coast guard couldn't be reached for comment before publication.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
