The crew of a Taiwanese fishing boat has been detained after the boat was seized by the Chinese coast guard while it was operating near an island controlled by Taiwan.
Taiwan’s coast guard says the boat was intercepted by Chinese vessels on Tuesday night near the Kinmen islands, located a few kilometers off the southern Chinese coastal city of Xiamen.
Taiwan dispatched three patrol boats to assist the fishing boat, but they were blocked by three Chinese vessels. The Taiwanese boats demanded the Chinese vessels release the fishing boat and its crew, but said they were warned by the Chinese side not to interfere. The Taiwanese coast guard says it ended its pursuit to avoid escalating the conflict.
The fishing boat was taken to a nearby Chinese fishing port. The five-person crew includes two Taiwanese nationals and three Indonesians.
Hsieh Ching-chin, deputy director-general of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration, said Wednesday the incident occurred as China begins its annual fishing moratorium.
He said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council and Fisheries Agency will “reach out to their Chinese counterparts” and call on the Chinese government “to explain its reasoning and release the crew and their boat in accordance with due procedure, refraining from using political means to handle the situation.”
Tuesday night’s incident was the latest maritime conflict between Taiwan and China this year.
Two Chinese fishermen drowned in February when their boat capsized as it was fleeing Taiwan’s coast guard after the fishermen entered restricted waters near Kinmen. China responded days later when its coast guard briefly boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat while it was on a sight-seeing trip near Kinman.
“China used to turn a blind eye to Taiwanese fishing vessels” operating around its waters, said Chung Chieh, an associate research fellow at the National Security Division in Taipei. But that “special treatment” is something that Taiwan’s fishermen “no longer enjoy,” he told VOA Mandarin.
China is now citing its “domestic laws” when looking to punish Taiwanese crews “found operating within China’s territorial waters,” according to Chieh. China wants to “establish the fact that it can enforce law among Taiwanese fishers and vessels,” he said. “Such incidents will help consolidate its pursuit of using laws as a weapon of war across the Taiwan Strait.”
Taiwan has been self-governed since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists.
But Beijing regards the island of 23 million and its outlying islands as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary.
VOA Mandarin contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
