King Xia, a Taiwanese tourist boat, was taking 23 passengers on a journey around Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen Islands just miles from China’s southeastern coast when it was intercepted by two Chinese coast guard vessels.
Six Chinese officers swooped onboard, checking the vessel’s route plan, certificate and the licenses of its 11 crew members in a “forced” inspection that lasted about half an hour, according to Taiwan’s coast guard, which said King Xia had “veered toward” the Chinese side of the water to avoid shoals.
The unprecedented encounter with Chinese law enforcement at a time of heightened tension between Beijing and Taipei startled Taiwanese passengers onboard.
I don’t know, I have family in Taiwan and I haven’t heard of any panic. Yes people are worried but they’re also more than used to China’s saber rattling. And Xi has a lot more of a long term vision than Putin. No one believes an invasion is imminent.
The article is clearly for non-Taiwanese consumption
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But now, the popular route has been caught up in rising tensions as China’s coast guard ramps up patrols in the area – in what analysts say is Beijing’s latest effort to tilt the status quo in its favor by undermining Taiwan’s control of the waters.
The escalation came after two Chinese fishermen drowned last week when their speedboat capsized during a pursuit by Taiwan’s coast guard, who accused them of trespassing into prohibited waters around Kinmen.
The stakes are high, as the increased presence and closer proximity of Chinese and Taiwanese coast guard vessels raise the specter of miscalculations that could potentially spiral into open conflict.
China has already increased pressure on Taiwan after Vice President Lai Ching-te, a staunch defender of Taiwanese identity and sovereignty, won the presidential election in January, handing the DPP a historic third consecutive term.
Tian Feilong, a hardline legal scholar in Beijing, likened the increased patrol by the Chinese coast guard in waters around Kinmen to China’s “breakthrough” of the median line following Pelosi’s visit.
It’s not only “a declaration of sovereignty” by Beijing, but also “a gradual demonstration and establishment of a new normal” in China’s governance and law enforcement in the Taiwan Strait, Tian wrote in a commentary on guancha.cn, a nationalist Chinese news site.
The original article contains 981 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Probably not a smart idea for civilians to be randomly veering into foreign countries’ territorial waters. They were less than 5km of the PRC coast, fully in the PRC coast guard’s jurisdiction.
Your comment seems to suggest that the boat was far away from Taiwan, which was not the case. For context, the boat was touring Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, which are just a few kilometers/miles from the Chinese mainland (Wikipedia says 10 km/6.2 mi), and had to veer toward the Chinese side of the water to avoid shoals.
According to the article, this seems like an escalation by the PRC:
For years, sightseeing boat tours between Kinmen and Xiamen, the closest city on the Chinese mainland, have offered Taiwanese tourists a chance to gaze at China’s dazzling skyline without the hassle of border checks, with China operating similar tour boats for its citizens too.
…
Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, said the latest measures are part of China’s “gray zone” tactics, referring to coercive or aggressive state actions that stop short of open warfare – something Beijing has used increasingly in recent years in the East and South China Seas, as well as toward Taiwan.
The inspection of a Taiwanese tour boat by China’s coast guard, which Chong said had not happened before, was meant to provoke Taiwan and see if it would either escalate or accept this sort of behavior as given.
I’m aware that this incident happened on the Kinmen islands, but the article says that the boat had veered into PRC waters. You cannot veer into foreign waters and assume that foreign law does not apply to you. If a Moroccan boat in the Gibraltar strait crossed that 5km boundary between Morroccan waters and Spanish waters, I would think that the Spanish coast guard and Frontex would be boarding that boat.
I’m not familiar with coast guard procedure around Kimmin, and I understand that the situation is escalating, but it just seems weird to dismiss territorial waters like that.
