Reuters doesn’t know for sure, so its report is only that Taiwan says so: “Taiwan says China seizes fishing boat near its coast” (July 3, 2024).
If Reuters were sure, the headline would maybe be “China seizes fishing boat near Taiwan’s coast.” Reuters does know, though, that China has been ramping up the pressure on Taiwan ever since the new Republic of China president, “a man Beijing accuses of being a ‘separatist,’ ” took office. (China was also ramping up the pressure on Taiwan, via military drills, hectoring propaganda, and other ways, in the lead-up to last January’s presidential election.)
Reuters reports:
Chinese officials boarded and then seized a Taiwanese fishing boat operating near China’s coast close to a Taiwan-controlled island late Tuesday and took it to a Chinese port, Taiwan’s coast guard said, in a further escalation of tensions.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has ramped up pressure on Taipei since May when President Lai Ching-te took office, a man Beijing accuses of being a “separatist”.
The squid fishing boat was near the Taiwan-administered Kinmen islands, which sit next to the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou, but in Chinese waters on Tuesday night when it was boarded and seized by two Chinese maritime administration boats, Taiwan’s coast guard said.
The Taiwanese boat was operating during China’s no-fishing period, the coast guard said, adding Taiwan will communicate with China and urge them to release the fishermen as soon as possible.
Coast guard officials in southern Fujian seized the Taiwan boat, China’s coast guard said in a statement, as it violated a summer ban on fishing and carried out illegal trawling operations.
The ROC government says the boat was seized. The PRC government says the boat was seized. The ROC officials say they’re going to get in touch with the PRC officials and try to get the fisherman back. Neither government is arguing about whether the boat was seized.
The boat was seized. But: “It is not uncommon for Taiwan and China to detain each other’s trespassing fishing boats. So far this year Taiwan has detained five such boats from China, Taiwan coast guard data shows.” So we can all relax.
Or can we? This isn’t a matter of equibalanced legitimate concerns about alternating acts of trespass. The mainland wants to wipe out the Republic of China as an independent political entity and, as Reuters says, has been ramping up the pressure on Taiwan because the new president fails to pretend that the ROC is not already separate and independent.
Some guidelines
The mainland recently issued “legal guidelines…that included use of the death penalty for ‘diehard’ advocates of Taiwanese independence,” causing Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council to urge extra caution to anybody thinking of traveling to China, Macau, or Hong Kong. We must hope that if the captured fisherman accepts the fact of the ROC’s political independence, his acceptance is not too evidently of a character and degree that puts him in the diehard camp.
Also going on right now, per Nikkei Asia: “China has sent the most military aircraft in nearly two years across the informal dividing line with Taiwan, in what Taipei sees as a campaign of intimidation against new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.” The number is 175 Chinese military planes flying across the median line in June alone as a means of bullying the Taiwanese.
Seems more drastic and more unambiguously troublemaking than drifting a few yards off course while trying to catch some fish.
