Chinese Man Appears To Sail to Taiwan and Back in Rubber Dinghy

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan's coast guard is asking for more funding for better detection technology after a Chinese man appears to have sailed to Taiwan and back in a dinghy. It's the latest in a series of territorial breaches exposing weaknesses in Taiwan's maritime surveillance capabilities.

Transcript

00:00The Coast Guard in Taiwan is asking for more funding for better detection technology

00:04after a Chinese man appears to have sailed to Taiwan and back in a dinghy.

00:09Reese Ayers has more on this latest in a string of boat crossing cases.

00:13Reese, is it really possible that this man sailed the Taiwan Strait in a rubber boat?

00:21Well, difficult but not impossible is what Taiwan's Coast Guard are saying.

00:27This particular case came to light after the man himself posted videos on social media.

00:33Now, he's claiming that he traveled from the coast of Fuzhou, which is in China's Fujian Province,

00:40all the way across the Taiwan Strait to Guanyin Beach in Taoyuan, which is on the northwest coast of Taiwan.

00:48And he says that he did this on May 15th.

00:51Now, that's a total distance of about 175 kilometers.

00:55He says he made that journey in just nine hours, and he appears to have gone back the way he came

01:02because he wasn't apprehended here in Taiwan.

01:06And as I mentioned, he said he posted those videos on Guanyin, which is China's version of TikTok,

01:13boasting that he'd made that journey, showing a video of him on the beach in Taiwan

01:18with a Chinese flag planted in the sand behind him.

01:25in his boat with a message that says that he's doing this to help reclaim Taiwan for China.

01:32And these videos have been verified.

01:34They do appear to show the places and the times that the man was claiming.

01:40But given how difficult this journey would have been, not impossible, but difficult,

01:45the coast guard is saying that they're not ruling out the possibility that he could have been dropped off somewhere,

01:51maybe in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, out of the range of radars,

01:56and then made the remainder of the journey on his own in that small dinghy.

02:00But this beach, you know, has been used before by Taiwan's military for drills.

02:05It is a high-risk point for a Chinese invasion, as many of the beaches or coastlines around Taiwan are.

02:14But, you know, detection equipment, as of right now, just struggles to pick up smaller vessels like these.

02:21And Rhys, this is not the first landing on this particular stretch of coast, is it?

02:25Are incidents like these exposing a weakness in Taiwan's maritime defense?

02:29Well, right, on Friday the 16th, which was just a day after the man claims that he landed,

02:38two Chinese people were arrested for making a similar journey to a similar point in Taiwan.

02:45That brings the total number of cases just so far this year to five, involving 38 people, 36 of which were arrested.

02:54And typically those that are caught, you know, they face fines or deportation or even short prison sentences.

03:01And they claim a variety of reasons for making those journeys.

03:04Some say they're doing it for China.

03:07Some say that they're escaping political persecution in China.

03:11But, you know, a few individuals in a few boats maybe doesn't pose so much of a national security risk for Taiwan.

03:19They still are able to detect those bigger vessels floating around.

03:23But it is prompting the Coast Guard to highlight China's ongoing grey zone warfare tactics.

03:29This could be an example of that if, you know, some of those people that are speculating are correct,

03:34that he was dropped off by a larger vessel in the middle of the strait.

03:38But now the Coast Guard is calling for more funding.

03:41They want better equipment, better radar systems for detecting smaller vessels,

03:46including using infrared technology and drones.

03:49Taiwan has over 1,800 kilometers of coastline.

03:54It's very difficult to patrol.

03:57And, you know, beaches and coasts around the country,

04:00Taiwan would need to defend those if China was to launch an attack.

04:06And this week is the one-year anniversary of President Lai Ching-deh's inauguration.

04:10And so the Coast Guard are on high alert of any more crossings of that kind.

04:18Thanks, Rhys.

04:19That was Rhys Ayers reporting live from our Taipei newsroom.

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