Chinese Citizens Showing Up Along Taiwan's Coast Raise Concerns

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan has recently seen several incidents of Chinese citizens arriving illegally on small boats. Coast guard and national security officials say they are not ruling out the possibility that these incidents could be part of China's cognitive warfare tactics intended to intimidate.

Transcript

00:00This is the moment a Chinese man says he arrived on Taiwan's coast,

00:12claiming to have sailed from China's Fujian province

00:14all the way across the Taiwan Strait in a rubber dinghy.

00:18That video posted to social media,

00:21along with another appearing to indicate the man made the trip

00:24to help reclaim Taiwan for China.

00:26It's just one of a series of recent incidents

00:29of Chinese citizens arriving illegally on Taiwan's shores in small boats

00:33that have summoned Taiwan concerned,

00:35with both Coast Guard and national security officials

00:38saying these incidents could be part of China's gray zone tactics to intimidate Taiwan,

00:42which China considers part of its territory

00:44and has threatened to take by force if necessary.

00:47When pressed on the issue in the legislature,

00:50the head of the country's intelligence agency had this to say.

00:56The arrivals have come one after another.

01:16Just a day after the incident captured on social media,

01:19two more Chinese people showed up on Taiwan's northern coast,

01:22also in a small rubber boat,

01:24reportedly claiming that they had fled to Taiwan

01:26because they were facing persecution in China.

01:29A few days later,

01:30Taiwan's Coast Guard detained two more Chinese men

01:33who had sailed over to Taiwan's outlying Jinmen Islands

01:35on a small wooden boat

01:37and were trying to sneak ashore.

01:39Some have also raised questions about Taiwan's border security,

01:43with officials saying they are working to improve coastal surveillance.

01:46But at least one analyst says these incidents do not indicate

02:09that Taiwan's border security is weak

02:10and don't pose any real maritime threat.

02:13These kinds of small boats are hard to detect,

02:16in part because monitoring systems are looking for larger threats.

02:19The real issue, he says,

02:21is the fear these incidents could cause.

02:23I think that what you are seeing right now,

02:27especially with the latest couple of incidences,

02:30you're seeing it become more of a social media trend.

02:33And I think that becomes much more dangerous

02:36because it's less of a maritime security threat

02:38and it becomes much more of a psychological impact to the society.

02:43It's not about securing the border, per se.

02:46It's more about preventing and mitigating

02:49that psychological harm that's going to happen

02:51to the people of Taiwan,

02:53where it feels like the border is insecure.

02:57Taiwan's government and Coast Guard

02:58say they are investigating each case

03:00to find out more about their motives.

03:02And in at least one,

03:03looking into whether small boats

03:05really did make it all the way across the Taiwan Strait unaided.

03:09But with many of those questions still unanswered,

03:11Taiwan may not have seen the last of Chinese people

03:14wandering up on its shores.

03:16Ryan Wu and Caden's Quaranta for Taiwan Plus.

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