China is attempting to normalize its increased incursions into the waters around the outlying Kinmen islands in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo has warned.
Koo told a hearing at the Taiwanese legislature on Wednesday that by stepping up its activities in the prohibited and restricted waters around Kinmen, China is trying to establish a new normal.
Kinmen is less than 10 km (6.2 miles) from China’s Fujian province.
“Prohibited” and “restricted” waters are the tacit boundaries between Taiwan’s outer islands and China’s mainland that both sides have been adhering to.
“Prohibited waters” refer to the territorial waters around Kinmen that extend about halfway to the Chinese coast, or roughly 4 km (2.2 nautical miles) to the north and northwest, and about 8 km (4.3 nautical miles) to the south.
“Restricted waters” extend a little further to the south, about 24 nautical miles from Taiwan’s main island.
On Tuesday, Chinese and Taiwanese coast guards had a tense two-hour standoff after four coastguard ships from mainland China were seen patrolling in Kinmen’s restricted waters.
Such incursions have become regular, according to the Taiwanese coast guard, which reported in May a record number of 11 Chinese vessels intruding into Kinmen’s waters.
“The Chinese coast guard has organized a new fleet of cutters to establish a new enforcement model around Kinmen in an attempt to demonstrate their sovereignty over Taiwan,” said Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s state-run Institute for National Defense and Security Research, or INDSR.
“This can be seen as an expansion of the gray zone tactic, that is the use of the coast guard fleet to expand China’s maritime control, not only against Taiwan, but also against the Philippines in the South China Sea, and against Japan in the Senkaku islands,” Su told Radio Free Asia.
Gray zone activities are not explicit acts of war but harmful to a nation’s security as they are aimed at achieving security objectives without resort to direct use of force.
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New model of law enforcement
China's Global Times reported that the Chinese coast guard has adopted a new model of conducting law enforcement near Kinmen, by expanding its scope and intensity, as well as making it "all-weather enforcement."
According to the news outlet, since June the Fujian coast guard has organized a fleet of warships to conduct extensive patrols and further strengthen China’s control over the area.
The newspaper quoted a Chinese Taiwan expert, Liu Kuangyu, as saying that this new maritime enforcement method can serve as an example for promoting a “one country, two systems” formula, providing an optional solution for resolving the Taiwan question.
The Taiwanese government has repeatedly said that China’s incursions are harmful to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Beside activities at sea, Beijing has also flown military aircraft over the median line in the Strait into Taiwan’s air defense zone on a daily basis.
This month, Taiwan has tracked 389 flyovers by Chinese military aircraft, including 141 over the past week, according to the defense ministry in Taipei.
To respond to China’s gray zone activities “it requires the alertness and joint efforts of the Indo-Pacific countries and the ASEAN, because the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea are connected,” said INDSR’s Su Tzu-yun.
“Regional sea lanes bear a great importance on the world's economic development as well as serve the common interests of neighboring countries,” the analyst said, adding that China needs to be prevented from monopolizing and controlling them.
Edited by Mike Firn.