China must improve the education of its fishermen and stop them from trespassing into Taiwanese waters, the government said on Saturday after two Chinese fishermen were injured resisting Coast Guard Administration (CGA) orders near Penghu.
The fishermen’s boat, which had departed from Nanao Island in Guangdong Province, was detected 23 nautical miles (42.6km) west of Penghu’s westernmost Huayu Islet (花嶼) at about 5:20am, the coast guard said.
The boat refused to stop for inspection, despite several warnings, it said.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of Maritime Patrol Offshore Flotilla 8
Coast guard personnel fired rubber bullets to force the boat to stop, injuring two crew members in the leg, the coast guard said.
The fishermen were sent to a hospital for treatment and are in stable condition, it added.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) expressed “indignation” over what it called Taiwan’s “seizure and arrest for no good reasons.”
“We demand Taiwan to immediately launch an investigation into this incident, release the crew and the boat as soon as possible, and prevent similar incidents,” TAO spokesman An Fengshan (安峰山) said.
The Mainland Affairs Council said China has imposed a moratorium on its fishing boats entering Taiwanese waters, but cannot stop them from violating the rules.
“Mainland fishing boats have violated Taiwanese law and repeatedly engaged in illegal fishing, seriously affecting Taiwanese fishermen’s rights and interests,” the council said.
The CGA said its patrols last year chased away 1,325 trespassing Chinese fishing boats and seized 108.
This year it had already driven away 346 Chinese fishing boats and taken 36 into custody as of the end of last month, the CGA added.
In January, the captain of a Fujian-based fishing boat, had three fingers severed while trying to prevent coast guard personnel inspecting his boat and in February, another Fujian-based boat rammed a CGA vessel.
The CGA said it has repeatedly requested that China rein in its fishing boats in accordance with a cross-strait agreement on joint efforts to combat crime, but the calls went unheeded.
It said it will continue to enforce the law.
Saturday’s seizure was not for “no good reason,” the CGA said.
The government has raised the maximum fine for trespassing to NT$10 million (US$331,323) in a bid to prevent incursions into the nation’s waters by foreign vessels.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
RSS