China has been actively collecting data on the aquatic environment surrounding Taiwan, prompting the military to suspect that Beijing could be planning a claim sovereignty over a reef off Penghu island, defense sources said yesterday.
The rationale behind the move remains unclear, sources say, but a desire in Beijing to set a precedent for further sovereignty claims and a perhaps an attempt to test Taipei's resolve could be behind the action.
The South China Sea is dotted with hundreds of islets, reefs, rocks and shoals, which are the subject of conflicting territorial claims.
According to the UN Law of the Sea, China cannot claim any of the territory within Taiwan's territorial waters, an area extending twelve miles from the Taiwan coast.
But not all of the reefs and islets off Penghu island are within Taiwan's territorial waters. According to defense sources, Beijing's strategy is to occupy a reef or islet near Penghu island that is in international waters or whose status is ambiguous.
Recent intelligence information shows that China is extremely interested in information about Penghu island and the islets and reefs surrounding it, using satellites and spy ships to monitor the region.
In the past, Beijing has used unarmed civilians to take reefs in the South China Sea.
China seems to be looking for a reef off of Penghu which is above water at low-tide and submerged at high-tide to substantiate new claims of sovereignty. The UN Law of the Sea is ambiguous on whether a country can claim such territory, sources said.
In the past, China took a number of reefs in the South China Sea, such as the Shuan Tzu Chao, using this technique.
But taking the reef might be easier than holding it, since the occupation would likely spark a negative backlash, not only from Taiwan but among other states with conflicting claims in the region and from the US, to whom many surrounding nations look toward to deter conflict in the area.
Officials said that China needs more marine data about the region before it acts. Hence, it has not yet decided on which reef to occupy, a problem which is apparently much more complicated than Beijing previously thought.
An army general, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if China tries to use civilians to take one of the reefs off of Penghu, there would be several ways to deal with it.
"If the reef is within our territorial waters, we have the right to drive off the Chinese. But if it is beyond our territorial waters, we can do nothing against them," the general said.
"But we will consider the move a hostile act, since it violates a tacit agreement between the two sides that the imaginary middle line of the Strait should not be freely crossed by either side," he said.
"How we will respond depends government leadership. It will be a hard decision to make if they send civilians" he said.
It is a well-known fact that Chinese spy ships disguised as fishing boats cross the middle line of the Taiwan Strait on a daily basis and enter waters off Taiwan -- either for fishing or espionage.
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