The government took a small group of foreign lawmakers on a Coast Guard Administration (CGA) ship around Kinmen County yesterday, pushing back against China Coast Guard patrols there.
Since last month, the China Coast Guard has patrolled in waters off Taiwan’s east coast in what it said was a “law enforcement” operation — a move that sparked concern in the US, the UK, France and Germany.
On board the CGA’s PP-10081 for a 90-minute tour in waters around Kinmen were Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) and Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Chen Gau-tzu (陳昭姿), as well as seven foreign lawmakers.
Photo: Ben Blanchard, Reuters
The trip, believed to be the first of its kind, underscores Taiwan’s efforts to draw international attention to the dispute at a time when China’s expanding maritime patrols are testing the nation’s ability to defend its waters and raising alarm among some Western governments.
The PP-10081 is one of several 100-tonne patrol ships stationed in Kinmen. It did not go out with any weapons on deck and the crew were not visibly armed.
Former British minister of state for security Tom Tugendhat said that being in waters where China claims jurisdiction was an important show of support for Taiwan.
“I’m in Taiwan. I’m in Taiwanese waters. This has nothing to do with Beijing. This is to do with simply defending the international rules-based system that the Chinese government in Beijing claims to have signed up to,” Tugendhat said.
With him were two other British lawmakers, as well as one each from Ukraine, the Czech Republic, India and New Zealand, all members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. They were on a trip organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the CGA.
CGA Fleet Branch Deputy Director Tsai Chung-mou (蔡崇謀) said that the government hoped the trip would help the international community get a better idea of the pressure Taiwan was facing from China.
“We hope that all countries around the world that support freedom and democracy can understand that Kinmen stands on the front line of the Taiwan Strait, facing the Chinese Communist Party,” Tsai said.
While China Coast Guard ships did not appear during the trip, they made one of their regular forays into Kinmen waters the previous day, the CGA said.
The Taiwanese ship navigated around the northern part of the main island of Kinmen, giving the lawmakers a clear view of China just a few kilometers away, including Xiamen’s new airport, which Taiwan said Beijing has failed to provide safety information for.
Ukrainian lawmaker Yulia Sirko said that there were many parallels between the situation Taiwan was facing with China, and Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2022.
“And these lessons consist of, first of all, that if you want peace, start preparing for war. And unfortunately, we didn’t do it in the right time, so this is lesson No. 1 from the Ukrainian experience,” Sirko said.
The other lawmakers onboard were: British members of parliament Alicia Kearns and Tris Osborne, the Czech Republic’s Katerina Demetrashvili, Priyanka Chaturvedi, a former Indian lawmaker, and New Zealand’s Helen White.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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