China’s Coast Guard has seized a Taiwanese fishing boat and its crew of five and forced it to a port on the mainland Chinese coast, a move that could add to tensions between Beijing and President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan.
The fishing boat, Ta Chin Man 88, was in Chinese waters 27 miles northeast of Kinmen, a Taiwanese-controlled island close to the Chinese coast, when two Chinese Coast Guard ships boarded and took control of it on Tuesday night, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said. Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels that sailed to the area to help the fishing boat were blocked by their Chinese counterparts, the administration added.
The situation in the seas around Taiwan, a self-governed island that China claims as its own, has become more and more tense, with coast guard standoffs between the two sides seemingly on the rise. The concern among officials is that such encounters bring the risk of a clash that could deepen antagonism between the sides or even set off a regional crisis.
The Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels broadcast demands for the Chinese Coast Guard to free the fishing boat, but the Chinese ships responded only by “demanding no interference,” the statement from Taiwan said. The fishing boat had two crew members from Taiwan and three from Indonesia, officials said. Many workers on Taiwanese fishing boats are from Indonesia or other Southeast Asian countries.
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A spokesman for China’s Coast Guard, Liu Dejun, said the seized boat had broken a fishing moratorium in Chinese waters that China declared in May and had been using an illegal fine-meshed net. During the seizure of the boat, Mr. Liu said in a statement, the Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels “tried to meddle in our normal law enforcement” and were driven away.
Hsieh Ching-chin, a spokesman for Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the Ta Chin Man 88 had entered Chinese territorial waters. He called for China to release the boat and crew, saying that they should not become pawns in the tensions between China and Taiwan. China has seized 17 Taiwanese fishing boats since 2003 and the last such incident was in 2007, Mr. Hsieh said. In recent months, Chinese officials and media have warned fishing boats not to violate the fishing ban, which lasts until mid-August.
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