Chinese Coast Guard boards Taiwan tourist boat; Taipei says Beijing 'triggered panic'

Chinese Coast Guard officials boarded a Taiwanese tourist ship amid tensions between the two nations after two Chinese fishermen drowned off the Kinmen archipelago.

Last week, a Chinese vessel with four people on board capsized after it tried to flee from a Taiwanese Coast Guard ship.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office strongly condemned the deaths and called for an investigation, saying “Such a malicious event during the Spring Festival seriously hurts the feelings of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.”

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Chinese policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said that a preliminary investigation into the matter proves that the Coast Guard acted in accordance with the law and “did nothing wrong.”

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Why did Chinese Coast Guard officials board Taiwan’s ship? 

Two Chinese Coast Guard officials intercepted a Taiwanese sight-seeing ferry called King Xia with 11 crew and 23 passengers on board on Monday.

Six coastguards entered the vessel on the pretext of checking the documentation of the crew onboard before it finally disembarked half an hour later, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Authority said.

The ship was then escorted back to the coast by the Taiwan coast guard patrol.

Chinese Coast Guard ’triggered panic’

A Taiwanese government minister on Tuesday said that the incident triggered panic" among Taiwan’s people. However, Taiwan’s military has said that it is not planning to get involved in the matter.

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“We think it has harmed our people’s feelings and triggered people’s panic. That was also not in line with the interest of the people across the strait,” Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council, told reporters on the sidelines of parliament in Taipei.

China’s coast guard, which has no publicly available contact details, has yet to comment.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China announced on Sunday that its coast guard would begin regular patrols and set up law enforcement activity around the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, following the death of two Chinese nationals fleeing Taiwan’s coast guard having entered into restricted waters too close to Kinmen.

With inputs from agencies