China Seizes Taiwan Vessel

U.S. officials were closely monitoring a potential flare-up in the Taiwan Strait this week after Chinese law-enforcement officers boarded and seized a Taiwanese trawler in a move regarded as unusually heavy-handed.

The Da Jin Man 88, a squid fishing boat from Taiwan's Western Penghu or Pescadores Islands, was inspected by the Chinese Coast Guard late on Tuesday over a suspected fishing violation before being steered to a harbor in Fujian province in southeastern China.

The boat's location last pinged at the Fujian port of Weitou on July 2, according to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic, after it was escorted there by Chinese Coast Guard vessels 14521 and 14607.

There has been a yearslong low point in cross-strait relations, with Beijing growing increasingly impatient at Taipei's outright rejections of Chinese territorial claims to Taiwan, the democratically governed island of 23 million people.

Taiwan's Coast Guard on Wednesday called for the release of the fishing boat and its six crew, among them Indonesian nationals. It asked Chinese authorities not to involve politics in the case.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Newsweek by email: "We encourage both sides to maintain open lines of communication and resolve the incident in a peaceful manner."

China Coast Guard spokesperson Liu Dejun said the day after that the Da Jin Man 88 had violated Chinese laws governing a moratorium on fishing activity in its coastal waters. The Taiwanese boat was trawling in a prohibited zone using a nonregulation net that was too fine, "damaging fishery resources and ecosystems."

Taiwan's Coast Guard said the squid boat was intercepted outside Taipei-controlled maritime zones around the front-line Kinmen Island group, off the Chinese coast, and within China's 12-nautical-mile territorial sea.

Taiwanese patrol boats dispatched to the scene decided not to pursue further into Chinese waters "in order to avoid escalation," the agency said.

The Da Jin Man 88 is the latest of over a dozen Taiwanese fishing vessels to be boarded and confiscated by China since it began imposing fishing bans nearly three decades ago, according to Taipei's figures.

Most returned after paying fines, while the rest were released following formal consultations with Beijing. Political dialogue between the two capitals is almost nonexistent today, although working-level crisis hotlines remain in use.

China's seasonal fishing ban and the boat's location within its territorial waters mean the incident likely "holds more significance for the protection of fishing rights than political implications," said Hung Tzu-chieh, an analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research think tank in Taipei.

"However, compared to the usual approach of the Chinese Coast Guard, which typically involves driving away fishing boats first, this time they directly detained the fishing vessel, indicating a more assertive approach," Hung told Newsweek.

"It remains to be seen if, as in previous cases, the Da Jin Man 88 will be released after paying a fine," he said.

This year's summertime moratorium prohibits certain types of fishing activity in the East and South China seas from May 1 to August 16, although the unilateral policy is frequently ignored by China's neighbors.

Taiwan spy chief Tsai Ming-yen told lawmakers in Taipei on Thursday that China may be attempting to demonstrate it has jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait while pressuring the Taiwanese government.

China's Coast Guard has no publicly available contact information.

On Wednesday, the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing said the agency's interdiction was a lawful enforcement measure "to maintain fisheries, marine resources and ecosystems in the relevant sea areas."