Taiwan ships should ignore boarding requests by China coast guard, Taipei says

TAIPEI — Taiwanese ships off the island's east coast should ignore any boarding and inspection demands by China's Coast Guard, and if necessary Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels will intervene to stop this from happening, a senior official said on Wednesday (July 1).

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, sent Coast Guard ships last month into the waters off Taiwan's east coast for what it called a "special maritime traffic law-enforcement operation", angering Taipei.

China said the operation was in response to an announcement by Japan and the Philippines that they would begin formal talks on their maritime boundaries, which Beijing viewed as involving Chinese waters off Taiwan.

Taking lawmaker questions in parliament, Hsieh Ching-chin, deputy head of Taiwan's Coast Guard, said if an "incident" happened in those waters, ships should notify Taiwan's Coast Guard and "not respond to the so-called boarding inspections" by Chinese vessels.

"If the situation is urgent, Coast Guard vessels will sail between the two ships to separate them," he added, referring to Taiwanese ships.

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

China has repeatedly said the waters around Taiwan are Chinese and that Taipei has no sovereignty of its own.

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'China has no jurisdiction'

Hsieh said that if a similar request was made to a foreign-registered ship inside Taiwan waters, then "in order to defend our national sovereignty and maintain order in our waters, we will intervene".

"In our waters, China has no jurisdiction," he added.

Neither Taiwan nor China reported any ship boarding requests during last month's Chinese patrol.

But Taiwan said the Chinese coast guard ships "harassed" commercial shipping by asking them information about their point of origin and destination and claiming jurisdiction.

In 2024, Chinese coast guard personnel briefly boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat near Taiwan-controlled islands next to China's coast.

China's patrols off Taiwan's east coast have prompted concern from the US, Britain, France and Germany.

Stepped up pressure

Taiwan says last month's Chinese patrols were part of a broader pattern of harassment that has shown how Beijing is shifting its tactics away from purely military activity to quasi-civilian "grey zone" operations.

In a written report to lawmakers, the Coast Guard said China is now using a variety of vessels, including ocean survey ships, to conduct routine operations not only around Taiwan but also the Taiwan-controlled Pratas and Itu Aba islands in the South China Sea.

This "reflects a pattern of grey-zone harassment that is multi-point, multi-form, and cross-regional across maritime areas", it added.

"We will take all necessary measures to defend national sovereignty and maritime security, and to ensure the freedom and safety of vessel navigation," it added.

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