China's latest weapon against Taiwan: the sand dredger

Chunghwa Telecom Co

05/02/2021 12:06

By Yimou Lee
    ON BOARD THE TAIWAN COAST GUARD SHIP PP-10062, East China
Sea, Feb 5 (Reuters) - T aiwanese coast guard commander Lin
Chie-ming is on the frontline of a new type of warfare that
China is waging against Taiwan. China's weapon? Sand.
    On a chilly morning in late January, Lin, clad in an orange
uniform, stood on the rolling deck of his boat as it patrolled
in choppy waters off the Taiwan-run Matsu Islands. A few
kilometers away, the Chinese coast was faintly visible from
Lin's boat. He was on the lookout for Chinese sand-dredging
ships encroaching on waters controlled by Taiwan.
    The Chinese goal, Taiwanese officials say: pressure Taiwan
by tying down the island democracy's naval defenses and
undermining the livelihoods of Matsu residents.
    Half an hour into the patrol, Lin's nine-man crew spotted
two 3,000-ton dredgers, dwarfing their 100-ton vessel. Parked
just outside Taiwan's waters, neither of the dredgers clearly
displayed their names, making it difficult for a crew member to
identify them as he peered through binoculars.
    Upon spotting Lin's boat, armed with two water cannons and a
machine gun, the dredgers quickly pulled up anchor and headed
back toward the Chinese coast.
    "They think this area is part of China's territory," said
Lin, referring to Chinese dredgers that have been intruding into
Matsu's waters. "They usually leave after we drive them away,
but they come back again after we go away."
    The sand-dredging is one weapon China is using against
Taiwan in a campaign of so-called gray-zone warfare, which
entails using irregular tactics to exhaust a foe without
actually resorting to open combat. Since June last year, Chinese
dredgers have been swarming around the Matsu Islands, dropping
anchor and scooping up vast amounts of sand from the ocean bed
for construction projects in China.
    The ploy is taxing for Taiwan's civilian-run Coast Guard
Administration, which is now conducting round-the-clock patrols
in an effort to repel the Chinese vessels. Taiwanese officials
and Matsu residents say the dredging forays have had other
corrosive impacts - disrupting the local economy, damaging
undersea communication cables and intimidating residents and
tourists to the islands. Local officials also fear that the
dredging is destroying marine life nearby.
    
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    Besides Matsu, where 13,300 people live, the coast guard
says China has also been dredging in the shallow waters near the
median line of the Taiwan Strait, which has long served as an
unofficial buffer separating China and Taiwan.
    Last year, Taiwan expelled nearly 4,000 Chinese
sand-dredgers and sand-transporting vessels from waters under
its control, most of them in the area close to the median line,
according to Taiwan's coast guard. That's a 560% jump over the
600 Chinese vessels that were repelled in all of 2019.
    In Matsu, there were also many Chinese vessels that sailed
close to Taiwanese waters without actually entering, forcing the
coast guard to be on constant alert.
    The dredging is a "gray-zone strategy with Chinese
characteristics," said Su Tzu-yun, an associate research fellow
at Taiwan's top military think tank, the Institute for National
Defense and Security Research. "You dredge for sand on the one
hand, but if you can also put pressure on Taiwan, then that's
great, too."
    
    'PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE'
    Sand is just part of the gray-zone campaign. China, which
claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, has
been using other irregular tactics to wear down the island of 23
million. The most dramatic: In recent months, the People's
Liberation Army, China's military, has been dispatching
warplanes in menacing forays toward the island. Taiwan has been
scrambling military aircraft on an almost daily basis to head
off the threat, placing an onerous burden on its air force.
    Taiwanese military officials and Western analysts say
China's gray-zone tactics are meant to drain the resources and
erode the will of the island's armed forces - and make such
harassment so routine that the world grows inured to it. China's
sand dredging, said one Taiwanese security official
investigating the matter, is "part of their psychological
warfare against Taiwan, similar to what they are doing in
Taiwan's southwestern airspace," where the Chinese jets are
intruding.
    China's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement to Reuters
that Taiwan's claims that Beijing is allowing sand-dredging
boats to engage in "illegal operations" near Matsu and the
median line are baseless. The office did say it has taken steps
to stop illegal sand-dredging, without elaborating.
    The office also said Taiwan is "an inseparable part of
China." Taiwanese authorities, it alleged, are using their
claims of control over the waters near the islands to "detain
mainland boats and even resorting to dangerous and violent means
in their treatment of mainland crews."
    Asked about China's gray-zone actions, Taiwan's Mainland
Affairs Council, which oversees policy toward China, said the
Chinese Communist Party was engaging in "harassment" with the
aim of putting pressure on Taiwan. The council said the
government had recently increased penalties for illegal dredging
in its waters.
    Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense did not respond to
questions.
    Chinese President Xi Jinping has not ruled out the use of
force to subdue Taiwan. If he succeeds - by gray-zone tactics or
outright war - it would dramatically undermine America's decades
of strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific region and propel
China toward preeminence in the area.
    The Matsu Islands are almost an hour by plane from Taipei.
They are one of a handful of island groups close to China's
coast that Taiwan has governed since 1949, when the defeated
Republic of China government, under Chiang Kai-shek, fled to
Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war. The Matsu, Kinmen and
Pratas island groups lie several hundred kilometers from
mainland Taiwan. Their isolation, and their much-reduced
Taiwanese military presence since the end of the Cold War, would
make them highly vulnerable to a Chinese attack.
    Matsu is just nine kilometers from the Chinese coastline at
the closest point. The island has a total of just nine coast
guard ships, ranging from 10 to 100 tons. On some days,
government officials said, the coast guard has faced hundreds of
Chinese vessels, ranging in size from 1,000 to 3,000 tons, in
and around the island's waters. Taiwan says those waters extend
six kilometers out from the coastline here. China doesn't
officially recognize any claims of sovereignty by Taiwan.
    At one point last year, more than 200 Chinese sand-dredging
and transport boats were spotted operating south of Nangan, the
main Matsu islet, three Taiwanese officials told Reuters. Lin,
the coast guard commander, recalls a similar scene playing out
on the morning of Oct. 25, when he and his colleagues
encountered an armada of roughly 100 Chinese boats. That day, he
said, his team expelled seven Chinese vessels that breached
Matsu waters.
    "People were frightened by the scene," he said, referring to
local residents. "They were speculating about the purpose of the
mainland boats and whether they would pose a security threat to
the Matsu region."
    
    NEW BOATS
    In some stand-offs, Taiwan's coast guard has sprayed
high-power water cannons at the Chinese ships in an attempt to
drive them away. Last year, Taiwan impounded four Chinese
vessels and detained 37 crew members, according to the coast
guard. Ten of those arrested were given sentences of six to
seven months in prison. The others are still on trial, the coast
guard said.
    Taiwan is in the process of beefing up its coast guard,
partly in response to the dredging threat. Last year, President
Tsai Ing-wen commissioned into service the first of a new class
of coast guard vessel, based on the design of an
"aircraft-carrier killer," a missile boat for the navy.
    More than 100 new coast guard boats will be built in the
next decade, Tsai said in December, vowing to enforce a
crackdown with "no mercy" on Chinese dredging in Taiwan waters.
In the meantime, larger patrol boats were sent to temporarily
reinforce the coast guard in Matsu, whose 117 members are now
conducting 24-hour patrols.
    The number of sand dredgers off the coast of Matsu dropped
significantly at the end of last year, as winter weather brought
rougher seas that make dredging difficult. When the seasons
change and the seas are calmer, local residents fear that
dredgers will be back.
    From the late 1950s through to the late 1970s, Chinese
forces occasionally bombarded the Matsu Islands with artillery
shells. Remnants of that era are still visible across the island
group, from old air-raid tunnels to anti-Communist slogans
displayed on the rugged cliffs of Nangan island.
    Today, Matsu is a popular tourist destination. Its
picturesque old-stone homes have been turned into fashionable
guest houses.
    But locals say China's dredging tactics are hurting their
livelihoods. Chen Kuo-chiang, who runs a seafood restaurant on
Nangan, says the dredging has led to a drastic decline in the
number of fish he catches off the island. Three years ago, he
was hooking a dozen a day with his rod, said Chen, 39, as he
stood fishing on some rocks in a Nangan port. Now, he said, he
struggles to catch one or two.
    The fears of a Chinese invasion are palpable on Nangan. Chen
thinks the sand dredging might be a precursor to an attack by
Chinese forces. "We don't want to be ruled by mainland China,"
he said. "We have freedom, which is limited over there."
    Tsai Chia-chen, who works at an ocean-front bed and
breakfast, said concern was particularly high ahead of the U.S.
presidential election in early November. At the time, said Tsai,
rumors circulated that China might seize the window of
opportunity with the United States distracted by the election to
launch an attack on Taiwan. The large number of Chinese dredgers
around the islands in late October added to the anxiety, she
recalled.
    "Our guests were obviously worried," she said. "There was
only one small Taiwan coast guard boat, surrounded by many huge
dredgers."
    
    DAMAGED CABLES
    On five occasions last year, the dredgers damaged undersea
communication cables between Nangan and Juguang, another isle in
the Matsu group, the three Taiwanese officials told Reuters.
Mobile phone and internet services for the islanders were
disrupted, they said. There were no such incidents in 2019.
    State-backed Chunghwa Telecom said it spent T$60 million
(about $2 million) to fix the cables last year. It also hired a
local fishing boat to conduct daily patrols to ensure the safety
of the cables.
    The coast guard said most of the fully loaded Chinese
vessels around Matsu have been seen heading with their sand in a
northerly direction, towards the city of Wenzhou, where the
local Chinese government has been touting a massive land
reclamation project.
    Known as the Ou Fei project, the area has been reclaimed for
a new economic zone. It encompasses about 66 square kilometers -
more than double the area of all the Matsu Islands. On its
website, the Wenzhou local government describes the project as a
"major strategic development for the future" of the city.
    The Wenzhou city government didn't respond to a request for
comment.
    Following contact on the local level between the two sides,
China detained several dredging boats last month, according to
Taiwan's coast guard. But a Taiwan-initiated meeting with
authorities in the port city of Fuzhou to discuss the dredging
was "postponed indefinitely" and without explanation in late
December, said Wang Chien-hua, who oversees economic development
in the local government that administers Matsu.
    Taiwan had been planning to use the online meeting to urge
Chinese authorities to enforce mandatory registration for
dredgers and punish those who go out to sea without reporting to
the authorities, according to an internal government note
reviewed by Reuters.
    The Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing said the local
authorities on both sides maintained "necessary communication
and collaboration" to ensure order on the seas.
    Aboard his patrol vessel, Taiwanese commander Lin sounded
defiant. The coast guard, he said, "will use force to drive
away" Chinese ships that enter Taiwan's waters.
    "That way we can reassure the people in Matsu. At the
moment, we are capable of doing this job."
    

    <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
China launches 'gray-zone' warfare to subdue Taiwan    https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/hongkong-taiwan-military/
The China Challenge: Inside Xi Jinping's military revolution   
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/china-army/
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>
 (Reporting by Yimou Lee. Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard
in Taipei. Edited by Peter Hirschberg.)
 ((Yimou.Lee@thomsonreuters.com))