By AFP | 2025-11-17

With a clear view of China's skyscraper-studded coastline, Taiwanese coast guard captain Huang Heng-chun steers his patrol boat through choppy waters around a group of islands controlled by Taipei.

Huang and his crew are on alert for China Coast Guard ships, which have been entering sensitive waters around Kinmen with greater frequency as Beijing dials up pressure on Taiwan.

China claims all of Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control.

Just 2km from the closest point in China and 200km from Taiwan proper, Kinmen has been on the front line of friction between Beijing and Taipei for decades.

In late October, AFP journalists received the rare opportunity to join Huang and his colleagues as they scanned the waters around Kinmen for Chinese ships.

China's coast guard began increasing patrols near Kinmen after two Chinese nationals died during a chase by Taiwan's coast guard near the tiny archipelago in February 2024.

Since then "their presence has become much more frequent," Huang, a veteran of Taiwan's coast guard in Kinmen, told AFP.

Chinese coast guard ships enter Kinmen's waters about four times a month. "Now our work encompasses more issues related to national security," Huang said.

Across the narrow strip of water, AFP could see the skyline of the Chinese city of Xiamen, the piers of China's unfinished Xiamen-Kinmen bridge and Xiamen's new international airport, due to open next year.

China's patrols around Kinmen are part of Beijing's "gray-zone" operations against Taiwan -- coercive tactics that fall short of acts of war -- Taipei and analysts say.

They are also a way for China to test tactics for a potential blockade of Taiwan.

The Chinese hope "to make the public or the citizens feel that this area belongs to them," said Huang. "Of course, that is simply not the case; it never has been."

'Can't push back too hard'

Taiwan's coast guard conducts law enforcement patrols around Kinmen 24 hours a day, assisted by coastal radar and thermal imaging systems to detect Chinese fishing boats, smugglers and swimmers.

In more recent years, it has played an "increasingly important" role in national security, said Chia Chih-kuo, deputy director of the Coast Guard Administration's Kinmen-Matsu-Penghu Branch.

That includes shadowing Chinese coast guard ships and responding to suspicious vessels lingering near Taiwan's subsea telecom cables.

The agency's resources and workforce, however, are "insufficient" for their "increasingly complex and diverse missions," Chia said, adding that it hoped to secure more funding.

Taiwan's coast guard is massively outmatched by China's fleet, the largest in the world.

When China's 1,000-ton ships enter Kinmen's waters, Taiwan follows them with 100-ton boats -- the biggest they have there, because of shallow waters closer to shore.

Taiwanese personnel use radios, loudspeakers and light-emitting diode signs to order the Chinese out.

The Taiwanese boats also have water cannon and a 20mm static machine gun but are careful to avoid a confrontation that "could lead to unimaginable consequences," Huang said.

"In most countries, the Chinese coast guard would be seen as a major regional navy," said Alessio Patalano, a specialist in maritime strategy at King's College London.

"You want to push back, but you can't really suggest to push back too hard," Patalano told AFP.

"Who's going to risk further escalation with China these days ... over a couple of islands that most people don't know about?"

'National duty'

Anti-landing spikes positioned along Kinmen's shores and old military forts facing China are grim reminders of the archipelago's past battles.

When Chinese Communist insurgents won a civil war in 1949, their Nationalist enemies fled to Taiwan but managed to hold Kinmen.

The islands were a flashpoint during the Cold War and were heavily shelled by China in the 1950s.

But they retain strong links with their far larger neighbor.

China supplies water to Kinmen, and a ferry service takes islanders to Xiamen for shopping or business, bringing Chinese tourists in return.

Beijing has made clear it wants to integrate Kinmen by deepening its economic and infrastructure connections with China.

Coast guard patrols are "central" to those efforts, Erik Green, an analyst of China's gray-zone activities at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, wrote in July.

Despite the risk of war, Huang is clear-eyed about the coast guard's role in defending Taiwan's "sovereignty and jurisdiction" over the waters.

"It's a necessary act of national duty," he said.

"As long as we're here doing our job, it shows we have both the authority and the ability to govern."