[新聞] China’s latest weapon against Taiwan: the sand dredger

看板Gossiping作者DFIGHT (Dknight)時間3年前 (2021/02/06 03:04)推噓-1(6推 7噓 29→)

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備註請放最後面違者新聞文章刪除 1.媒體來源: ※ 例如蘋果日報、自由時報（請參考版規下方的核准媒體名單） Reuters 2.記者署名: ※ 若新聞沒有記者名字或編輯名字，請勿張貼，否則會被水桶14天 ※ 外電至少要有來源或編輯如:法新社 Reporting by Yimou Lee Photos by Ann Wang Graphics by Marco Hernandez PUBLISHED FEB. 5, 2021 3.完整新聞標題: ※ 標題沒有完整寫出來 ---> 依照板規刪除文章 China’s latest weapon against Taiwan: the sand dredger 4.完整新聞內文: ※ 社論特稿都不能貼！違者刪除（政治類水桶3個月)，貼廣告也會被刪除喔！可詳看版規 Chinese dredging ships are swarming Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, forcing the loc al coast guard to run round-the-clock patrols. The tactic is part of Beijing ’s escalating campaign of irregular ‘gray-zone’ warfare on Taipei. Reuter s joined the coast guard on patrol. Taiwanese coast guard commander Lin Chie-ming is on the frontline of a new t ype 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 o n the rolling deck of his boat as it patrolled in choppy waters off the Taiw an-run Matsu Islands. A few kilometers away, the Chinese coast was faintly v isible from Lin’s boat. He was on the lookout for Chinese sand-dredging shi ps 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 dre dgers, dwarfing their 100-ton vessel. Parked just outside Taiwan’s waters, neither of the dredgers clearly displayed their names, making it difficult f or 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, t he dredgers quickly pulled up anchor and headed back toward the Chinese coas t. “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 us ually leave after we drive them away, but they come back again after we go a way.” 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 exh aust a foe without actually resorting to open combat. Since June last year, Chinese dredgers have been swarming around the Matsu Islands, dropping ancho r and scooping up vast amounts of sand from the ocean bed for construction p rojects in China. The ploy is taxing for Taiwan’s civilian-run Coast Guard Administration, w hich is now conducting round-the-clock patrols in an effort to repel the Chi nese vessels. Taiwanese officials and Matsu residents say the dredging foray s 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 l ife nearby. 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 Stra it, which has long served as an unofficial buffer separating China and Taiwa n. Last year, Taiwan expelled nearly 4,000 Chinese sand-dredgers and sand-trans porting vessels from waters under its control, most of them in the area clos e to the median line, according to Taiwan’s coast guard. That’s a 560% jum p over the 600 Chinese vessels that were repelled in all of 2019. Boats expelled by Matsu’s coast guard About 240 Chinese sand-dredging and transport vessels were expelled by the M atsu coast guard between June and December of 2020. Below are the numbers ex pelled daily in the second half of the year. Growing intrusions The number of these vessels entering all Taiwan-controlled waters soared las t year, according to Taiwan’s coast guard. Below are the annual figures sin ce 2017. In Matsu, there were also many Chinese vessels that sailed close to Taiwanes e waters without actually entering, forcing the coast guard to be on constan t 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 tan k, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research. “You dredge fo r sand on the one hand, but if you can also put pressure on Taiwan, then tha t’s great, too.” Sand is just part of the gray-zone campaign. China, which claims democratica lly-governed Taiwan as its own territory, has been using other irregular tac tics to wear down the island of 23 million. The most dramatic: In recent mon ths, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, has been dispatching warplanes in menacing forays toward the island. Taiwan has been scrambling m ilitary 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 tac tics are meant to drain the resources and erode the will of the island’s ar med forces - and make such harassment so routine that the world grows inured to it. China’s sand dredging, said one Taiwanese security official investi gating the matter, is “part of their psychological warfare against Taiwan, similar to what they are doing in Taiwan’s southwestern airspace,” where t he 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 a uthorities, it alleged, are using their claims of control over the waters ne ar the islands to “detain mainland boats and even resorting to dangerous an d violent means in their treatment of mainland crews.” Commander Lin Chie-ming aboard his coast guard vessel in late January. “The y usually leave after we drive them away, but they come back again after we go away,” he said, referring to the Chinese sand dredgers. | Photo by Ann W ang/REUTERS Asked about China’s gray-zone actions, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees policy toward China, said the Chinese Communist Party was eng aging in “harassment” with the aim of putting pressure on Taiwan. The coun cil said the government had recently increased penalties for illegal dredgin g 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 Ta iwan. If he succeeds - by gray-zone tactics or outright war - it would drama tically undermine America’s decades of strategic dominance in the Asia-Paci fic 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 s ince 1949, when the defeated Republic of China government, under Chiang Kai- shek, fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war. The Matsu, Kinmen a nd Pratas island groups lie several hundred kilometers from mainland Taiwan. Their isolation, and their much-reduced Taiwanese military presence since t he end of the Cold War, would make them highly vulnerable to a Chinese attac k. Matsu is just nine kilometers from the Chinese coastline at the closest poin t. 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 face d 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 kilomet ers out from the coastline here. China doesn’t officially recognize any cla ims of sovereignty by Taiwan. At one point last year, more than 200 Chinese sand-dredging and transport bo ats were spotted operating south of Nangan, the main Matsu islet, three Taiw anese officials told Reuters. Lin, the coast guard commander, recalls a simi lar 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 t eam expelled seven Chinese vessels that breached Matsu waters. Satellite image taken on Oct. 25, 2020, 02.50pm local time by Sentinel ESA. “People were frightened by the scene,” he said, referring to local residen ts. “They were speculating about the purpose of the mainland boats and whet her they would pose a security threat to the Matsu region.” In some stand-offs, Taiwan’s coast guard has sprayed high-power water canno ns 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 th e coast guard. Ten of those arrested were given sentences of six to seven mo nths in prison. The others are still on trial, the coast guard said. A coast guard vessel sprays a Chinese sand dredger with a water cannon after it entered Matsu’s waters in late October last year. | Taiwan’s Coast Gua rd Administration Taiwan is in the process of beefing up its coast guard, partly in response t o the dredging threat. Last year, President Tsai Ing-wen commissioned into s ervice the first of a new class of coast guard vessel, based on the design o f 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 s aid 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 c onducting 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 dredg ing difficult. When the seasons change and the seas are calmer, local reside nts fear that dredgers will be back. From the late 1950s through to the late 1970s, Chinese forces occasionally b ombarded the Matsu Islands with artillery shells. Remnants of that era are s till visible across the island group, from old air-raid tunnels to anti-Comm unist slogans displayed on the rugged cliffs of Nangan island. Today, Matsu is a popular tourist destination. Its picturesque old-stone hom es have been turned into fashionable guest houses. After a Chinese sand dredger was detained by the coast guard in July last ye ar, it was forced to pump back the sand it had taken near the coast of Nanga n island. | Video by Aya Liu 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. Th ree 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 w ant to be ruled by mainland China,” he said. “We have freedom, which is li mited 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 Novem ber. At the time, said Tsai, rumors circulated that China might seize the wi ndow of opportunity with the United States distracted by the election to lau nch an attack on Taiwan. The large number of Chinese dredgers around the isl ands 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.” On five occasions last year, the dredgers damaged undersea communication cab les between Nangan and Juguang, another isle in the Matsu group, the three T aiwanese 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 d aily patrols to ensure the safety of the cables. The coast guard said most of the fully loaded Chinese vessels around Matsu h ave been seen heading with their sand in a northerly direction, towards the city of Wenzhou, where the local Chinese government has been touting a massi ve 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 descr ibes 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. Satellite image by Lansat, NASA. Following contact on the local level between the two sides, China detained s everal dredging boats last month, according to Taiwan’s coast guard. But a Taiwan-initiated meeting with authorities in the port city of Fuzhou to disc uss the dredging was “postponed indefinitely” and without explanation in l ate 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 authoriti es to enforce mandatory registration for dredgers and punish those who go ou t to sea without reporting to the authorities, according to an internal gove rnment note reviewed by Reuters. The Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing said the local authorities on both side s maintained “necessary communication and collaboration” to ensure order o n 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 T aiwan’s waters. “That way we can reassure the people in Matsu. At the moment, we are capabl e of doing this job.” . 5.完整新聞連結 (或短網址): ※ 當新聞連結過長時，需提供短網址方便網友點擊 https://tmsnrt.rs/3pTVkwt 6.備註: ※ 一個人三天只能張貼一則新聞，被刪或自刪也算額度內，超貼者水桶，請注意 ※ 備註請勿張貼三日內新聞(包含連結、標題等) .Reporting Yimou Lee Photos Ann Wang Graphics Marco Hernandez Editing Simon Scarr and Peter Hirschberg Additional reporting Ben Blanchard Sources Satellite images by Sentinel-2, European Space Agency. Matsu Coast Guard. Lansat, NASA. Bathymetry data from GEBCO 2019 grid. 對於中國來說港珠澳大橋的建立無疑是統治香港的最成功要素他們建立人工島嶼順利連通香港到中國之後派軍隊進駐鎮壓非武裝平民亂打亂抓姦淫婦女都很順暢和歷史上修路築運河的帝王87像古羅馬軍隊也差不多同樣方法修路打戰分析中國為何要這樣對香港台灣激進到如此地步利用抽砂築人工島花了大費力氣去玩放眼地圖北方專制統一帝國軍隊間諜都是老字號玩不過南方地險就做水壩欺壓第四世界發展中國家你要水不好意思要錢唷印度一樣地形不好擴張且人口相當打不贏西北集中營用藥不能生小孩滅絕白人種族做到一定處理好了台灣在新疆蒙古剛有問題時那時候沒有幫忙發聲就來不及了現在呢？整個壓力出口開始一致對向東方日本香港韓國台灣首當其衝大致都被影響到目前只剩下台灣有便宜可以撿尤其金門馬祖以共慘黨尿性要幾條抽砂船抽光金門馬祖畢竟共慘黨的腦袋是肥油這種攻擊方式十分符合腦殘只想修杆的獨裁者抽砂這種事情路透社以數據證明當地採訪衛星照片種種跡象表明共慘黨抽砂老早抽了兩三年了到底台灣要不要國軍去支援海巡我覺得是一大課題就算明面上還是海巡也需要軍事上給予一定信心我怕的是海巡像是警察一樣抓台灣併排停車違停這樣抓了又停還停在警車後面警察還不回頭像這樣的抽砂一直抽還是會擔心其心態的海巡到底有沒有金錢人力去打這永無止境的仗畢竟警察已經膩煩轎車併排都不抓了海域空域一直被侵擾拜登總算表態前幾天第一次開船來臺灣海峽我覺得以車用晶片來交易是划算的放大眼界觀察中國在歐洲的形象反而比俄羅斯美國好美國和俄羅斯在中國西方爭石油中國也只能跑來東方爭台灣香港台灣要是沒有台積電我估計美國鳥都不鳥日本的駐軍美國都想撤了台灣那麼小誰鳥你環太平洋島鏈根本不差台灣一個之前疫情口罩什麼Taiwan can help 根本沒路用台灣人不靠自己站起來誰鳥你積極打進全球供應鏈參與世界組織交流不要說什麼提升地位什麼的能夠有個位子坐有個名字在就好了台灣現在根本像是哈利波特裡面不能說的名字一說台灣中國就北七腦袋中風要求全世界不要有台灣這種像是不良少年聚眾霸凌老師管不來的電影情節比比皆是台灣這若是被孤立的校園可憐小乖乖能幹嘛？日本漫畫每天都在演啊上演主角逆襲來場轟轟烈烈的戀情之後還不是只能靠自己吸引高富帥來幫忙自己現在台灣像是美女一樣日本哈台要設廠德國也在哈我是歐洲白人你們這些亞洲拉基還不快上貢美國也哈說是台灣這樣很危險穿太少來他家設廠一種去你家就不危險的概念大家覺得中國會幹嘛？按照日本漫畫情節現在正上演到高潮啊中國走流氓下賤風美國走霸道總裁風日本的立場我已經是美國的女人了算是下水了正旁觀著呢台灣未來怎麼走抽砂船抽到什麼時候？美國也不可能一直派船來啊! 難道每一次都要美豬車用晶片這樣讓美國壓制？要不像日本那樣直接做美國小三？ -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc), 來自: 111.243.109.43 (臺灣) ※ 文章網址: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/Gossiping/M.1612551843.A.552.html

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