Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Minsc/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
AN ACTIVE DUTY military officer who is part of the Kinmen Garrison continues to be held in China after a fishing trip went awry led to his being rescued by the Chinese Coast Guard.
The man, a 25-year-old non-commissioned officer surnamed Hu, was fishing with a 40-year-old man surnamed Wu in March. However, engine issues and winds resulted in their being blown adrift and ended up drifting into Chinese waters. Subsequently, the two were rescued by the Fujian Coast Guard.
Wu has since been repatriated to Taiwan. However, Hu has not been repatriated due to the sensitivity regarding his status as a member of the military. As such, his family has sought to discharge him from active duty status, in the hopes that this can allow for his quicker return.
Hu’s detention in China took place after an incident in February when a Chinese fishing vessel intruded in Kinmen territorial waters and was ordered to stop for a search by the Taiwanese Coast Guard. When the boat fled, it collided with a Taiwanese Coast Guard vessel in pursuit and capsized. Two of the four men on the boat were without vital signs once recovered.
China subsequently used the incident as pretext to step up grey-zone tactics directed at Taiwan, including claiming that it would step up patrols against what it claimed to be recurrent harassment of Chinese ships by the Taiwanese Coast Guard. China later searched a Taiwanese tourist ferry under such auspices.
In the time since then, Taiwan has also seen increased Chinese naval activity directed at Taiwan. Yet tensions between Taiwan and China since the incident have not prevented joint operations such as search-and-rescue operations between the coast guards of both countries, as occurred in mid-March. Hu’s detention, then, would be an attempt to pressure Taiwan using the pretext of Hu’s status as a member of the military.
Photo credit: Kechinyuan/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
According to KMT Kinmen legislator Chen Yu-chen, Hu’s discharge may be of assistance in facilitating Hu’s repatriation. Chen has involved herself in the case, presumably to reinforce the KMT’s claim to be the only political party in Taiwan able to conduct communications with the CCP and, in this way, dial back cross-strait tensions.
In recent memory, apart from conducting trips to China that have involved meetings with Chinese government officials under these auspices. At the same time, this has also sometimes involved KMT politicians involving themselves in cases of Taiwanese detained or kidnapped by China.
For example, when Taiwanese human rights NGO worker Lee Ming-che was arrested by Chinese authorities in March 2017 after entering China, then-KMT legislator Alex Tsai claimed to have reached out to Chinese friends on his behalf. Lee was later jailed by China for five years on charges of seeking to subvert state power–this was thought to be due to Lee sharing the experience of Taiwan’s democratization with Chinese friends on WeChat. In particular, Tsai claimed to have interceded with Chinese friends after Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu, was approached by a former assistant of Tsai’s who claimed that Lee Ming-che would be released faster if Lee Ching-yu did not actively seek to campaign for her husband’s release.
Indeed, Chen claimed that negotiating for Hu’s release was the purpose for her trip to China in late April as part of a delegation led by KMT caucus convener Fu Kun-chi. Consequently, one sees how members of the KMT have sought to reinforce their claim of being able to communicate with the CCP in a way that the DPP cannot through both trips to China and negotiations with Chinese government officials over detained Taiwanese.
Either way, there has not been a strong public reaction to Hu’s ongoing detention in China. This has sometimes been the case with Taiwanese detained by China, with only Lee Ming-che’s case attracting substantial attention in past years. Among the Taiwanese held by China include pro-unification advocates, as a result of which it does not appear that one’s political leanings dissuade the Chinese government from arresting Taiwanese. It is to be seen whether there will be more detentions by China of Taiwanese going forward, particularly as the Lai administration takes office.