The Taiwan Coast Guard said on Wednesday that it had "expelled" four Chinese coast guard ships after they entered Taiwan-controlled territorial waters near Kinmen County earlier in the day.
According to a statement from the local Coast Guard branch, ships with numbers 14603, 14608, 14609 and 14513 entered "restricted waters" in the Kinmen Islands area at around 8:50 a.m. They entered from the southeast of Liaoning Bay and southwest of Damao Peak.
In response, Taiwanese authorities sent patrol ships with numbers 3505, 10081, 10039 and 10083, which followed the Chinese vessels and issued warnings urging them to leave the area.
The Chinese ships left the area at 11:03 a.m., the Taiwanese side said.
The Taiwanese branch denied a claim posted on the Chinese social network WeChat by the China Coast Guard that the four ships were conducting a “routine patrol” in the area.
Wednesday's incident followed a similar incident the previous day, when the same four Chinese ships entered Taiwan's territorial waters and stayed there for more than two hours before withdrawing. At that time, the Taiwanese side sent ships to escort and monitor them.
Since February 18, 2024, four days after a tragic accident involving an unregistered Chinese speedboat that resulted in the deaths of two Chinese sailors, the Chinese coast guard has been conducting regular incursions into Taiwan-controlled waters off Kinmen. According to Taiwanese authorities, such incursions occur on average four times a month and last about two hours.
The February incident occurred in "restricted waters" off Kinmen, prompting the Taiwanese coast guard to launch a pursuit. An investigation later determined that the pursuit resulted in a collision between the ships, causing the four Chinese crew members to fall overboard.
Due to the proximity of Kinmen County to the Chinese city of Xiamen, China's territorial waters encompass the entirety of Kinmen, leaving Taiwan with the compromise measure of demarcating the "forbidden" and "restricted" waters around the Kinmen Islands, which extend 1,500-10,000 meters from the archipelago's coast.