Taiwan takes lawmakers on Coast Guard patrol near China
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- Taiwan's Coast Guard hosted seven foreign lawmakers from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China aboard patrol ship PP-10081 for a 90-minute tour of Kinmen waters on July 9, believed to be the first such trip.
- China's Coast Guard began regular patrols around Kinmen in 2024 after two Chinese nationals died fleeing Taiwan's Coast Guard in restricted waters, and expanded last month to Taiwan's east coast in a "law enforcement" operation that alarmed the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany.
- Tom Tugendhat, a British former security minister, told Reuters from the boat that being in waters China claims jurisdiction was "an important show of support for Taiwan" and had "nothing to do with Beijing."
- Ukrainian lawmaker Yulia Sirko drew parallels to her country's 2022 invasion, warning from the ship: "if you want peace, start preparing for war. And unfortunately, we didn't do it in the right time."
- Chinese Coast Guard vessels did not appear during the trip but entered Kinmen waters the previous day, according to Taiwan's Coast Guard; encounters between the two sides around Kinmen generally consist of radio warnings and verbal sparring rather than confrontation.
- Kinmen sits just kilometers from Xiamen, including its new airport — which Taiwan says Beijing has failed to provide safety information for given its proximity to Kinmen's airport, a concrete grievance the diplomatic framing partially overshadows.
Why it matters: This is the first known instance of Taiwan hosting foreign legislators aboard an active Coast Guard patrol, giving Taipei rare international political cover as Beijing's maritime operations increasingly test its control of its own waters. Lawmakers from seven countries, including the UK, Ukraine, India, and New Zealand, publicly stood in waters China claims, escalating Taipei's diplomatic pushback beyond statements into a visible, on-water assertion of jurisdiction.
