Taiwan expels Chinese dredgers

Taipei, Jan. 25: Taiwan expelled nearly 4,000 Chinese vessels illegally dredging sand from its waters in 2020, authorities said on Monday, a more than six-fold increase on the year before as Beijing seeks to heap pressure on the democratic island.

China has taken an increasingly belligerent tone towards Taiwan under President Xi Jinping — especially over the last twelve months with Beijing’s jets and bombers buzzing the island at a record rate.

But the waters surrounding Taiwan have become another hot zone.

Taiwan’s coastguard on Monday said that it recorded a huge spike in Chinese sand dredgers illegally entering its waters.

Up to November last year,

it

CHINA’S LEADERS view Taiwan as their territory and have vowed one day to seize it, by force if necessary.

expelled 3,969 vessels, compared to 600 in 2019 and 71 in

2018.

China’s leaders view Taiwan as their territory and have vowed one day to seize it, by force if necessary.

It has increased economic and diplomatic pressure since Taiwanese President Tsai Ingwen took office in 2016, as she rejects the idea that the island is part of “one China”.

Chinese jets made a record

380 incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) last year as analysts warned tensions were at their highest since the mid-1990s.

Beijing was infuriated

Taipei’s dramatically warming relations with Washington under former president Donald Trump who used the island as leverage as he feuded with China on a host of issues.

After the inauguration of US President Joe Biden last week - to which Taipei’s de facto ambassador was invited — Beijing sent a fleet of jets and bombers into the ADIZ on both Saturday and Sunday.

That sparked the first statement on Taiwan from the Biden administration as it warned against China's “attempts to intimidate” the island would not upset Washington’s “rock-solid” to an xx ally xx.

The same day a US aircraft carrier group sailed into the South China Sea on a “freedom of navigation” exercise.

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