While visiting Taiwan’s tiny Kinmen Islands last week, Joseph Lin trained the state on his paddle board, drifting through the Chinese city of Xiamen, where fighter jets had sped past his head.
Taiwanese islets, just two miles off China’s coast, have a popular tourist destination, and Beijing’s large army training this month hasn’t deterred domestic visitors from approaching their neighbor.
Lin, a former soldier from Pingtung County in southern Taiwan, refused to cancel his three-day trip and said he believed China only seeks to appease nationalist sentiment at home through its show of force.
“I think Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has sent a warning to (Chinese President) Xi Jinping that it would not be so simple for Taiwan,” the 35-year-old told AFP after paddling under the scorching summer sun.
“The value would be too high.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are at their highest point in decades, as Beijing was angered by Taipei earlier this month by US House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In response, China conducted unprecedented military exercises, firing several missiles into the waters around Taiwan and sending fighter jets and warships to simulate a blockade of the island.
But even amid the wave of military activity, tourism in Kinmen continues.
Domestic flights continue to arrive on the island, tour teams and buses invade the islands’ popular sights as visitors collect souvenirs on the airport floor.
Visitors still watch from their stalls, walk past the artwork denouncing Beijing, and take photographs of China among the anti-landing spikes that dot the beach.
Life goes on
Kinmen is a former battlefield where locals faced occasional Chinese artillery bombardment until the late 1970s.
But the islets opened to tourists in 1993 and looked back.
War relics and monuments from its militarized afterlife are the main attractions, regardless of Kinmen’s proximity to China and the lingering risk of invasion.
“There’s no point in being worried (about a Chinese invasion). We want to be calm and get on with our lives,” said Vanessa Chu, 52, who traveled from the waterfront to the city of Hsinchu.
“I hope there will be peace, Taiwan is small and if tensions continue, Taiwan will suffer more than China,” he added, along with his two sons.
Many citizens of Kinmen have a favorable opinion of China after years of close ties with industry and tourism: the island’s main source of drinking water is a pipeline from the mainland.
Still, visitors from China are lately banned from traveling there due to Taiwan’s strict Covid-19 rules, which are those of Beijing.
The Chinese Communist Party sees the whole of Taiwan as its territory hoping to be “unified” one day, through force if necessary.
But on the other side of the Xiamen Strait, the locals live much like those on the beaches of Kinmen.
A bride smiles and poses for a photo shoot in the sand as a boy gives binoculars to tourists to practice the small islands china bombed more than half a century ago, killing more than six hundred people.
‘Use of force’
Near Lieyu, like Little Kinmen and the inhabited islet closest to China, Taiwanese tourists have their own view of the water.
They use a telescope in a castle to see a Xiamen billboard that reads “One country, two systems, unify China. “
The slogan is intended for Taiwanese viewers, a reference to China’s deal that secured Hong Kong secure freedoms and a high degree of autonomy before it overcame British rule in 1997.
But the vast majority of Taiwanese have long rejected this style, especially after seeing Beijing weigh on political freedoms in Hong Kong over the past 3 years following mass pro-democracy protests.
During AFP’s visits to Kinmen, some tourists laughed when a consultant joked that the Chinese might have replaced Xiamen’s slogan with “Use of force, unify China” as he struggled to locate the billboard with the telescope.
An elderly tourist from Taipei who refused to call said he thought China would not attack Taiwan because “there would be too many casualties. “
Lin, the former soldier, said he is in a position to fight if necessary.
“Taiwan is my home and I am in a position to stand out,” he said, rowing in hand.
PromotedSave the newest songs, in JioSaavn. com
“If we don’t make Taiwan, who will? Our democracy is precious.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed. )
Follow:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Advertising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .