They are one of a handful of island groups close to China’s coast that Taiwan has governed since 1949, when the defeated Republic of China government, under Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war. The Matsu Islands are almost an hour by plane from Taipei. If he succeeds - by gray-zone tactics or outright war - it would dramatically undermine America’s decades of strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific region and propel China toward preeminence in the area. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense did not respond to questions.Ĭhinese President Xi Jinping has not ruled out the use of force to subdue Taiwan. The council said the government had recently increased penalties for illegal dredging in its waters. | Photo by Ann Wang/REUTERSĪsked about China’s gray-zone actions, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees policy toward China, said the Chinese Communist Party was engaging in “harassment” with the aim of putting pressure on Taiwan. “They usually leave after we drive them away, but they come back again after we go away,” he said, referring to the Chinese sand dredgers. The office also said Taiwan is “an inseparable part of China.” Taiwanese authorities, it alleged, are using their claims of control over the waters near the islands to “detain mainland boats and even resorting to dangerous and violent means in their treatment of mainland crews.”Ĭommander Lin Chie-ming aboard his coast guard vessel in late January. The office did say it has taken steps to stop illegal sand-dredging, without elaborating. China’s sand dredging, said one Taiwanese security official investigating the matter, is “part of their psychological warfare against Taiwan, similar to what they are doing in Taiwan’s southwestern airspace,” where the Chinese jets are intruding.Ĭhina’s Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement to Reuters that Taiwan’s claims that Beijing is allowing sand-dredging boats to engage in “illegal operations” near Matsu and the median line are baseless. Taiwanese military officials and Western analysts say China’s gray-zone tactics are meant to drain the resources and erode the will of the island’s armed forces - and make such harassment so routine that the world grows inured to it. Taiwan has been scrambling military aircraft on an almost daily basis to head off the threat, placing an onerous burden on its air force. The most dramatic: In recent months, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, has been dispatching warplanes in menacing forays toward the island. China, which claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, has been using other irregular tactics to wear down the island of 23 million. Sand is just part of the gray-zone campaign. “You dredge for sand on the one hand, but if you can also put pressure on Taiwan, then that’s great, too.” The dredging is a “gray-zone strategy with Chinese characteristics,” said Su Tzu-yun, an associate research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Housing a 27,000 square foot showroom, 275 in water slips, and a 150 boat dry stack storage building Dredge Harbor Boat Center LLC has grown from a sandpit to a 110 acre marine facility selling thousands of pleasure boats to generations of boaters in the greater Philadelphia area.In Matsu, there were also many Chinese vessels that sailed close to Taiwanese waters without actually entering, forcing the coast guard to be on constant alert. Today the Marina is still a family business run by Tammy and her brother Bill with the help of their children Lauren, Stacy, William and Robert. visited daily and continued to make a strong presence to their long standing customers and employees until his passing on July 21 2008. Tammy and Bill now perform the daily responsibilities of the Marina, but Bill Sr. In 1984 Bill Parsons children Tammy and Bill Jr. Bayliner and it's Sister boat lines Maxum and Trophy have been the principal boat lines of Dredge Harbor ever since. In 1946 the brothers became boat dealers for a company called Chris Craft, which remained their principle boat line until the New York Boat Show of 1978 where Jack Purcell convinced them to drop Chris Craft in favor of an up and coming west coast boat company called Bayliner. In the early forties the brothers Bill and Herb had developed the "sandpit" location with a few in water slips and began selling such famous boat lines as Broadwater Yachts and Greenwich boats, which they sold in varying quantities after the second world war. Dredge Harbor Marina was on its way to becoming the largest full service marina in the Delaware valley. The riverfront was being dredged and the brothers had the foresight to see the potential of the future boating needs of the area. and his brother Herb traded their interest in two cars for a down payment on a sandpit located along the riverfront.
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