Taiwanese tourists carry on despite China threat

Tourist Joseph Lin practicing stand up paddling in the waters on the Kinmen islands with a view of Xiamen city (back) on the Chinese mainland – AFP Photo

Visiting Taiwan’s tiny Kinmen Islands last week, Joseph Lin practiced standing up on his paddleboard, drifting across from the Chinese city of Xiamen, where days earlier fighter jets had screamed overhead.

The Taiwanese islets, just two miles from China’s coast, have become a popular tourist destination, and Beijing’s massive military drills this month failed to deter domestic visitors from jetting closer to their sabre-rattling neighbour.

Lin, a former soldier from southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County, refused to cancel his three-day trip, saying he believed China was only trying to appease nationalist sentiment at home with 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 easy to seize Taiwan,” the 35-year-old told AFP after his paddle under the beating summer sun.

The price would be too high.

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are at their highest in decades as Beijing rages against a visit to Taipei earlier this month by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In response, China put on unprecedented military drills, firing multiple missiles into the waters around Taiwan as well as dispatching fighter jets and warships to simulate a blockade of the island.

But even amid the flurry of military activity, tourism in Kinmen continues.

Domestic flights continue to fly to the island, tour groups and buses crowd the islands’ popular sites while visitors hoarding souvenirs dot its airport floor.

Visitors still peer out of its observation posts, walk by murals denouncing Beijing and take pictures of China from between the anti-landing spikes that dot the beach.

Life goes on
Kinmen is a former battleground where residents had to contend with occasional shelling from Chinese artillery into the late 1970s.

But the islets opened up to tourists in 1993 and have never looked back.

Wartime relics and monuments of its militarized past are star attractions, regardless of Kinmen’s proximity to China and the lingering threat of invasion.

“There is no use worrying (about a Chinese invasion). We should be calm and get on with our lives,” said Vanessa Chu, 52, who travelled from the coastal city of Hsinchu.

“I hope for peace, as Taiwan is small and if the tensions continue, Taiwan will suffer more than China,” she added, speaking alongside her two sons.