Kinmen, Taiwan – On Taiwan’s sandy coasts, Liu Xi Jiu puts on his safetyglasses as he prepares to race throughout one of the most unsafe extends of water in the world.
Originally from Beijing, he is completing in the just occasion of its kind, a seven-kilometre (4.3-mile) swimming race throughout a geopolitical hotspot, from Taiwan’s offshore Kinmen Islands to the city of Xiamen on China’s east coast.
Around him, 200 professionalathletes from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau laugh and joke as they warm up. In front of them, past the rows of anti-invasion spikes that line Kinmen’s golden beaches, Xiamen’s unique high-risebuildings sparkle in the earlymorning sun.
But the warm weathercondition and sense of friendly competitors mask the progressively tense relations throughout the strait that separates democratic Taiwan from China, which declares the island as its own.
The swimmers, preparing to make the gruelling 90-minute crossing, hope their friendship can serve as an example for smoother exchanges throughout these choppy waters.
Kinmen and its locals have constantly had a close relationship with China, Wu Zeng Yun, CEO of the Kinmen-Matsu Joint Services Centre, informed Al Jazeera.
While Wu’s office now serves as the regional branch of Taiwan’s main executive, the structure still bears the name Fujian Provincial Government. Emblazoned in gold above the enforcing entryway, the characters are a suggestion of the time when Kinmen was part of China’s Fujian Province.
“In the previous, my uncles did company in Tong’an on the mainland,” Wu stated, referring to the historical district noticeable throughout the waters from simply outside his workplace.
“It was a shared living location,” he included. “You just went to the pier, boarded a ship to Tong’an, and paid the fare.”
But after the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, whatever altered. Facing defeat at the hands of the Communists, the nationalist Republic of China federalgovernment ranaway Beijing and developed itself in Taiwan. It likewise maintained control of the Kinmen Islands, more than 300km (186 miles) from Taipei.
The island’s locals were cut off from the province they had when been part of and quickly discovered themselves on the front lines of a political fight inbetween Taipei and Beijing that at times emerged into violence.
With China routinely shelling the island till 1979, citizens can keepinmind concealing in the bunkers that dot the island, taking cover as bombs drizzled down on their towns.
China declared its desire to usage force to take manage of Taiwan, which thinksabout the area its own, in a white paper as justrecently as2022 The federalgovernment in Taipei states the individuals of Taiwan oughtto be the ones to choose their future.
Heightened stress
Standing in Kinmen’s Shuitou Pier Ferry Terminal, Legislator Chen Yu Jen stated her daddy was on board one of the veryfirst boats that reconnected Kinmen with China in 2001.
At the time, it was hoped such connections might aid enhance relations inbetween Taipei and Beijing, however as Chen makes her method to the departure gate, preparing to follow in her dad’s steps, that hope has yet to materialise.
In mid-February, Kinmen was when onceagain the focus of cross-strait stress after a clash inbetween the Taiwanese coastguard and a Chinese ship captured fishing in Kinmen’s waters. Two of the anglers passedaway.
To make matters evenworse, it was found that the Chinese boat had capsized after it clashed with the Taiwanese ship, a reality that Taipei had atfirst leftout from its account of the occurrence.
In action, the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG), indirectly under the command of Beijing’s Central Military Commission, stepped up its existence in the area.
Looking out throughout the bothered waters from his little boat, regional angler and company owner Lu Wen Shiung states the fishing neighborhood has currently felt the effect.
“When cross-strait relations were less tense, we had great relations with the seaside anglers from the mainland,” he remembered. “If the mainland anglers had a great catch, they would share with us.”
But with CCG ships start to frequently cross into Kinmen’s territorial waters, a line that was mainly appreciated upuntil February, Lu now dealswith pressur