By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI, May 24 (Reuters) – A Chinese coast guard ship left waters near Taiwan’s strategically located Pratas Islands at the top of the South China Sea on Sunday following a tense standoff and verbal sparring between the coast guards, Taiwan’s Coast Guard said.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a position the government in Taipei rejects.
China has pressured Taiwan by increasing its military presence around the island, and Taipei is on high alert for further Chinese actions after President Xi Jinping discussed Taiwan with U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing this month.
Lying roughly between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance – more than 400 km (250 miles) – from Taiwan island.
Taiwan’s Coast Guard said on Saturday it had spotted a Chinese Coast Guard ship heading to the Pratas and immediately sent its own ship which broadcast warnings and the two sides “engaged in an intense verbal confrontation over sovereignty via radio.”
The Chinese ship broadcast that it was on a routine mission and that China had sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Pratas, the Taiwan Coast Guard said.
“Please do not destroy peace. You should return and strive for democracy. That is the correct way to serve your country,” the Taiwan ship broadcast back, according to video provided by its coast guard.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Taiwan’s coast guard said the ship eventually began sailing away from the Pratas late in the afternoon on Sunday.
A Taiwan coast guard official told Reuters that China’s wording on having jurisdiction and sovereignty was unusual as was the length of its stay in the waters so close to the Pratas.
The coast guard said on Friday night it had also driven away for the second time this month the Chinese research ship “Tongji” in waters close to the island.
The Pratas, an atoll which is also a Taiwanese national park, is only lightly defended by Taiwan, and its coast guard has that responsibility rather than the military.
In January, Taiwan said a Chinese reconnaissance drone briefly flew over the Pratas.
On Saturday, Taiwan’s National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu took to his X account to detail the 100 Chinese ships he said were currently in the first island chain, referring to an area running from Japan through Taiwan and into the Philippines.
(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Kim Coghill and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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