Analysts say Taiwan's coast guard should look for new ways to strengthen maritime border security after two recent cases of people making solo crossings from China to Taiwan by boat.
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00:00Brandon, we've seen a number of incidents from people breaching Taiwan's maritime borders
00:05and coming onto shore. Is this part of a bigger issue?
00:08I think that when you look at these individually, you really have to gauge a lot of the different
00:13factors that go into how much of this is a threat. I think that in previous ones, you're
00:19looking at a rigid hole or a metal hole that has a higher risk, potential for risk to Taiwan
00:26on a security side. But this latest incident with a rubber hole, it's not going to be a
00:32threat really on a security wise. It's pretty easy to puncture. It may not actually even
00:38be picked up on radar because of the lack of a rigid hole. So when we look at this,
00:44you look at the conditions that the person was in. This really does point more to a humanitarian
00:49response effort than it is a security effort.
00:54So then, is the frequency in which these activities are happening, is this more of
00:58a concern then? And is this more than Taiwan is used to dealing with?
01:02Now, obviously this is the second one in so many months. I think the third or fourth one
01:08in the past year. The frequency of these incidences is something that could be of concern, but
01:16realistically what we're seeing right now probably is within that realm of normal activities
01:23that occur on a maritime border. I would point to things like the Alaska-Russian border.
01:28These kinds of events happen there, South Korea, North Korea, where you would suspect
01:33North Korean defectors to be a spy or part of the military, as many of the men are.
01:39Now, this rubber boat came from around Ningbo in China, which is north of Taiwan and west
01:44of Japan. Do you think this maybe could be a way for the two countries, Japan and Taiwan,
01:49to work together in the sense of sharing information about these incidents?
01:54I think that every incident that occurs is always a great opportunity to examine what
02:00went wrong, what could go better. I think that the Coast Guard response here was the
02:04appropriate response. They looked at what the threat was, what the possibilities were,
02:10they responded appropriately. I think that when we look at what the Taiwan Coast Guard
02:17administration is supposed to do, they did exactly what they are in this scenario. So
02:21I think here, it's trying to find lessons where things have gone in the correct direction,
02:27trying to find lessons where things went right. I think cooperation with Japan, with the Philippines,
02:35with other neighbors is always a great start to help build that maritime domain awareness,
02:39not just for this incident, but really for monitoring and monitoring all the traffic
02:45in the maritime waters.