Taiwan coast guard forces four China coast guard ships out of Kinmen restricted waters

Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration said four China Coast Guard ships entered Kinmen's restricted waters on Tuesday morning, 13 October 2026, and left only after Taiwanese patrol boats shadowed them one-to-one, broadcast warnings in Mandarin and English, and used close-range blocking to stop them pushing deeper toward the island group.

According to a statement from the Coast Guard's Kinmen-Matsu-Penghu Branch, the Twelfth Patrol District detected the Chinese vessels around 8 a.m. Taipei time as they approached the outer edge of Kinmen's restricted waters. The hull numbers listed were 14608, 14531, 14607 and 14529. Coast Guard cutters were ordered forward to the boundary line before the Chinese ships crossed it.

At 8.52 a.m., the four China Coast Guard ships entered Kinmen restricted waters from south of Lieyu, also known as Little Kinmen, sailing in a single-column formation. Taiwanese patrol boats matched each Chinese vessel one-to-one, collected evidence throughout the transit, and used radio broadcasts plus near-range deterrence to keep the formation from pressing farther into the controlled zone.

The branch said all four Chinese coast guard ships left Kinmen waters at 11.08 a.m. The transit therefore lasted a little over two hours from entry to exit under continuous Taiwanese escort and warning.

Coast Guard officials characterised the sailing pattern as fake law enforcement and real power expansion, arguing that the manoeuvre seeks to change the local maritime status quo and threatens navigation safety and order around Kinmen. The service urged China's coast guard to stop harassment that could raise tensions or spark a clash, and said it would keep cutters on round-the-clock watch to defend Taiwan's sovereignty and maritime security.

Kinmen sits only a short distance from the Chinese city of Xiamen, which makes even brief China Coast Guard entries into Taiwan's declared restricted waters a high-visibility grey-zone test for Taiwan's coast guard and, behind it, the wider defence posture that treats the outlying islands as an early-warning front against Chinese maritime pressure.

Central News Agency, TaiSounds and SETN all carried the same Kinmen-Matsu-Penghu Branch account of the Tuesday intrusion, including the four hull numbers, the Lieyu approach, the one-to-one escort tactic and the 11.08 a.m. exit. The reporting frames the episode as a post-National Day return to routine China Coast Guard probing around Taiwan's frontline islands rather than a one-off holiday-week stunt.

For Taiwan's military and coast guard planners, the operational lesson is continuity: Chinese coast guard hulls that show up in column south of Lieyu still have to be met ship-for-ship, recorded, warned and turned around without letting the encounter escalate into a boarding or collision crisis that Beijing could spin as Taiwanese overreaction.