Taiwan has pledged to strengthen its ban on the Chinese mainland’s BeiDou satellite navigation system after its equipment was found on a fishing boat seized for trafficking narcotics, according to the island’s media.
The Taiwanese fisheries agency said on Tuesday that the fishers would be fined and their equipment confiscated as a penalty for breaching the BeiDou ban, imposed in 2018 when the satellite network’s global service went live.
The agency said Taipei’s National Communications Commission (NCC) had asked for a multipronged awareness campaign to remind the fishing community that possession of BeiDou terminals is illegal under the Telecommunications Management Act.
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“Working together with local governments, fishermen’s associations and fisheries radio stations, we will continue to educate fishermen to prevent violations of the relevant telecommunications law,” it said.
According to the fisheries agency, the NCC has been coordinating with customs and the coastguard since 2018 to search fishing boats, confiscate BeiDou devices and hand the operators to the commission for punishment.
The BeiDou system is operated by the Beijing-based China National Space Administration and was developed in response to the People’s Liberation Army’s demand for an alternative to GPS, which is run by the US military.
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BeiDou, which has an accuracy of 10cm (4 ins), compared to the 30cm (12 ins) offered to non-military users of GPS, was expanded for commercial use around the world in 2020. It also offers a short messaging service.
Taiwan’s ban on BeiDou was imposed two years before the dual-use satellite navigation system was fully operational, over concerns that it could be used by the PLA – regarded as the island’s biggest security threat.
Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province, to be brought under mainland control by force, if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise the island as an independent state but oppose any unilateral change to the status quo.
The Taiwan Statebuilding Party demanded a thorough inspection of fishing vessels to fully exclude BeiDou in the wake of the latest seizure, describing it as “a matter of national defence and security”.
All mainland-based fishing vessels, along with passenger buses and heavy trucks, carry a BeiDou-based automatic identification system which can monitor and track their movements in real time.
Beijing has also built ground stations on disputed islands in the South China Sea to strengthen vessel control.
But not all BeiDou users are tracked, with navigation chips available outside the mainland without the inbuilt identification system.
The US military has reportedly been using BeiDou as a backup navigation system, along with Russia’s Glonass and Europe’s Galileo.
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