‘We’ve been living with China’s threats for 70 years’

So far the rising tensions between China and Taiwan – the fallout of US politician Nancy Pelosi’s brief but controversial trip to Taipei – are playing out exactly as predicted.

First, China announced six exclusion zones around Taiwan, a self-ruled island it sees as a breakaway province.

After that within two hours of those zones coming into effect, Beijing terminated at least two Dong Feng ballistic missiles across the straits to the zones off the north Taiwan coast.

This closely comes after the pattern associated with what China did back in 1996, the last time Beijing sought to punish Taiwan for seeking international recognition.

The object of the tests is usually clearly intimidation.

But the move is also causing massive interruption to Taiwan’s delivery and airline sectors. The waters close to Taiwan are some from the busiest shipping lanes in the world. And all those ships are now needing to re-route.

At the north coast of Taiwan, in the angling port of Bi Sha Yu, anglers sitting on the interface side were repairing their nets plus grumbling loudly: “It’s always us little people who suffer once the politicians fight. inch

“But what can we do, it can too dangerous to visit out there now, ” said one chief.

Another had been tying up right after coming back into slot. “I went out this morning, but then the coastguard came on the radio stations and told us all to get back in to port immediately, inch he said.

But he mentioned he wasn’t worried.

“We can’t say for sure where the exclusion specific zones are, so we have to do what the coastguard lets us know. ”

Standing on the dockside, his wife has been far less sanguine: “Every day this continues we lose money. All of us can’t catch fish but we have to pay the crew’s wages! ”

Most people the BBC spoke to do not believe China is about to attack Taiwan. “They’re a bunch of gangsters, inch said one man fishing on the dockside.

“Those communists talk big, however they won’t do anything at all. We’ve been living with their own threats for seventy years. ”

But this is just day one, and there is certainly still plenty of time for China to ramp things up.

Chinese ships could intrude into Taiwan’s territorial waters.

The most intense speculation is about the possibility that China is getting ready to fire a missile right over the top of the island. The reason is that one of the exclusion areas China has announced is off the eastern coast of Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean.

A missile fired from China and taiwan and landing right now there would have to cross over Taiwan. Such a missile shot would be a dramatic infringement of Taiwan’s airspace.

The only nation to have done anything at all similar is North Korea, which in August 2017 fired the long-range missile across the Japanese island associated with Hokkaido.

Right now the question is: will Beijing follow Pyongyang’s playbook?