Kinmen: The Sleepy Fishing Island That Could Be East Asia’s Biggest Flashpoint

“If you look over there, you can see the propaganda sign. It reads ‘unite China under one country two systems,’” a fisherman told me. I was standing surrounded by old rusted anti-tank spikes on the beach of Kinmen, an island administered by Taiwan, but geographically a part of China’s Fujian province. At this closest point, it feels like you can reach out and touch the skyscrapers of China’s Xiamen city, which is just 2 miles across the water. The fisherman comes here every day with his rod and a bucket of bait. He knows the skyline of Xiamen like the back of his hand. “I don’t worry about China,” he tells me, “Life here is very peaceful, and we keep to ourselves.” This view is held by many residents of Kinmen, who view themselves neither as Taiwanese, nor as Fujianese. They take pride in their local identity. The coastline of China’s southeastern Fujian province is littered with hundreds of small islands, many of them relatively nondescript. However, two of them stand out as remnants of a Cold War that has never truly ended: Kinmen and Matsu. In 1949, China’s Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek was facing defeat against Mao Zedong’s communists. The KMT and its Republic of China government retreated to the island of Taiwan, from which Chiang planned to regroup and organize an attack to retake the mainland. Chiang made the strategic decision to hold on to three islands along the coast: Kinmen, Matsu, and Dachen. He believed keeping these footholds would offer a strategic advantage when launching an attack to retake China. As U.S. support for the Chinese Nationalists faded, this plan gradually became a pipe dream. Meanwhile, the forces of the newly founded People’s Republic of China constantly bombarded these islands with shells. Chiang eventually gave up Dachen, but held on to Kinmen and Matsu. Left Behind The outlying islands remained largely cut off from the economic boom Taiwan went through in the 1980s and ‘90s. Even today, the stark lack of modern infrastructure was one of the most obvious contrasts I felt as I cleared immigration at Kinmen’s ferry terminal and took my first steps on the island. The 30-minute ferry crossing was not only like crossing into another world, but also into another time. Unlike nearby Xiamen – with wide, clean boulevards lined with palm trees in perfect rows and huge glass skyscrapers either side – the roads of Kinmen felt worn out and battered. The road into the main town of Jincheng passed through farmland with crumbling houses that seemed to all cling to the same tiny spot as if competing against each other for space. As I checked into my hotel, I asked the receptionist why I was unable to find any cars on either Uber or its Chinese version Didi. “We don’t have any ride hailing services here on Kinmen. If you need transport I can call the taxi company, but you may need to wait half an hour to an hour,” she told me. Many people like to hire a scooter to explore Kinmen, but I felt that booking a local driver to take me around the island would be a good way to gain local insights. I booked a taxi to take me around the island the next day, and then I visited the nearby 7Eleven, apparently the only one on the whole island – and, as I found the next day, the only place to get coffee in the mornings. Overall, I noticed a distinct lack of any large chains on the island – not Western, Taiwanese, nor Chinese. Mom-and-pop businesses still seemed to largely dominate here. Night markets that stay open into the early hours of the morning are a staple of Taiwanese life, and there’s always fun to be had wondering around most cities in Taiwan after dark. But in Kinmen, I struggled to find anything to do in the evening. I grabbed a craft beer at a small shop, and the owner suggested I make sure to get my dinner before 7 p.m., otherwise I would be going hungry. I had a simple bowl of beef noodles and then wandered around the almost completely abandoned streets, which by now were in almost complete darkness. Apparently, the lack of nightlife in Kinmen is a remnant of martial law, when people weren’t allowed outside after dark for fear of overnight attacks from China. Remnants of War The next morning, I met my driver for the day, a local girl in her late 20s surnamed Chen. She told me she had grown up on the island, and then went to Taipei for university before deciding to return home to Kinmen. For the first stop of my island tour, I wanted to cross the bridge to Little Kinmen (Lieyu), a smaller island that is so close to mainland China that it feels as if you can throw a stone across the water and hit the skyscrapers of Xiamen. As we started to cross the bridge, the full view of mainland China came into perfect view. Kinmen is surrounded on three sides by the city of Xiamen and surrounding mountains. Clearly visible in the water are pillars – the preliminary steps of a bridge Chinese authorities say will one day link Xiamen airport up to Kinmen. “Have you ever been to Xiamen?” I asked Chen. She hadn’t. I asked her if local fishermen ever get into trouble crossing the maritime border, given how close it all is. “No, the fishermen generally know where the border is, and keep far away from it. Even if they do cross temporarily, it’s not a big problem,” she told me. My understanding was that this is not generally the case. There have been many cases of Kinmen fishermen being detained and taken to Xiamen before being released and sent home after a short period. Once on Little Kinmen, which is mostly small villages and farmland, the main stop for me was a long beach facing China. The entire beach was empty, save for one lone man with his fishing rod gazing solemnly over to Xiamen. I approached him and without any prompting, he started pointing out various landmarks over the water. The beach itself is covered in huge rusty metal spikes that protrude from the sand and point toward the water. They are left over from a time when an amphibious invasion by the Chinese military was a real threat. Likewise, along the beach at various points were several abandoned dug-out turrets, which decades ago probably held snipers or large machine guns. Some of the military installations have been turned into tourist attractions. Back on the main island I visited Shi Shan (Lion Mountain), where the tunnels have been renovated and daily reenactments of Nationalist soldiers firing a huge Howitzer gun toward China are carried out. My final stop was a huge loudspeaker pointing toward the Chinese coast. Up until at least the 1990s, this speaker broadcast a message from Taiwanese pop singer Teresa Teng over to China, followed by a rendition of her song “Tian Mi Mi,” which is hugely popular on the other side. Teng had famously said that she would only play a concert for her mainland fans once China was reunited under the “Three Principles of the People,” a concept put forward by the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen. Teng’s formerly broadcast message to the people of China was that she wished that all the people of her motherland could enjoy the same freedom and democracy that she had in Taiwan. “Only a life under democracy and freedom can you realize your dreams and aspirations, and only by letting young people fulfill their potential, can a country have a bright future,” she said. Returning to the Motherland And it was on that thought that I took the ferry back to Xiamen. I passed Taiwanese immigration, boarded the ferry, and then passed through Chinese immigration. Just like that, I left behind liberal democracy for a one-party state. I called a Didi that arrived in minutes, chatted to the driver about the slowing economy and cost of living, and headed to the beach with the large propaganda sign the Kinmen fishermen had pointed out to me. And sure enough, it was huge. Massive red writing behind a large highway read “unite China under one country two systems.” It was a message to the people of Taiwan that if they return to the embrace of the motherland, they will be governed much the same as Hong Kong. On the other side of the highway from the sign was a large beach. Hawkers were charging a fee to let tourists use their binoculars to get a view of life in Kinmen. One hawker was explaining the Taiwanese propaganda signs pointing toward the Chinese shore. “And do you know why there is this sea between us?” he asked them. “It’s all the tears Chiang Kai-shek shed after he lost China.”