Taiwan faces steady 'drip' of pressure as China tightens pre-inauguration squeeze

TAIPEI — Taiwan is facing a steady "drip, drip" of Chinese pressure ahead of the inauguration of its next president in May, with officials in Taipei fearing Beijing could further squeeze the island's room to manoeuvre without resorting to direct conflict.

Since current Vice President Lai Ching-te won the presidency in January — China views Lai as a separatist — Beijing has snatched away a diplomatic ally, altered an air route in the narrow Taiwan Strait, and begun regular coast guard patrols around the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, which hug the Chinese coast.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, over the island's strong rejections.

Visiting Taipei last week, US Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the US House of Representatives select committee on China, said Beijing's patrols around Kinmen, which is a short ferry ride from the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou, were part of a pattern of steady pressure on Taiwan.

"It is a salami-slicing effort; they are slowly turning up the rheostat," he said, referring to a resistor used to control an electric current.

One foreign official tracking security matters in the region described what was happening as a "drip, drip" of pressure, keeping up the message that Beijing does not like Lai, but without holding war games — as it has twice around the island in the past year and a half — or forcing direct military confrontation.

"It's part of the pattern of gradually altering the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, seeing what they can get away with and shifting to a new normal, restricting Taiwan's space to move," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

China says the coast guard patrols are