July 26 Kinmen-Xiamen swim still under MAC review

Taipei, July 3 (CNA) Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said Thursday that it is conducting "a more cautious review" of this year's Kinmen-Xiamen Strait Crossing Swim, following a report that the annual event, co-organized by local governments in Taiwan and China, could be canceled for the first time.

Set to take place on July 26, this year's swim -- an annual long-distance relay swimming contest held in the waters between Taiwan-held Kinmen and China's Xiamen -- is the 13th edition of the event, which was first organized in 2009 with Kinmen and Xiamen alternating as the host.

"The nature of this event is not something I would describe as purely a sporting activity," MAC deputy head and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news briefing in Taipei on Thursday.

The 7-kilometer swim, which draws more than a hundred swimmers from China and Taiwan each year, has essentially been used by the Xiamen city government -- and even the Fujian provincial authorities -- as "a united front effort targeting Kinmen," Liang said.

"We will conduct a more cautious review of the nature of the event," he said, noting that the review is "ongoing" but did not confirm whether the MAC would approve or cancel the swim.

Liang was responding to a report published earlier in the day by the Chinese-language newspaper United Daily News, which cited sources as saying that Taiwan's central government viewed the event as having "united front" implications and had asked the county government to cancel it, marking the first time the event would be called off due to political reasons.

Ou Yang Yi-hsiung (歐陽儀雄), head of the Kinmen County Sports Club, told United Daily News that there have been rumors suggesting the event would be called off, but no official notice from authorities has been received yet.

He said that the cancellation of the July 26 event -- scheduled on the same day as the recall votes involving 24 opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers -- would be regrettable if true, according to the report.

During the news conference, Liang said that the Xiamen authorities -- the host this year -- had applied for entry for many Chinese officials and TV reporters, and are also planning to livestream the event online, with drones even scheduled to capture aerial footage.

Such planned arrangements, along with the proposal for swimmers and filming boats to enter from Xiamen to Kinmen, "would amount to entering our restricted and prohibited waters," he said.

At last year's event, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said the MAC highly valued the event for its traditional significance, describing it as a form of reciprocal and equal cross-strait exchange that reflects hopes for peace.

Under the supervision of MAC, the SEF is a semi-official organization tasked by Taiwan's government with handling technical matters in cross-strait relations.

Asked about the shift in attitude toward the swim compared to a year earlier, Liang said that the 2024 event was hosted by the Kinmen County government, with swimmers going from Kinmen to Xiamen.

"I wouldn't say that the Kinmen County government can hold the event simply because it's the host," Liang said. "But since the hosting rights were on our side and the swimmers weren't entering our restricted and prohibited waters, the situation was quite different."