In the former fishing village of Houfenggang, ships and boats are left rotting and disused, near the new concrete embankment. Development by the government—with one eye on attracting ever more mainland Chinese tourists—has emerged as the key issue Kinmen’s burgeoning civil society activism centers on.
A military history enthusiast, Chen Zhixuan, stands atop the L18 military installation on Lieyu Island, overgrown with shrubs. Chen joined a group of Kinmen residents to explore the installation and clean the nearby beach of litter that had floated in from the sea.
Windows look out of the L18 military bunker and fort on Lieyu Island, through which soldiers would have watched the coast and fired their rifles. Currently accessible only on foot, development plans have local activists saying any changes to the bunker would destroy its authenticity and grit.
At the height of the Cold War, as many as 100,000 soldiers were barracked on Kinmen, outnumbering civilians. Today, there are only about 3,000 troops left on the island.
Theresa Fallon is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies (CREAS) in Brussels. She is concurrently a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, and a member of the CEPS Task Force on AI and Cybersecurity.
Fallon’s current research is on EU-Asia relations, maritime security, global governance, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and great power competition. She has testified on numerous occasions to the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Security and Defense, and has been featured in international media including ABC (Australia), Agence France Presse, Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Channel News Asia, Deutsche Welle, Financial Times, Science Magazine, Japan Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Previously, Fallon was a Senior Associate with the European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS) in Brussels and a member of the Strategic Advisors Group for the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). From 2003 to 2007, she worked in Beijing as a researcher and consultant. From 1998 to 2003, she was the Moscow representative of PlanEcon, a research and consulting firm, and taught economics in the first MBA program established in Russia at the American Institute of International Business in Moscow. She was educated at the University of Chicago, Loyola University, and The London School of Economics and Political Science.
Her articles have appeared in American Foreign Policy Interests, The Asan Forum, Carnegie, CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, China Brief, The Diplomat, ISN Security Watch, ORF, PlanEcon Energy, RUSI Newsbrief, War on the Rocks, and other publications.
A foggy view of the bridge being built between Kinmen and Lieyu Island, seen from Kinmen’s spike-lined northwest coast at low tide.
The 30-minute ferries, which cross the Taiwan Strait, were launched in 2001 as part of the ‘Mini-Three-Links’ between China and Taiwan. More than 1.5 million passengers traveled by ferry in 2014 between Fujian, in China, and Kinmen. Since 2015, Chinese tourists traveling to Kinmen can easily get visas on arrival.
A Chinese saying describes the relationship between Taiwan and China as, ‘as close as lips and teeth.’ But younger Taiwanese are increasingly uncomfortable with this formulation.
Li Congli, originally from the mainland, sells fish at the busiest market in Kinmen, in Jincheng town. She is one of about 2,000 lupei, or mainland Chinese women, who have married Taiwanese men and moved to Kinmen. She asked a matchmaker to introduce her to her current husband, a worker in Kinmen’s famous sorghum liquor factory—the cash cow in the island’s economy.
A miniature, battery-operated Dassault Mirage 2000 fighter jet—a scale model of the ones the Taiwan Air Force uses—zooms past an open field in Kinmen.
