Wuqiu

Wuqiu (population: 642) lies midway between Kinmen and Matsu, 9km from the nearest PRC-held territory. Save for the ROC servicemen posted there, very few outsiders have been able to visit Wuqiu and obtaining permission to go there is practically impossible.

In January 1997, Taiwan rejected South Korean demands that it not ship its nuclear waste to North Korea for treatment and storage. The PRC intervened to extract maximum political capital from the dispute, offering to take the Taiwanese nuclear waste on condition that the island be considered an “indivisible part of China.” One year later, however, Taiwan attempted to capitalize on this assertion of unity by proposing that it store its nuclear waste on Wuqiu, an islet off Fujian province on China’s coast. Environmental activists in Wuqiu, Taiwan, and Fujian all protested the deal, forcing the Taiwan Power Company to halt the project.