According to sources, the deal includes returning the victims’ corpses to China and paying compensation to the victims’ relatives. Taiwan’s coast guard refused to provide information.
Beijing claims the Taiwan Strait, which is a sensitive area, and the agreement may ease tensions there.
Following the incident in February, which it denounced as “malicious,” China began conducting routine patrols around Taiwan’s Kinmen islands.
According to Beijing’s coastguard, the purpose of the routine patrols was to “maintain operational order in sea areas and safeguard fishermen’s lives and property” in February.
Four people were on a fishing boat that trespassed into Taiwanese waters off Kinmen on February 14 and refused inspection, including the two men who died.
When Taiwanese officials pursued, the boat overturned, and the two fishermen perished while attempting to escape.
In the past, Beijing and Taipei were more accommodating to one another’s fishing boats, particularly in the area of Taiwan’s offshore islands, which are very near the Chinese coast. The northernmost archipelago of Taiwan, Kinmen, is only 3 km (1.9 mi) from China.
However, Taiwan has been tightening its regulations over its own waters recently in response to what it claims is a sharp rise in poaching by fishermen from China’s coastal province of Fujian.
