last month, investigators and prosecutors searched the residences of New Party spokesman Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠) and three other New Party members. This is reminiscent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Policy Research Office director Wang Huning (王滬寧), who was instrumental in including “socialism with Chinese characteristics in the era of Chinese President Xi Jingping (習近平)” in the nation’s constitution at last year’s 19th National Congress of the CCP, and how he has been an architect of the plan to bury Taiwanese democracy.
At the end of 2005, Wang Huning proposed a political strategy against Taiwan to then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). For Wang Huning, the CCP had already achieved considerable influence over Taiwan through long-term infiltration and united front tactics, and he believed the party could take further advantage of Taiwan’s democratic system by establishing a legitimate political organization in Taiwan.
In his book The Taiwan Crisis, exiled Chinese writer Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰) said that in June 2008, the Chinese Central Political Bureau passed its “political strategy for settling the Taiwan issue” and listed organizing a political party in Taiwan as its most important united front tactic.
PEACEFUL UNIFICATION
Wang Huning targeted more than 20 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party political figures who had been marginalized by their party and invited them to serve as party organizing central committee members. Given that the project was already well-developed, it is likely that the CCP had been working on the idea for some time.
A spokesperson from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office expressed “great concern” about the search of Wang Ping-chung’s and other New Party members’ homes, and condemned authorities for “wantonly suppressing and persecuting the forces and people who advocate peaceful unification of the two sides of the Strait.”
The New Party chairman said that “White Terror cannot be done this way.”
“This is political persecution and the authorities are forcing people to revolt,” the party’s vice chairman said.
Academic and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), who is also a political pundit, asked whether there was any difference between arresting New Party cadres and stigmatizing them by accusing them of liaising with the CCP, and the approach taken by the then-government in the White Terror era.
‘WARTIME CONTROL’
Former TVBS news anchor Lee Yen-chiou (李艷秋) said that it would have either a chilling effect or create strong resistance.
Media personality Clara Chou (周玉蔻) said in the political commentary program New Taiwan Refueling that as far as she knows, the New China Youth Association — which was established and is chaired by Wang Ping-chung as an extension of the New Party — and the China Revival Society at National Taiwan University, established by New Party member Huo Han-ting (侯漢廷), are organizations espousing political ideas similar to those of the CCP.
A team doing training similar to that of the military has also been set up with the goal of “wartime control.”
Could the CCP and the New Party’s agenda of “working together toward the peaceful unification of the motherland” have already started? Is it perhaps even bearing fruit?
Li Dao-yong is director of the City South Culture and History Studio.
Translated by Lin Lee-Kai
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS