Thirty-four-year-old Huang Ching-ping boots up his laptop in a picturesque Taipei teahouse and scrolls through a series of colorful photographs from his latest foreign trip.
They're a far cry from the usual tourist fare. The pictures show huge red banners hanging from the lobby of an upmarket hotel exhorting Taiwan to cast its lot with China.
"One China," they say. "Oppose Taiwan Independence, Support Unification."
The conference on cross-strait unity, held last December in Macau, hardly seems a natural draw for students like Huang, who are far more likely to spend a vacation on Bali's beaches or taking in Europe's cathedrals.
But over the past several years, a new generation of Taiwanese has been participating in all-expense-paid Chinese junkets aimed at promoting union with China and combatting the policies of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
The events -- seminars, camps, university programs and academic conferences -- are part of a well-coordinated effort to show a kinder, gentler side of China to Taiwan's 23 million people.
Their principal targets are future opinion makers, including graduate students and junior academics.
For much of the past 58 years, China's Taiwan policy has been dominated by saber-rattling -- the deployment of 900 missiles aimed at Taiwanese targets, for example, or repeated threats to invade if Taiwan were to formalize its de facto independence.
Still, said Tsai Sheng-dung (蔡生當), a section deputy director of the Mainland Affairs Council, China's new push is no surprise, because Beijing regards young Taiwanese as crucial elements in the struggle for national unity.
"China has always seen the youth of Taiwan as key trend setters for the future of the nation," he said. "Working with Taiwan's youth to create a sense of identification has become a key part of China's efforts toward Taiwan."
Tsai said the cultivation of Taiwanese young people has expanded rapidly in recent years, with some 7,000 participating in Chinese-sponsored events last year and an even higher figure expected this year. That doesn't include the 5,000 Taiwanese enrolled full-time in Chinese universities.
Huang attended the Macau seminar at the Golden Dragon Hotel at the initiative of his Chinese Cultural University professor.
For four days, Huang and 40 fellow students sat within earshot of Macau's famous gambling tables and sumptuous gourmet restaurants as communist officials talked up unity between China and Taiwan -- and repeatedly lambasted Chen's pro-independence line.
At least in Huang's case, the persuasion effort fell short.
"They didn't change my mind at all," he said. "I'm against both unification and independence -- I support the status quo."
Huang believes a key goal of the seminar was to inculcate a strong Chinese identity among the participants -- something diametrically opposed to Chen's insistence that China is a foreign country.
"There were all these banners in the hotel about how people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are descended from the legendary Chinese emperors," he said. "There was even this guy walking around with a sign saying `one China' and blasting Taiwanese independence. It was not a subtle sell."
Huang's reaction closely mirrors that of Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), 40, an Academia Sinica researcher, who attended an all-expense paid academic conference on cross-strait relations at a luxury hotel in Beijing last summer.
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