Taiwan is the primary target of a Chinese campaign of political warfare, according to a new study by a Washington-based think tank.
The 40-page study by Project 2049 Institute executive director Mark Stokes and senior fellow Russell Hsiao was published this week.
“Taiwan’s democratic system of government — an alternative to mainland China’s authoritarian model — presents an existential challenge to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political authority,” the report said.
With political legitimacy across the Taiwan Strait viewed as a zero-sum game within the international arena, authorities in Beijing have long sought the political subordination of Taiwan, it added. As a result, a “coercive persuasion campaign” intended to manipulate international perceptions of the “one China” model and undermine Taiwan’s international legitimacy, is being waged, the paper said.
Beijing runs a “complex network” designed to influence the policies of the US, Taiwan and other countries, it said, adding that several party and state organizations engage in political warfare, but under the leadership of the CCP Central Military Commission, the Chinese the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Political Department Liaison Department is the PLA’s principal political warfare command.
“Political warfare is the employment of instruments of national power — short of war — to achieve foreign policy goals,” the study said.
Chinese political warfare seeks to shore up legitimacy domestically, reframe international rules of the road and promote alternatives to widely accepted universal values, it added.
“While the US is viewed as an ideological adversary, Taiwan remains the central focus of PLA political warfare,” the study said.
“The objective reality is that Taiwan, under its current ROC [Republic of China] constitutional framework, exists as an independent, sovereign state. The two equally legitimate governments — the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and ROC — are currently committed to ‘one China’ principles, under which they exercise exclusive administrative jurisdiction over the territory under their respective control, with neither side subordinate to the other,” the report said..
“In the context of the US ‘one China’ policy, a ‘one China, two governments’ framework may serve as the most accurate representation of the ‘status quo’ in the Taiwan Strait,” it went on.
However, with Taiwan seen as a challenge to the CCP’s monopoly on power, authorities in Beijing have long sought the political subordination of Taiwan under a “one country, two systems” principle, the paper said, adding that in the near term, Beijing appears focused on creating the conditions for early initiation of cross-strait political negotiations on terms favorable to it.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS