The National Immigration Agency (NIA) and the Tourism Bureau announced on the weekend that 9,500 employees of the Beijing-based Pro-Health Company and their family members would come to Taiwan on a sightseeing tour late this month, adding that the south would not be part of the itinerary.
This time, the claim that visits by or documentaries about individuals (such as Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer) who are loathed by Beijing was behind the decision to spurn the south cannot be sustained, even if no reason has been given for the decision.
What Beijing — and by extension the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration — is doing is fairly transparent, however: It is using Chinese tourists as an economic weapon to punish and sideline a segment of the country that is perceived as a bastion of Taiwanese independence and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) support.
In response, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is said to have begun looking into alternative sources of tourists by focusing on Japanese and Europeans, among others.
Whether this new gambit by China and its tourism proxies succeed in hurting the south economically remains to be seen and will be contingent on Chen and others being able to mitigate the effects. What will happen, however, is a further political fragmenting of the country along a north-south axis. It is not hard to imagine that after tourism, Chinese institutional investment in Taiwan, which the Ma administration is now allowing in a growing number of sectors, could also be used as a means to isolate the south and widen the wealth gap between the two parts of the country.
If such a strategy were successful, the south could eventually face a disadvantage vis-a-vis other parts of Taiwan and the region. In such a scenario, residents there would face a choice between economic opportunity or discrimination, compelling them to compromise their political beliefs and support for independence. One result would be the possible sidelining of the DPP, as only votes for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or other pro-unification parties would be perceived to hold the promise of Chinese tourism and investment.
By quickly liberalizing trade with China, the Ma administration has made it possible for China to use the economy as a weapon to reward and punish. The “good” north is being rewarded, while the “bad” south is being forced into a corner to either rot or “reform.”
The political polarization of Taiwan along geographical lines would be an unhealthy development that would undermine the unity that is necessary to protect the nation against Chinese encroachment on its sovereignty.
National unity that transcends geography and political differences, as well as efforts to limit economic dependence on China, will be the best means to counter Beijing’s strategy of divide and conquer.
There will be costs in doing so, and China could “punish” tour operators or firms in the north that refuse to go along with its plan, but in the end, it would be far costlier to this nation if it allowed China to cleave Taiwan in two.
For Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military conquest of Taiwan is an absolute requirement for the CCP’s much more fantastic ambition: control over our solar system. Controlling Taiwan will allow the CCP to dominate the First Island Chain and to better neutralize the Philippines, decreasing the threat to the most important People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) space base, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. Satellite and manned space launches from the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers regularly pass close to Taiwan, which is also a very serious threat to the PLA,
Taiwan is beautiful — no doubt about it. In Taipei, the streets are clean, the skyline is gorgeous and the subway is world-class. The coastline is easily accessible and mountains can be seen in the distance. The people are hardworking, successful and busy. Every luxury known to humankind is available and people live on their smartphones. As an American visiting for the first time, here are some things I learned about the country. First, people from Taiwan and America love freedom and democracy and have for many years. When we defeated Japan in 1945, Taiwan was freed from Japanese rule. In
More than 100 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels and aircraft were detected making incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Sunday and Monday, the Ministry of National Defense reported on Monday. The ministry responded to the incursions by calling on China to “immediately stop such destructive unilateral actions,” saying that Beijing’s actions could “easily lead to a sharp escalation in tensions and worsen regional security.” Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the unusually high number of incursions over such a short time was likely Beijing’s response to efforts
Taiwan’s first indigenous defense submarine prototype, the Hai Kun (SS-711), is to be launched tomorrow and undergo underwater testing next month. It is a major breakthrough in upgrading the nation’s self-defense capabilities, and would make it more difficult for China to blockade Taiwan. Facing Beijing’s escalating military threats and ambitions of expanding across the Taiwan Strait, a domestically developed submarine was first proposed in the 1990s under then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). The Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS) program was formally initiated in 2016, as President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, with the aim of creating a fleet of eight domestically developed submarines. The
RSS