Last month, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao, citing anonymous sources, reported that Beijing plans to compile a blacklist of what it terms “stubborn Taiwanese independence elements.”
For Taiwanese, this amounts to a badge of honor, as the only “crime” such patriots are guilty of is protecting Taiwan from annexation by China.
In the past few years, Beijing has slapped sanctions on US officials and politicians — and even European politicians — for having raised concerns over Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, and human rights breaches in Tibet and Xinjiang. For these individuals, too, the sanctions levied against them are worn with a sense of pride.
Beijing’s self-harm is simply the latest manifestation of its obnoxious “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
How should the outside world interpret “wolf warrior” diplomacy? Is it Beijing sounding the starting gun for its “China dream” hegemonic ambitions?
In just a couple of years, China has turned itself into an “enemy of civilization,” causing Western nations to revise their “one China” policies, and realign their diplomacy and militaries to protect Taiwan, and push back against China.
For China, this is nothing short of a catastrophic policy failure. It has boxed itself into a corner over Taiwan, which has led to increased tension across the Taiwan Strait and a deterioration in China’s relations with the West.
In short, Beijing has been hoisted by its own petard.
As China knows that such behavior would elicit just such a response, why does it carry on in this fashion? The situation is more complex than first meets the eye. To justify its new blacklist, Beijing trotted out a slogan on Chinese social media: “We will never permit Taiwanese businesses to break the bowl from which they have eaten.”
This sort of forceful and aggressive language is of course nothing new. Forcing Taiwanese businesses, artists and performers to ritually denounce Taiwanese independence is a common occurrence in China. Beijing’s latest tactic is to levy arbitrary fines against Taiwanese firms operating in China that it accuses of making donations to the independence cause.
Beijing calculates that this will not only send a shot across the bow of Taiwan’s business community in China, and draw a line between companies aligned with Taipei and those that side with Beijing, but might even smoke out some hitherto under-the-radar businesses that advocate independence for Taiwan.
However, there is an ulterior motive. China’s latest campaign is also about inducing Taiwanese companies to make political donations to Beijing-approved political entities in Taiwan, but only the sort that parrot the so-called “1992 consensus” and “one family on either side of the Strait.”
The logic is simple: It is Beijing’s way to overtly and covertly attempt to seize a political constituency in Taiwan.
Compared with Beijing’s past interference in Taiwan’s electoral process — when it typically mobilized fifth columnists and agitators in the nation to sway voters — this new front is intended to normalize the distortion of Taiwan’s democratic process.
Australia provides an object warning of where the distortion of politics through business can lead.
Taiwanese should remain vigilant, otherwise Beijing might subvert the nation’s democracy and induce them to sell out their own people.
Taiwan is a small country and a young democracy. If Beijing is allowed to politicize the private sector, it could prove fatal.
For China to bribe firms into making political donations that it sees as beneficial makes Beijing the common enemy of all Taiwanese, as its plans would emasculate voters, denying the freedom and will of 23 million people.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) agrees with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) sentiment that “the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] is altering the cross-strait status quo,” saying that Taiwanese businesses operating in China ought to comply with local regulations, while the government in Taiwan harps on about China, but is unable to protect Taiwanese businesses there.
Chu says that the DPP opposes China at all times, making life difficult for Taiwanese businesses there.
This shows that it is an irresponsible government, he says.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), took part in the Taipei-Shanghai Forum, criticizing people in high places in Taiwan for causing problems, including by forcing corporations to take sides and causing discrimination against Chinese spouses.
It is ironic that while foreign countries are voicing support for Taiwan in the face of China’s continued military intimidation — sending fighter jets across the Taiwan Strait median line and making incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — people such as Chu and Ko have their sights set inward. Stockholm syndrome seems to be the only reasonable explanation for their behavior. It would be like they sided with the aggressor over the victim in a domestic violence scenario.
Could it be that they are using this to signal to Beijing that they welcome political donations to their own bank accounts?
In remarks at the Taipei-Shanghai Forum, Ko said that “dialogue is better than confrontation, exchange is better than disruption, friendship is better than enmity,” implicitly criticizing the government for creating confrontation, disruption and enmity due to its refusal to enter into dialogue with China because of its prerequisites.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said that Beijing chooses which exchanges it will allow, based upon political considerations, and this is why some twin city forums have been disrupted.
If China desired the exchanges to go ahead, they would, irrespective of the party controlling the city council, with a consistent standard applied throughout the country and with no ill-intentioned interference, Cheng said.
The Taipei-Shanghai Forum is a perfect example of this process, because for Xi, the phrase “people on both sides of the Strait are one family” is a passphrase to get permission to hold the event. Beijing knows that it can rely on the city forum platform to have catchphrases such as: “We on both sides of the Taiwan Strait ... are all Chinese” who can work together to “create a bright future to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and that it can rely on some people on the other side not to criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and even to make a facetious comment about some people expecting him to travel to China to rewrite parts of Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng’s (龔正) opening remarks.
A comment about how Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation appeared on the Facebook page of Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), and she was not at the city forum, but Ko’s response was to not let trivial matters such as that prevent the forum from going ahead.
To play on the words of Madame Roland, a writer during the French Revolution: “Oh, exchanges, exchanges, what crimes are committed in your name.”
The question is: Are the KMT and the TPP going to fulfill their roles as “loyal opposition” for Taiwanese or “loyal garbage” — to borrow a term used by Beijing-based academic Tian Feilong (田飛龍) in the context of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council — promoting the CCP’s agenda?
If it is the former, then they should be providing rational oversight of, and checks and balances to, the DPP.
For example, in the face of the increased military intimidation by China, they should be pushing the government to make sure that military preparations are proceeding as planned; that military discipline and ethics are clear and transparent; and that there is an adequate balance between military conscription and volunteer recruitment to ensure that Taiwanese are protected and that the nation’s independent status remains unchanged.
However, if it is the latter — that they only know how to signal their loyalty to the CCP, as do the establishment parties in Hong Kong, hoping to secure for themselves political favors from Beijing while still wanting votes from Taiwanese — then things are unlikely to end well for them.
Eventually, the votes will dry up. When this happens Beijing will no longer have any use for them and will just toss them aside like so much garbage.
The CCP is “bad,” but it is not stupid, and politicians such as Chu and Ko had better not let their intelligence blind them to what Beijing is doing.
At the moment, of course, there is a pro-Taiwan government in power, with control over the presidency, as well as the executive and legislative branches. That is not to say that there are not reasons for concern.
There have been allegations of plagiarism by important DPP figures, revelations by former DPP legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) that he was a KMT informant during the authoritarian era, accusations of a DPP-sponsored “Internet army” spreading disinformation and suggestions concerning manipulation of referendums, all of which are likely to cause rifts in the pan-green camp, in addition to factional infighting resulting in major figures leaving the DPP.
There are signs of internal weaknesses, which benefit the CCP’s cause.
If the opposition parties are providing a secret weapon in China’s “united front” tactics, the pro-Taiwan parties allow themselves to lose internal cohesion and others develop Stockholm syndrome, Beijing is going to find it easier to control Taiwanese politics from afar.
If Taiwan allows itself to get itself into this rut, it is going to be difficult for the international community to intervene when a crisis emerges.
Translated by Edward Jones and Paul Cooper
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