In response to requests from businesspeople, the Straits Exchange Foundation arranged an investment event in Kinmen County. No one would have expected that at least 18 senior representatives of a Taiwanese business association in China had been contacted by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), which convinced them not to participate in the event.
The incident harkens back to a Chinese Communist Party propaganda article published in 2015 that tried to convince Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), Hong Kong’s richest man, to keep his assets in China. Li, who had most of his assets in Hong Kong, started to off-load his major property investments in China, a move that triggered a series of discussions in Beijing. The Liaowang Institute, a think tank of Xinhua news agency, published an article accusing Li of abandoning his benefactor upon achieving his goal, especially at a sensitive moment when China’s economy was at risk.
Today, China’s economy is again facing crisis. How does Beijing interpret the moves of Taiwanese businesspeople who have been trying to bring their investments back to Taiwan? They want to diversify their risk, but Beijing has prevented them from doing so. It is clear that China is playing the same old trick.
Meanwhile, the TAO’s recent move over the Kinmen event is contradictory. The county has been ruled by the pan-blue camp for years, and locals tend to welcome communication with China, a much different attitude from that of other areas in Taiwan. Even so, Beijing dealt with the matter bluntly, preventing locals from benefiting and stopping Taiwanese businesspeople from investing in Kinmen. Obviously, Beijing has been playing a double game. Its previous proposals to win over Kinmen residents were sugarcoated and could not be trusted.
Huang Wei-ping is a former think tank researcher.
Translated by Emma Liu
In a stark reminder of China’s persistent territorial overreach, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, a woman from Arunachal Pradesh holding an Indian passport, was detained for 18 hours at Shanghai Pudong Airport on Nov. 24 last year. Chinese immigration officials allegedly informed her that her passport was “invalid” because she was “Chinese,” refusing to recognize her Indian citizenship and claiming Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet. Officials had insisted that Thongdok, an Indian-origin UK resident traveling for a conference, was not Indian despite her valid documents. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest, summoning the Chinese charge d’affaires in Delhi and demanding
With the Year of the Snake reaching its conclusion on Monday next week, now is an opportune moment to reflect on the past year — a year marked by institutional strain and national resilience. For Taiwan, the Year of the Snake was a composite of political friction, economic momentum, social unease and strategic consolidation. In the political sphere, it was defined less by legislative productivity and more by partisan confrontation. The mass recall movement sought to remove 31 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators following the passage of controversial bills that expanded legislative powers and imposed sweeping budget cuts. While the effort
When Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced newspaper owner Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to 20 years in prison this week, officials declared that his “heinous crimes” had long poisoned society and that his punishment represented justice restored. In their telling, Lai is the mastermind of Hong Kong’s unrest — the architect of a vast conspiracy that manipulated an otherwise contented population into defiance. They imply that removing him would lead to the return of stability. It is a politically convenient narrative — and a profoundly false one. Lai did not radicalize Hong Kong. He belonged to the same generation that fled from the Chinese
There is a story in India about a boy called Prahlad who was an ardent worshipper of Lord Narayana, whom his father considered an enemy. His son’s devotion vexed the father to the extent that he asked his sister, Holika, who could not be burned by fire, to sit with the boy in her lap and burn him to death. Prahlad knew about this evil plan, but sat in his aunt’s lap anyway. His faith won, as he remained unscathed by the fire, while his aunt was devoured by the flames. In some small way, Prahlad reminds me of Taiwan
RSS