With China’s economy in the doldrums, people have been asking whether a slowing economy might make Chinese less supportive of a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan. With more pressing issues, such as healthcare, housing and cost of living, Chinese might be more concerned with developments inside their country, rather than “reunifying the motherland,” using the parlance of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Ordinary Chinese people are not pushing the government to get unification,” one Chinese told al-Jazeera last week, adding: “It is the government that pushes people to believe that there must be unification.”
University of Manchester China Institute research fellow Wang Tao, writing for Foreign Policy last week, said that going by recent comments on Chinese social media, Chinese are souring on the idea of a Taiwan invasion. He said this is a marked change from online sentiment in the past few years, which has been characterized by bellicose nationalism and anti-Taiwan warmongering.
“Who is going to fight the war? If I die, who is going to pay my mortgage or my car loan?” wrote one user regarding a post from Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) about “reunification” with Taiwan.
However, these comments and interviews should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they might not be representative of wider public opinion. Polling on this matter suggests Chinese would be more than willing to support an invasion.
In an article titled “Assessing Public Support for (Non-)Peaceful Unification with Taiwan: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey in China” published in the Journal of Contemporary China, academics Adam Liu (劉遙) and Li Xiaojun (李曉雋) asked Chinese whether they would find “armed unification” acceptable. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they would, while 33 percent said they would not.
Public opinion data in authoritarian countries tend to be unreliable given that respondents are incentivized to self-censor for fear of the repercussions for speaking against the party line. Yet 55 percent, even for an authoritarian country, is high. On the eve of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, 43 percent of Russians said the use of military force against Ukraine to force it to join Russia would be wrong, while 36 percent said it would be right.
A few comments online and in interviews with journalists expressing skepticism about supporting an invasion should not encourage Taiwanese. Many in the West hoped that Russians would not support their government’s invasion of Ukraine. Especially once the impact of sanctions hit, the hope was that a political movement would rise up and force the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw. The democratic world has been disappointed.
Like Russia’s, the Chinese political system is based on depoliticization and demobilization. People are encouraged to not get involved in politics, and for a variety of reasons, they duly oblige.
Fundamentally, authoritarian political rulers are not answerable to their public, and often make decisions themselves. While there might be some grumbling online and chuntering with journalists, if China were to invade Taiwan, do not expect the Chinese people to take a stand and stop the carnage.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
RSS