Chinese state media have sought to quiet online speculation that a conflict with Taiwan might be imminent, in a sign of how heated rhetoric between Washington and Beijing was feeding public concern about the risk of war.
Chinese social media networks have seen a flurry of chatter about a possible Taiwan crisis in the past few days, seemingly fueled by Beijing’s call for citizens to stockpile food and an unrelated message claiming to show the nation was preparing to mobilize military reserves.
The surge came after a report by China’s state broadcaster saying that Taiwanese were hoarding their own survival supplies.
Photo: AFP
On Tuesday, the Economic Daily published a commentary urging the public “not to over-read” a Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement encouraging families to stock up on some daily necessities due to supply-chain concerns.
Then, late on Tuesday, a social media account affiliated with the official People’s Liberation Army Daily newspaper denounced the mobilization rumors as a “vile” and “malicious fabrication.”
“It will not only cause negative impact to the state, the military and society, it could also lead to severe consequences,” said the account, Junzhengping.
One screenshot of a text message widely circulated on social media urged reserves to “get ready for being recalled at any time” because “the Taiwan issue was very grim.”
Yesterday morning, the Junzhengping denial was among the top-trending topics on the Weibo social media network.
Still, the war talk continued to simmer, with a 63-year-old video of Chinese People’s Liberation Army generals singing that they “will definitely plant the flag of victory on Taiwan” getting more than 130 million views.
The controversy shows the challenge Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government faces in trying to manage Chinese public sentiment over Taiwan, even with its vast censorship powers. Over months of saber-rattling over Taiwan, authorities have sometimes needed to step in to tone down the rhetoric and at other times faced backlash for perceived weakness.
The official China Daily newspaper warned in an editorial on Sunday that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were “leading Taiwan to an abyss.”
The paper cited a senior Chinese official’s pledge to spend the nation’s “post-unification” revenue on improving the well-being of its citizens as a remark that shows “confidence that the Taiwan question will be settled in the foreseeable future.”
Hu Xijin (胡錫進), the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, offered a strategic rationale for the government’s rhetoric in a commentary published on Monday.
Hu said that “peaceful reunification” would likely result from applying enough pressure to make the DPP leadership believe it had no choice but to surrender.
“Personally, I believe there is still a chance for peaceful reunification, but it must be based on the condition that the DPP authority feels cornered and will perish if they do not accept reunification,” Hu said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS