Nearly 40,000 Taiwanese last year joined industry events in China, such as conferences and trade fairs, supported by the Chinese government, a study showed yesterday, as Beijing ramps up a charm offensive toward Taipei alongside military pressure.
China has long taken a carrot-and-stick approach to Taiwan, threatening it with the prospect of military action while reaching out to those it believes are amenable to Beijing’s point of view.
Taiwanese security officials are wary of what they see as Beijing’s influence campaigns to sway public opinion after Taipei and Beijing gradually resumed travel links halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the scale of such programs have not previously been systematically reported.
Photo: Reuters
A study by the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (IORG) showed that 39,374 Taiwanese last year joined more than 400 business events supported or organized by government units across China.
The research by the Taiwan-based non-government organization analyzed more than 7,300 articles posted by a news portal run by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
These articles offered event details, including the scale, location and agenda, and were examined with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools and verified by IORG researchers.
The number of Taiwanese attending state-supported business events in China rose 3 percent from 2023, the IORG said, adding that the agriculture, tourism, and biotechnology and medical industries were among the top sectors.
“These are common industries in which the Chinese Communist Party exerts political pressure on Taiwan through economic means,” the report said.
The Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧) told an internal meeting on Taiwan in February that Beijing was working to expand people-to-people exchanges in a bid to “deepen cross-strait integration and development,” Xinhua news agency reported at the time.
The events surveyed by the IORG included a job fair in June last year in China’s Fujian Province targeting more than 1,500 Taiwanese university graduates.
“Reward and punishment always go hand-in-hand in the Chinese influence campaigns on Taiwan,” IORG codirector Yu Chih-hao (游知澔) said. “Military drills and intimidation are punishment; cross-strait business cooperations are reward.”
China staged two days of war games near Taiwan this month.
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