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.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS