The number of Chinese lobbying groups visiting the US has increased unusually ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a source said yesterday.
Intelligence showed that the number of Chinese academics and governmental officials visiting the US has surged abnormally, apparently to gain information on the incoming Trump administration’s policies and to circulate rumors that “Taiwan is the troublemaker hampering cross-strait exchanges,” said a security official familiar with cross-strait issues, who asked to remain anonymous.
Beijing is spreading such messages in the US via lobbyists to shape Taipei or the Mainland Affairs Council’s image as uncooperative and disruptive, they said.
Photo: Reuters
“However, numbers speak volumes,” they added.
Although the government conditionally allows Taiwanese group tours to China, it does not impose any restrictions on self-guided tours, they said.
From January to October last year, Taiwanese visiting China surpassed 2.3 million, while Chinese travelers to Taiwan were only 300,000, who were either visitors for professional exchanges or permanent residents of “a third place” such as Macau, Hong Kong or a foreign country, the official said.
Beijing has permitted self-guided tours from its Fujian Province to Kinmen County or from Fujian to Lienchiang County (Matsu), but Taiwan proper is still banned from China’s list of tourist destinations, they said.
President William Lai (賴清德) in his inauguration speech last year said that the number of Chinese students pursuing a degree in Taiwan could return to as many as before the COVID-19 pandemic, the official said.
However, no Chinese students enrolled in Taiwanese high schools or universities last year, as Beijing continued its barring policy, they said, adding that one could tell who is hampering cross-strait exchanges simply from these figures.
Regarding the Taipei-Shanghai Twin-City Forum, the official said that the government banned certain delegates from visiting Taiwan to counter the guidelines China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) announced to penalize “diehard Taiwanese independence separatists.”
Given the TAO was hostile to Taiwan, its officials who were at the level of directors or higher were in return not allowed to visit Taiwan, they said, adding that those who were disapproved were not indispensable participants in the forum and made up only 10 percent, while more than 90 percent of the proposed delegates were approved.
On the other hand, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army as of Dec. 30 last year sent a total of 5,089 warplanes and 2,490 warships around Taiwan as coercion, and 3,100 vessels and aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the official said.
Beijing asked for courtesy clearance at the airport for all delegates who were attending the forum in Taipei while dispatching warplanes and warships to coerce Taiwanese, they said.
“How does make sense?” the official asked.
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