Nearly 40,000 Taiwanese joined industry events in China such as conferences and trade fairs supported by the Chinese government last year, a study showed today, as Beijing ramps up a charm offensive toward Taiwan alongside military pressure.
Taiwan's security officials are wary of what they see as Beijing's influence campaigns to sway Taiwan 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
About 39,374 Taiwanese last year joined more than 400 business events supported or organized by government units across China, according to a study by the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (IORG), a Taiwan-based non-government organization.
IORG's research 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 by artificial intelligence-assisted tools and verified by IORG researchers.
The number of Taiwanese attending state-supported business events in China represented a 3 percent increase from 2023, 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 office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese Communist Party's fourth-ranked leader, 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," state news agency Xinhua reported at the time.
Last year's events surveyed by IORG included a June job fair in southeast 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."
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