Taiwan fears a Chinese offensive of false kindness before the elections

FILE PHOTO: Flags of China and Taiwan in an illustration taken on August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Por Yimou Lee

TAIPEI, March 3 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s government believes China is ready to renew an offensive of niceties aimed at “opinion leaders” to win their trust, as the island prepares for presidential elections next year. less than a year, according to an internal report from a security agency.

China, which regards democratic Taiwan as its own territory, has long applied the carrot-and-stick method to the island and, while threatening it with the prospect of a military operation, reaches out to those it considers sympathetic to the point. view of Beijing.

As Taipei and Beijing gradually resume travel relations disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan security officials hope China will relaunch an influence campaign that in the past included all-expenses-paid trips to China for politicians. Taiwanese.

Starting this month, the campaign will focus on inviting “opinion leaders” to visit China, according to a classified report by a Taiwanese security agency that studies Chinese activities on the island, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

“The Chinese Communist Party is developing its exchange programs with Taiwan for this year. Various Taiwan-related agencies will gradually resume their invitations to Taiwanese people of all levels to visit mainland China,” the agency said in the February report, based on intelligence information.

Taiwan’s presidential elections are scheduled for January next year, and authorities fear Beijing is trying to foment animosity toward the government of President Tsai Ing-wen.

China refuses to talk with the government, believing Tsai to be a separatist for refusing to accept Beijing’s longstanding position that both China and Taiwan belong to “one China.”

Tsai rejects Chinese territorial claims, saying only the island’s 23 million people can decide its future, though she has repeatedly offered to hold talks with Beijing.

China, which has never renounced the use of force to gain control of what it calls its “sacred” territory, has intensified pressure on Taiwan to accept Chinese sovereignty in recent years, including carrying out exercises periodic military strikes near the island.

Beijing is expected to try to use its campaign to convince the population to support the political parties most open to “reunification” or at least closer ties.

“They may want Taiwanese to support certain political parties that favor closer economic ties with the mainland,” a Taiwanese security official investigating the matter told Reuters.

The official, who declined to be named, said China could invite a range of people beyond political and business leaders in the hope of discreetly promoting its political ideology.

“Exchange programs may come in the name of sports, culture or commerce, but what worries us is what is said in private,” said the official.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Beijing staff; Editing in Spanish by Flora Gómez)

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