How China's shadowy agency is working to absorb Taiwan
TAIPEI/HONG
KONG: Ever since a civil war split the two sides more than 60 years
ago, China has viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be
absorbed into the mainland. To that end, the legion of Taiwanese
businessmen working in China is a beachhead.
In June, hundreds of those businessmen gathered in a hotel ballroom in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. They were there to toast the new head of a local Taiwan merchants' association. They sipped baijiu liquor and ate seafood as a troupe performed a traditional lion dance for good luck. An honored guest, senior Communist Party official Li Jiafan, stood to deliver congratulations and a message.
"I urge our Taiwanese friends to continue to work hard in your fields to contribute to the realization of the Chinese dream as soon as possible," said Li, using a nationalist slogan President Xi Jinping has popularized. "The Chinese dream is also the dream of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait — our dream of reunification."
Li, who ended his speech to beating drums and loud applause, is a department chief in the Shenzhen arm of the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Its mission: to spread China's influence by ultimately gaining control over a range of groups not affiliated with the party and that are often outside the mainland.
United Front documents reviewed by Reuters, including annual reports, instructional handbooks and internal newsletters, as well as interviews with Chinese and Taiwanese officials reveal the extent to which the agency is engaged in a concerted campaign to thwart any move toward greater independence by Taiwan and ultimately swallow up the self-ruled island of 23 million.
The United Front's 2013 annual work report for the Chinese province of Zhejiang, for instance, includes the number of Taiwanese living in the province, the number of businesses they run as well as an entry on background checks that have been conducted on the Taiwanese community in the province, an entrepreneurial hub near Shanghai.
The United Front hasn't confined itself to the mainland. It is targeting academics, students, war veterans, doctors and local leaders in Taiwan in an attempt to soften opposition to the Communist Party and ultimately build support for unification. The 2013 work report, reviewed by Reuters, includes details of a program to bring Taiwanese students and military veterans on visits to the mainland.
Influencing politics
Through the United Front and other Chinese state bodies like the Taiwan Affairs Office, which is responsible for implementing policies toward Taiwan on issues including trade and transport, Beijing has also tried to influence politics on the island, in part by helping mobilize Taiwanese businessmen on the mainland.
Many of them are heading back home this weekend to vote in mayoral elections that are being viewed as a barometer of support for Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which favors closer ties with China than does the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A large number of those businessmen, who a senior KMT source said will largely vote for the party, will be flying on deeply discounted airfares being offered by Chinese and Taiwanese airline companies.
"The goal is simple - peaceful unification," said a person with ties to the Chinese leadership in Beijing. ,Soft power, not armed force, is the strategy. "To attack the heart is the best. To attack a [walled] city is the worst," the source said, quoting Sun Tzu's "Art of War."
Questions sent by fax to the Beijing office of the United Front Work Department were not answered. The Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office referred Reuters to a statement on its website saying it does not comment on elections on "the island."
What's happening in Taiwan is part of a broader effort by Beijing to bolster its control over restive territories on its periphery.
The United Front has long been active in Hong Kong, which is ruled under the "one country, two systems" model that enshrines a wide range of personal freedoms for its residents and which China's leaders have proposed as a model for Taiwan. Reuters reported in July that United Front operations in Hong Kong had shifted from the backroom courting of academics and businessmen to the streets, where new groups of pro-Beijing agitators were attempting to silence critics of China.
"What the United Front is doing to Taiwan now is the same as what it has been doing in Hong Kong since the 1980s - a quiet, slow but extensive penetration," said Sonny Lo, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and author of a book on China's covert control of the city.
Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is a fully democratic entity. It has an army but does not have membership in the United Nations, and China has refused to rule out the use of force to gain control of the island.
Since the KMT won the presidential election in 2008, cross-Strait ties have been warmer than ever. More than 20 trade deals, including the establishment of the first direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland, have been inked. No trade agreements were signed under the previous DPP-led administration. Earlier this year, Chinese and Taiwanese officials held their first official meeting since 1949.
Taiwan's economy has become increasingly intertwined with China's. About 40 percent of Taiwan's exports are to China and some key sectors like technology have much of their manufacturing on the mainland. The world's biggest electronic components maker, Foxconn Technology Group ,, which assembles Apple Inc's iPhones, has many of its plants in China.
Taiwan presidential spokesperson Ma Weikuo said Taiwanese heading home to vote were exercising their right as citizens. "It is normal that Taiwanese businessmen living in Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Europe, Japan and other parts of the world want to return to Taiwan to vote," she said.
In June, hundreds of those businessmen gathered in a hotel ballroom in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. They were there to toast the new head of a local Taiwan merchants' association. They sipped baijiu liquor and ate seafood as a troupe performed a traditional lion dance for good luck. An honored guest, senior Communist Party official Li Jiafan, stood to deliver congratulations and a message.
"I urge our Taiwanese friends to continue to work hard in your fields to contribute to the realization of the Chinese dream as soon as possible," said Li, using a nationalist slogan President Xi Jinping has popularized. "The Chinese dream is also the dream of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait — our dream of reunification."
Li, who ended his speech to beating drums and loud applause, is a department chief in the Shenzhen arm of the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Its mission: to spread China's influence by ultimately gaining control over a range of groups not affiliated with the party and that are often outside the mainland.
United Front documents reviewed by Reuters, including annual reports, instructional handbooks and internal newsletters, as well as interviews with Chinese and Taiwanese officials reveal the extent to which the agency is engaged in a concerted campaign to thwart any move toward greater independence by Taiwan and ultimately swallow up the self-ruled island of 23 million.
The United Front's 2013 annual work report for the Chinese province of Zhejiang, for instance, includes the number of Taiwanese living in the province, the number of businesses they run as well as an entry on background checks that have been conducted on the Taiwanese community in the province, an entrepreneurial hub near Shanghai.
The United Front hasn't confined itself to the mainland. It is targeting academics, students, war veterans, doctors and local leaders in Taiwan in an attempt to soften opposition to the Communist Party and ultimately build support for unification. The 2013 work report, reviewed by Reuters, includes details of a program to bring Taiwanese students and military veterans on visits to the mainland.
Influencing politics
Through the United Front and other Chinese state bodies like the Taiwan Affairs Office, which is responsible for implementing policies toward Taiwan on issues including trade and transport, Beijing has also tried to influence politics on the island, in part by helping mobilize Taiwanese businessmen on the mainland.
Many of them are heading back home this weekend to vote in mayoral elections that are being viewed as a barometer of support for Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which favors closer ties with China than does the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A large number of those businessmen, who a senior KMT source said will largely vote for the party, will be flying on deeply discounted airfares being offered by Chinese and Taiwanese airline companies.
"The goal is simple - peaceful unification," said a person with ties to the Chinese leadership in Beijing. ,Soft power, not armed force, is the strategy. "To attack the heart is the best. To attack a [walled] city is the worst," the source said, quoting Sun Tzu's "Art of War."
Questions sent by fax to the Beijing office of the United Front Work Department were not answered. The Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office referred Reuters to a statement on its website saying it does not comment on elections on "the island."
What's happening in Taiwan is part of a broader effort by Beijing to bolster its control over restive territories on its periphery.
The United Front has long been active in Hong Kong, which is ruled under the "one country, two systems" model that enshrines a wide range of personal freedoms for its residents and which China's leaders have proposed as a model for Taiwan. Reuters reported in July that United Front operations in Hong Kong had shifted from the backroom courting of academics and businessmen to the streets, where new groups of pro-Beijing agitators were attempting to silence critics of China.
"What the United Front is doing to Taiwan now is the same as what it has been doing in Hong Kong since the 1980s - a quiet, slow but extensive penetration," said Sonny Lo, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and author of a book on China's covert control of the city.
Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is a fully democratic entity. It has an army but does not have membership in the United Nations, and China has refused to rule out the use of force to gain control of the island.
Since the KMT won the presidential election in 2008, cross-Strait ties have been warmer than ever. More than 20 trade deals, including the establishment of the first direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland, have been inked. No trade agreements were signed under the previous DPP-led administration. Earlier this year, Chinese and Taiwanese officials held their first official meeting since 1949.
Taiwan's economy has become increasingly intertwined with China's. About 40 percent of Taiwan's exports are to China and some key sectors like technology have much of their manufacturing on the mainland. The world's biggest electronic components maker, Foxconn Technology Group ,, which assembles Apple Inc's iPhones, has many of its plants in China.
Taiwan presidential spokesperson Ma Weikuo said Taiwanese heading home to vote were exercising their right as citizens. "It is normal that Taiwanese businessmen living in Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Europe, Japan and other parts of the world want to return to Taiwan to vote," she said.
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