TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Taiwanese government has its own cabinet-level agency, the Mainland Affairs Council, dedicated to its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing. The agency is separate from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Before arriving on this island about 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast last week, I assumed that the agency had been established because Taiwan and China interact across the Taiwan Strait in such myriad ways — culturally, socially and economically, if not always diplomatically — that their dealings were just too extensive to put within the Foreign Ministry.
But Taiwan maintains a separate, China-focused agency for an entirely different reason. Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Jan Jyh-horng, addressing a group of journalists here on a visit funded by the Taiwan government to convey its perspective on tensions with China, explained that “if we treat cross-strait relations as part of internal affairs, we couldn’t properly separate Taiwan and mainland China. If we positioned cross-strait relations as ‘foreign affairs,’ China wouldn’t dare to interact with us” — because Beijing insists that Taiwan is part of China.
Thus, in 1988, Taiwan created a forerunner of this neither-fish-nor-fowl agency, just to get diplomatic discussions started. To call the progress halting since then would be generous. In the current moment, it’s essentially nonexistent.
Over the years, Jan said, the tenor of negotiations has varied depending on the Chinese leader and the policies of the moment. Today, he said, “even if we call them … they won’t pick up the phone. If we send them a message by fax, they don’t reply. Even if we want to invite some of their people to Taiwan, or we want to send some officials to mainland China for some exchanges, they have all said no.”
It has been years since Taiwan and China held any significant diplomatic talks; the only meeting between heads of state was in 2015. Jan, who has spent about three decades dealing with the relationship with China from posts within the Taiwanese government, said the days are long gone when Taiwan would send a delegation to China for a day or two of sober talks bookended by decidedly less sober parties, the first sponsored by the hosts, the second by the guests.
Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Roy Chun Lee told us, “I often joke that rather than calling my colleagues ‘diplomats’, I would prefer to call them ‘soldiers,’ because diplomatic foreign service in Taiwan is like fighting, pushing back against China’s intimidation on a daily basis.”
Some of the intimidation tactics have been going on for years, as when China uses its leverage on other countries to deny Taiwan diplomatic recognition. The campaign has been hugely successful; when Honduras cut diplomatic ties to Taiwan after 82 years last spring, the total number of countries recognizing Taiwan dropped to 13, among them Belize, Guatemala and Haiti. The United States dropped diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in 1979 and maintains an intentionally vague stance on its sovereignty claims.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told us that Beijing also works “very hard” to isolate Taiwan in other ways, including by preventing it from gaining observer status at the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Taiwan’s national police, he said, can’t even access or send data to the 19 databases of Interpol.
But, as is well -known, in recent years under President Xi Jinping’s rule, China’s bellicosity against Taiwan has ratcheted up. China now regularly makes military feints at Taiwan with naval and aerial incursions.
Wu, usually a thoroughly buttoned-down minister, betrayed a hint of exasperation with Beijing’s constant harassment and criticism: “Everything we do, everything we say, is provocative. … The fact that Taiwan is a democracy is a provocation to China.”
That democratic quality will be on display in January, when Taiwan elects a new president. Government officials say they are seeing considerable Chinese meddling and intimidation tactics — the military harassment is perceived as not only saber-rattling by a country that has repeatedly threatened to seize Taiwan but also election-season interference. The officials say they are also dealing with a steady stream of online disinformation. China’s Foreign Ministry has furiously denounced furiously denounced Vice President Lai Ching-te, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential nominee.
Lai has pledged to never back down from China’s threats, and this year he traveled to the United States over objections from Beijing; much like the term-limited President Tsai Ing-wen, he’s insisting that differences across the Taiwan Strait must be resolved peacefully — while a major defense buildup continues. Few Taiwanese leaders would ever be sufficiently supine to placate the Chinese government, but Lai is a particular irritant to Beijing.
“The PRC”— the People’s Republic of China — “wants to play a role in Taiwan’s major elections,” Wu warned. “They want to decide Taiwan’s future. That is not acceptable.” If “an authoritarian communist government” is allowed to decide the democratic results in Taiwan, he said, “I am sure they will try to do this even more in other countries through different kinds of means. That is something that all democracies should say no to.”
Wu smiled slightly. “If China likes to play a role in our democratic election, I think they should try their own election.”
