Taiwan has warned of “disturbing” attempts by China to interfere in its election this month after Chinese leader Xi Jinping said “reunification” with the island democracy was inevitable.
Taiwan’s chief representative in Australia, Douglas Hsu, said China had ramped up efforts to influence the January 13 poll, which will define how the Chinese-claimed island deals with Beijing.
Douglas Hsu is confident Taiwanese voters can make informed decisions despite Chinese interference ahead of the island’s January 13 election. Eamon Gallagher
He pointed to reports by Reuters last week that China’s National Radio and Television Administration had asked pop group Mayday to publicly voice support for Beijing’s claims that Taiwan is part of China.
A similar incident occurred on the eve of Taiwan’s election in 2016 when Taiwanese singer Chou Tzu-yu, then 16, was forced to issue a grovelling apology and declare “there is only one China” in a video issued by her South Korean management company, after major backlash in China because she performed a show while holding the Taiwanese flag.
“Mayday did not yield to Chinese pressure, but this is disturbing,” Mr Hsu told The Australian Financial Review.
“China has been interfering with every single presidential election in Taiwan since 1996, either through military exercises, economic coercion, or cognitive warfare, including disinformation or the spread of conspiracies.
“So of course we have concerns about Chinese interference with our elections. But we are confident the Taiwanese people will have the wisdom to identify malign influences and make their own choice.”
President Xi in his New Year’s Eve address this week said that the “reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability”.
“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he added.
This marked a more aggressive tone than last year when he said people on either side of the Taiwan Strait are “members of one and the same family”.
But Mr Hsu said this rhetoric would only embolden the Taiwanese people’s desire for self-determination, with recent polling showing more than 80 per cent of residents want to maintain the status quo.
“Every time China tries to apply these tactics to our election it has a negative impact on the Taiwanese people from Beijing’s perspective,” he said.
Leonard Chao, Taiwan’s former ambassador to Eswatini, the island’s sole ally in Africa, and who also served as a diplomat in Washington and Ottawa, said Mr Xi’s New Year’s Eve address had three audiences in mind — Taiwanese voters, Chinese residents and American politicians.
Mr Xi held a successful meeting with United States President Joe Biden in California in November, but he faces a series of economic challenges at home including a residential property crisis, high government debt, rising youth unemployment and falling exports.
“Xi is trying to exert pressure on Taiwanese voters, divert domestic attention away from their own problems, and tell Uncle Sam that despite softening US-China relations, China remains absolutely firm on its desire for reunification with Taiwan,” Mr Chao told the Financial Review.
Wen-Ti Sung, a politics expert who teaches in the Australian National University’s Taiwan studies program, said the goal of China’s interference in Taiwan’s election this month was to make the US sound “unreliable” and make resisting Beijing’s agenda sound “unwise” to Taiwanese voters.
“Beijing is attempting to influence Taiwan’s election left and right by amping up propaganda to instil US-scepticism in Taiwan’s public sphere and leveraging economic punishment to punish select Taiwanese exports,” he said.
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