How Chinese state agencies are being deployed to build support for unification in Taiwan by co-opting local groups and conducting influence operations against overseas campaigns contrary to China’s political agenda by YimouLee jamespomfret
TAIPEI/HONG KONG - When Taiwanese businessman Jhang Yun-nan wanted to find buyers for his company’s new cleaning products in China, he turned to an unconventional channel: A Taiwanese party that advocates the unification of China with the self-ruled, democratic island.
“I support peaceful unification across the strait,” Lin told Reuters, echoing the view CUPP expects Taiwanese it works with to embrace. China views Taiwan as a wayward province to be brought under Beijing’s control, by force if necessary. The defeated Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists.
Chinese state agencies deployed to build support for unification include the Taiwan Affairs Office and the United Front Work Department, whose aim is to unify Taiwan by co-opting local groups and conducting influence operations against overseas campaigns contrary to China’s political agenda. During a visit to China in April 2016, the Taipei-based Alliance for the Reunification of China was “greatly praised” by a senior Chinese official for “advancing the great work of motherland reunification,” according to minutes from the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, one of the few nominally independent political groups permitted in China.
A Taiwan security source, who declined to be named as the matter was not made public, said CUPP was at the top of his agency’s watch list because of its size - it has 60,000 members - and its ability to mobilize members. He and other unification advocates said they saw an opportunity to gain influence in the wake of President Tsai Ing-wen’s pro-independence ruling party’s recent poll defeat amid frustrations over its economic and cross-strait policy.
“We will concentrate our firepower to support KMT,” CUPP’s Wen said, citing KMT’s support for the 1992 consensus, an agreement that year by KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides are part of “one China,” a cherished principle in Beijing.“There’s a reason why pro-unification groups support KMT - we tackle cross-strait issues on an equal and reciprocal basis,” Ou-Yang said.
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