INTERVIEW/Taiwan countering Chinese pressure, 'united front' efforts: MAC head

By Sunny Lai, CNA staff reporter

In the seven months since President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) took office, China has not shown any signs of easing its pressure campaign against Taiwan that had already been ramped up during the tenure of Lai's predecessor Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).

Much of that pressure has involved regular military drills in the Taiwan Strait, but it has also entailed "united front" activities intended to help Beijing influence public opinion in Taiwan.

Taiwan's top government agency for cross-strait affairs is the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and in an exclusive interview with CNA on Friday, MAC head Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) outlined some of the approaches his agency has adopted to address the challenges of dealing with Beijing.

A countermeasure

On June 21, around one month after the Lai administration took office, Chinese authorities, including the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of the State Council, announced a new set of legal guidelines targeting advocates of Taiwan independence, with the most severe punishment being the death penalty.

The guidelines' scope was "extremely broad and overly expansive," Chiu said, noting that, under the provisions, anyone who does not support the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) unification policies "could almost certainly face legal consequences."

In response, the MAC participated in raising the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macao to the second-highest "orange" level, he said, and "lodged a protest" with Chinese authorities over the serious personal safety risks the rules posed to Taiwanese in China.

The protest included rejecting applications from high-ranking TAO officials in major Chinese cities to visit Taiwan.

Those denied entry included Jin Mei (金梅), director of the Shanghai Municipal TAO, who missed the 15th Twin-City Forum in Taipei in mid-December.

Asked if the same approach would continue in the future, Chiu said it was "the principle."

Entry would only be granted if the officials would agree to meet with the MAC in a way where "we could lodge a protest regarding this matter (the issuance of the guidelines)," he added.

Working with democratic nations

Among other measures the MAC can resort to in countering Chinese threats is fostering international exchanges, Chiu said, even though the MAC is primarily focused on interacting with China.

To build ties with like-minded democratic nations and help them manage their relations with China, Chiu said the MAC provides Taiwan's overseas offices with detailed weekly reports on the cross-strait situation, offering in-depth analyses of bilateral relations.

Those reports, Chiu explained, are subsequently shared by Taiwan's diplomatic missions with "local friends," helping deepen collaboration on navigating relations with China.

"China's influence is growing stronger, and many countries are eager to understand how we interact with China," he said.

Tourism freeze or thaw?

If there was an area in which there was hope for progress, it was tourism, but even that remains at an impasse, and there was little indication from Chiu that the situation would improve in the near future.

In 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese visitors accounted for around one quarter of all foreign visitors to Taiwan, but that source of tourism income has all but dried up, with independent or group travel largely frozen by the Chinese authorities for over four years.

"The crux of the issue lies in the unwillingness (of Chinese authorities) to lift the travel ban," Chiu said.

While some Chinese officials have expressed a willingness to ease restrictions, they have attached numerous conditions, said Chiu, who described some of the conditions as "involving political manipulation."

If China's lifting of the ban touches on political issues or if tourism is used as a form of economic leverage against Taiwan, it would raise significant concerns for the MAC, Chiu noted.

McCarthyism in Taiwan?

Chiu, a former professor specializing in cross-strait relations at a university in Kinmen, described Beijing's actions since May 20 as "a multifaceted form of pressure" on Taiwan.

These efforts, he said, include social infiltration that employs "united front" strategies aimed at dividing and influencing Taiwanese society.

While he defined "united front" strategies as efforts to "exploit and create internal conflicts among adversaries," some have criticized Taiwan's crackdown on such activities as fostering an environment that could in time evoke the specter of McCarthyism.

McCarthyism, named after late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, cultivated paranoid fear and suspicion of communist influence in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often leading to unjust accusations, social division, and the suppression of differing opinions.

The term "united front" often appears in MAC press releases to denounce China's attempts to influence Taiwan, including when it criticized a small number of Taiwanese entertainers for echoing China's military threats against Taiwan in October.

It accused them of "becoming pawns in the CCP's united front tactics to intimidate Taiwan."

As to whether a phenomenon similar to McCarthyism could occur in Taiwan, Chiu rejected such a possibility and believed the steps taken by the MAC were in the best interests of Taiwan and would not hurt its people.

Imposing a direct ban on suspected "united front" efforts would be "the quickest and simplest solution," he said, but the MAC was against it because "it would undermine the principles of freedom and democracy, and disrupt the normal functioning of a constitutional democracy."

The MAC's current approach, Chiu said, is to focus on educating the public to identify "united front" strategies and push for legislation, such as the Anti-Infiltration Act, to "defend democracy."

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