Two Chinas Policy

U.S. warship sails through Taiwan Strait after election

By Emerson Lim, Chiang Chin-yeh, Su Long-chi, Wang Yang-yu and Yu Hsiang

Taipei -- Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) and the U.S. 7th Fleet confirmed Friday that a United States warship recently sailed through the Taiwan Strait, less than one week after Taiwan's 2020 presidential and legislative elections.
The move was interpreted by some Taiwanese lawmakers as a warning to Beijing.
The transit happened Thursday with the U.S. warship approaching southwest of Taiwan and sailing north through the Taiwan Strait, a MND statement said Friday.
The MND did not identify the U.S. military vessel but said it was conducting "normal" navigation operations and Taiwan's Armed Forces fully monitored its movement.
Joe Keiley, spokesperson of the U.S. 7th Fleet, confirmed the transit in response to a query from CNA.
"The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67) conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit Jan. 16 in accordance with international law," Keiley said in a statement.
"The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows," he said.
The USS Shiloh is a forward deployed Ballistic Missile Defense Cruiser stationed out of Yokosuka, Japan.
The vessel's transit through the Taiwan Strait came five days after Taiwan's 2020 presidential and legislative elections, in which President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文, who ran for reelection, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a landslide victory.
Following the elections, many foreign and domestic analysts predicted that Beijing is likely to increase pressure on Taiwan, with the flexing of military muscle a possible option.
Meanwhile, Taiwan legislators expressed different views on the U.S. warship's transit through the Taiwan Strait.
DPP lawmaker Tsai Shih-ying 蔡適應 said the transit showed Washington's support for Taiwan's democratic process, adding that the U.S. action provided a sense of security for the Taiwanese people.
Another DPP lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng 羅致政 said the timing of the transit could be read as the U.S. telling China not to overreact to the results of Taiwan's election, as Beijing has issued harsh statements over the past few days.

President Tsai Stands Up to Xi Jinping

The Chinese dictator miscalculated, increasing the pressure he exerted, but driving more support to President Tsai Ing-wen.

By Thomas Wright

Taiwan can seem like the third rail of international diplomacy. 

If a country wants a good relationship with China, Beijing has effectively stated, it cannot have a meaningful relationship with Taiwan. 

Just this week, the city of Shanghai broke off official contacts with the city of Prague for signing a partnership treaty with Taipei. 

Beijing has long regarded Taiwan as nothing more than a renegade province. 

Under Xi Jinping, China has systematically tried to reduce Taiwan’s international space, forcing it out of global organizations and forums, as well as increasing military and economic coercion to force it into a process of reunification.

By this measure, Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide reelection on Saturday as president of Taiwan will come as a great disappointment to Beijing. 

President Tsai’s victory seemed very unlikely nine months ago. 

She was more than 20 points behind in the polls. 

Her party, the DPP, suffered a big defeat in midterm elections in 2018. 

But China’s actions in Hong Kong gave the Taiwanese a glimpse of their possible future. 

In his 2019 New Year’s Day message, Xi demanded that Taiwan look to the “one country, two systems” approach as a model for future relations. 

The Taiwanese had their worst fears about what that meant confirmed in Hong Kong and gave a resounding “No, thanks.”
Taiwan’s politics are complicated and defy the typical left-right divide. 

The DPP has traditionally favored formal independence, although President Tsai is cautious and has made it clear she will not take any steps in this direction that could give Beijing a pretext for an invasion. 

Her government is focused on preserving Taiwan’s practical autonomy and freedoms. 

The other party is the Kuomintang (KMT), which extended its rule over Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists. 

The KMT favors closer ties with Beijing and eventual reunification, albeit on very different terms to those proposed by Xi. 

Young people in Taiwan have no emotional attachment to the past and want to preserve the only way of life they have known.
Beijing made its feelings known quickly. 

Commenting on the election, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said the “international consensus” on “the one-China principle,” which holds that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory … will not be affected in the least by a local election.” 

“Those who split the country will be doomed to leave a stink for 10,000 years,” he said. 

The Global Times, a newspaper operated under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, called for “a plan to crack down on President Tsai’s new provocative actions, including imposing military pressure, which is an unbearable option for Taiwan authorities.”

The big question hanging over Taiwan now is how Beijing will react over the next four years. 

I spent the past five days in Taipei with a small group of Americans and Australians to observe the elections. 

We also had an opportunity to speak with President Tsai and other senior officials.

“We need to be candid,” President Tsai told us. 

“If we are vague, Beijing may misjudge the situation. In the past, people have gotten concerned when we are direct, but the situation has changed. We need to be direct to prevent misjudgment.” President Tsai reminded me of Angela Merkel. 

A 63-year-old academic, she is both principled and cautious. 

“We must be clear, but not provocative; loud, but careful,” she said.

Taiwan officials told me that more than 70 countries had sent messages of congratulations to President Tsai and the people of Taiwan on the election, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

They said the messages were longer and arrived faster than in previous years. 

This may seem like a small thing, but in a place where protocol is often seen as a matter of survival, it mattered. 

The officials pointed in particular to Europe, where they said they had witnessed a sea change in recent years. 

As European countries experienced direct pressure from China on a variety of fronts, they have seen Taiwan in a new light.

Taiwan officials believe that Xi miscalculated on Taiwan. 

He saw that President Tsai was politically vulnerable and sought to increase pressure, but it had the opposite effect. 

Xi has decades of experience in dealing with Taiwan and sees himself as the expert in chief. 

Now that his judgment has been revealed to be fallible, the question is whether he will be impatient and seek to achieve unification through coercive means, or whether he has enough on his plate. 

Taipei hopes that Xi will reach out to President Tsai to ease tensions. 

The officials pointed out that President Tsai is not an ideologue. 

If China does not deal with her now, it may have to deal with future leaders who they will perceive as more difficult. 

There is no prospect of leaders who will engage on the one country, two systems idea, even if the KMT were to make a comeback.

But Taipei is not counting on Xi having a change of heart. 

Instead, officials are preparing for a prolonged pressure campaign. 

Although the military threat grabs headlines, President Tsai’s government’s main foreign-policy goal is to halt and reverse its diplomatic isolation. 

Taiwan officials see the Trump administration as a stalwart ally in this regard. 

The U.S. has increased official engagement and approved the sale of fighter jets. 

Taipei hopes to move toward a free-trade agreement and is willing to offer good terms. 

However, Donald Trump remains a wild card. 

For instance, Trump complained bitterly after a mid-ranking State Department official, Alex Wong, visited Taipei to demonstrate U.S. solidarity, because he worried that it would infuriate Xi.

Always susceptible to direct requests from Xi, Trump reportedly considered firing him, but eventually demurred.
Support for Taiwan is likely to remain a bipartisan cause in the United States. 

Both Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg issued strong statements of congratulations and support after President Tsai’s election. 

In Washington, there is widespread recognition that President Tsai’s win was not a disruptive act; it was a vote for stability and the status quo. 

Isolating Taiwan is bad not just for Taiwan, but for the world. 

After President Tsai’s first election in 2016, China blocked Taiwan’s attendance as an observer at World Health Assembly meetings even though it had participated for the past eight years under a KMT government. 

Global pandemics know no boundaries, and tackling this threat ought not to be dependent on whether Beijing approves of Taiwan’s political choices.

The pressure Taiwan is experiencing is a more extreme case of the pressure many countries, companies, and people are under from Beijing, whether it is the Swedish government awarding a free-speech prize to a Swedish citizen born in Hong Kong; the mayor of Prague; a Turkish soccer player in England; or American technology companies. 

When I asked President Tsai what lessons the world should draw from Beijing’s global assertiveness, she told me, “We cannot afford to be romantic about the relationship with China.”

The question facing democracies is whether to accommodate Beijing’s attempt to silence all criticism and to ensure engagement occurs only on its terms, or to be candid and steadfast about defending and preserving the freedoms we have. 

The people of Taiwan chose to be candid not despite the fact that they are under pressure, but because of it. 

The rest of the world is moving in that direction, too.

Taiwan's citizens battle pro-China fake news campaigns as election nears

Contest is in effect a referendum on the future of the nation’s relationship with China
By Lily Kuo and Lillian Yang
Protesters against Taiwan’s pro-China KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu during a protest in Kaohsiung.

Citizen groups in Taiwan are fighting a Russian-style influence and misinformation campaign that originated across the strait in mainland China with just weeks to go before it votes for its next president,
Taiwan goes to the polls on 11 January to decide between two main candidates, incumbent president Tsai Ing-Wen of the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) under whom ties with Beijing have become fraught, and Han Kuo-Yu of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which advocates closer engagement with China.
The contest is in large part a referendum on the future of Taiwan’s relationship with Beijing, which sees the independent nation as a renegade "province" that one day must return to the fold.
Han is Beijing’s favoured candidate while Tsai’s party has been campaigning on the slogan: “Resist China, Defend Taiwan”.
In a televised debate with her rivals for the job on Sunday, Tsai said China’s “expanding ambitions” were the biggest threat to its democracy. 

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.

Citizen groups in Taiwan say the openness of one of the freest societies in Asia is being used against it by groups in China to wage an online disinformation campaign, made more potent by their shared language, Mandarin.
A recent study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that Taiwan was the most exposed to foreign dissemination of false information.
False reports include claims Tsai’s doctorate degree was fake or that Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong kicked an elderly man when he visited Taiwan in October and met members of the DPP.
“China has multiple ways of pushing misinformation. We’ve found that content mills are no longer simply producing fake information. More and more, they are manipulating opinions,” said Jarvis Chiu, senior manager for the Institute for Information Industry, which has been assisting government efforts to prevent disinformation.
According to Chiu, an army of trolls will leave thousands of comments under a candidate’s post or a news article, shifting the focus of the debate.
Fake social media accounts also share pro-Beijing content or inflate the number of likes such content gets.
“Subliminal attacks” include repeatedly searching for one candidate’s name to influence search algorithm results.
“China won’t give up this practice. It will only increase and because it is non-military, it won’t get much global attention,” Chiu said.
The uncertain status of Taiwan, functionally independent but not internationally recognised, has been an issue in every campaign since direct elections were introduced in the 1990s following decades of martial law under the KMT.
This year, the question of how Taiwan should deal with Beijing looms even larger after years of increasingly strident rhetoric from China.
On Thursday, China sailed its new aircraft carrier, Shandong, through the Taiwan Strait in a move critics described an effort to intimidate voters.
Months of witnessing Beijing’s inflexible response to protesters in Hong Kong have cast even more doubt on the city’s “one country, two systems” framework, once touted as a possible model for Taiwan.
“There’s a sword hanging over everyone all the time,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor of east Asian politics with a focus on Taiwan at Davidson College.
“It’s exhausting to know that you’re being threatened and that the entity that is threatening you is getting more and more powerful all the time.”
In an attempt to push back against the campaign, citizen watchdog groups are manning social media, debunking rumours and trying to trace questionable content back to its source.
Prosecutors have been charging those who spread disinformation.
The party in office is trying to pass a law that would prohibit support from foreign “infiltration sources” to a political party.
“Taiwanese people have only just started understanding what is happening. It’s still the very beginning,” said Summer Chen, of Taiwan FactCheck Center which works on debunking disinformation on Facebook.
“It is a crisis and all of Taiwan needs to be researching this.”
A series of snappy Youtube tutorials educate viewers on the nature and methods of disinformation warfare.
“Taiwan has become the main laboratory for information warfare from China. If China wants to practice its methods, Taiwan is the starting point,” Puma Shen, who runs DoubleThink Labs, which monitors how false information, explains in one of the videos.
Those working on the issue say it is difficult to definitely say these attacks originated in China or link them to Chinese state actors, which makes the work of raising awareness harder.
“I believe that there is cooperation with China, but how much China knows, how much of this is from the Chinese government or people in Taiwan who are pro-China, we don’t know,” said Vivian Chen, a recent graduate studying medicine from Taipei.
China’s efforts to influence events in Taiwan stretch a long way back and go beyond online information warfare, to include traditional media, incentives for citizens or businesses who cooperate with China, group trips and donations to temples and other grassroots organisations.
Last month when Chinese defector Wang Liqiang detailed ways he had been instructed to interfere in Taiwan’s midterm elections in 2018 as well as the upcoming race, few in Taiwan were surprised.
“The story was not as shocking in Taiwan as it was in other parts of the world,” said Lev Nachman, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine, studying social movements and focusing on Taiwan.
“It is not news to Taiwanese people that China has been co-opting local organisations for political influence.”
Observers say it is unlikely efforts to influence voters will affect the outcome of the race, where voters will also choose representatives for the legislature.
According to polls, Tsai is ahead of her rival, helped by months of protests in Hong Kong and concerns about Beijing, and an improved economy.

Taiwan is battling a wave of online disinformation from China

By Alice Su

Demonstrators in Taiwan rally against pro-China media. A global study found that the island was the territory most exposed to Chinese disinformation.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The messages start out as innocuous advice, often health-related, like: “Don’t eat mushrooms and eggplant together, or you may die.”
Then they turn political.“Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s PhD is fake.” 

“The CIA pays Hong Kong protesters $385 a day to go on the streets.” 

“Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan are ethnically Vietnamese and Japanese.”
Thousands of Chinese lies flood social media every day in Taiwan, a new frontier of information warfare. 

The island, which China claims as part of its territory but has been functionally independent since the 1950s, is the target of a Russian-style disinformation campaign by China to exploit social divisions and undermine democracy in the lead-up to the presidential election in January.
A recent study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that Taiwan was the territory most exposed to Chinese disinformation, based on weighted ratings by experts. 

The U.S. ranked No. 13.
On Friday alone, Facebook shut down 118 Taiwanese fan pages, 99 groups and 51 accounts, including at least one unofficial fan group with more than 150,000 members for pro-China politician Han Kuo-yu, the candidate of the Nationalist Party, who is seen as Beijing’s favorite. 

He is seeking to unseat Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party takes a more confrontational stance toward China.
Facebook told Taiwan’s Central News Agency that the accounts had been removed for violating the platform’s rules by artificially inflating their posts’ reach, and that the removal was part of Facebook’s efforts to protect Taiwan’s election.
Like other democracies, Taiwan has been struggling to contain the spread of false information via social media. 

Several nations, including Singapore and Vietnam, have passed laws to combat “fake news,” but advocates of human rights and press freedom think that such bans are being used as a pretext to censor news and stifle speech.
In Taiwan, a bill prohibiting foreign “infiltration” of elections is stalled in the legislature, challenged by critics who say it brings back memories of the “White Terror,” a nearly four-decade period of martial law period that ended only in 1987.
Instead, Taiwan’s government is relying on private citizens to check facts and promote media literacy.
In a small office tucked inside a TV broadcast building, four former journalists recently pored over social media posts for the Taiwan FactCheck Center, a nonprofit group that started collaborating with Facebook in July 2018 to debunk disinformation on Taiwanese pages. 

The center is supported by two private foundations and is not funded by any government, political party or politician.
When users click on a Facebook post flagged as false, they encounter a warning screen with a link directing them to the center’s report before the user can access the content.
(Facebook says it similarly works with third-party fact-checking organizations in a number of countries, including the U.S. But when posts are marked false in most countries, they simply get moved lower in the news feed so that users see it less prominently. Fact-checking reports are also added as “Related Articles” connected to the false posts, Facebook says.)
In Taiwan the fact-checking team is small. 

It takes days to research and publish a full debunking report. 

The work is Sisyphean: The center has published 214 reports so far, but thousands of fake-news posts show up daily on Facebook and Line, a popular messaging app. 

Many appear in private chat groups that the center cannot monitor.
“This is just a beginning,” said Summer Chen, the center’s editor in chief, acknowledging the challenge.
Chen sees parallels with the disinformation campaigns used by the Russians to interfere in American elections. 

Some accounts and pages lure readers with seemingly innocuous information, then suddenly switch to political messaging.
Other posts try to stir emotions on hot-button issues — for example, false claims that Tsai’s government has misused pension funds to lure Korean and Japanese tourists to make up for a drop in visitors from the mainland, and that organizers of Taiwan’s annual gay-rights parade received stipends to invite overseas partners to march with them.
“They see a crack and stick a needle in,” Chen said, citing a Chinese proverb to explain disinformation that exploits social divisions.
The provenance of some slanderous posts is barely concealed.
One false post, for example, claimed that pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong had been offered money to kill police officers in suicide attacks. 

Chen’s group traced its first appearance to a post on Weibo, a mainland Chinese platform, by an official account belonging to China’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission.Fact-checkers also noted that the posts were accompanied by a fabricated poster claiming to recruit “martyrs.” 

But the name of the supposed martyrs’ chat group was written in Mandarin phonetics, rather than in Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong.
Content analysis is one method analysts use to discern whether disinformation is coming from China, said Puma Shen, head of DoubleThink Labs, an organization that tracks Chinese disinformation and influence networks in Taiwan.
Timing can also be a giveaway, Shen said, as when clusters of accounts post and share content at the same time, between the same hours every day.
Proving whether such “coordinated inauthentic behavior” is linked to the Beijing government is harder. 

But there are clues: When Twitter shut down 936 mainland Chinese accounts targeting Hong Kong protests with disinformation in the summer, it found that several originated from internet addresses in mainland China that can access Twitter without a virtual private network — which strongly suggests that they were state-controlled accounts.
Facebook soon followed suit, closing mainland Chinese pages with thousands of followers and disclosing that individuals behind them were “associated with the Chinese government.” 

Google recently disabled 210 YouTube channels coordinating disinformation about Hong Kong.
Yet Taiwanese society remains undecided on whether Chinese disinformation is a threat, or even real.
In a survey of voters in November 2018, a week after local elections in Taiwan, Wang Tai-Li, a journalism professor at National Taiwan University, found that 52% of respondents did not believe there was Chinese interference in the elections, or did not know enough to judge.
Last month, a survey by the local news outlet Apple Daily found that in general, respondents could not correctly identify the source of online disinformation in Taiwan: 23.6% said it came from Tsai’s party, while 12.8% said it came from the Nationalist Party. 

Only 17.8% said it came from China.
It doesn’t help that Taiwan’s media landscape is severely polarized, with poor fact-checking standards and a high emphasis on entertainment over factual, neutrally presented news. 

Politicians from both of Taiwan’s major parties have also used trolls and cyber armies to influence voters as elections approach, Wang said.
That unsure, confused segment of Taiwanese society is most susceptible to Chinese influence — and most in need of media literacy training, Wang said. 

“Disinformation works on people in the middle, the politically neutral.”
On a recent Sunday afternoon, about 20 volunteers filed into a co-working space in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital. 

Pop music played as they snacked on egg tarts and opened their laptops, typing reports for CoFacts, a crowdsourced fact-checking database. 

Users can send queries to a CoFacts chatbot on Line about suspicious messages, which generates prewritten responses debunking the false claims.
Johnson Liang, the founder of CoFacts, acknowledged that it was hard to change the minds of people deceived by disinformation, but he said that the chatbot at least provided alternative viewpoints to consider.
“We’re providing information, not telling people what to think,” Liang said.
It’s a philosophy in line with how Liang and many Taiwanese people believe the internet should operate: open source, based on exchange and dialogue, not on censorship and top-down control.
“Our kind of defining identity is to be not what the PRC is,” said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s “digital minister,” referring to the People’s Republic of China. 

Chinese authoritarianism is a reminder of Taiwan’s recent past under martial law, she said.
“Freedom of speech, assembly and press are not something instrumental that you can kind of trade away — rather, they form the core identity of Taiwan.”
Yisuo Tzeng, acting director of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-backed think tank, said that China’s Communist Party lacked sufficient understanding of democratic societies to change how people outside mainland China think.
“People always say disinformation must have a huge impact on you, because you are all Chinese — but look at Hong Kong now,” he said, pointing to pro-democracy candidates’ landslide victory in recent elections, notwithstanding a wave of mainland propaganda. 

“If it didn’t work on Hong Kong, how can it have an impact on us?”
Tzeng worries less about disinformation than about conventional influence operations — coercion and bribery — carried out by the United Front Work Department, the Communist Party entity responsible for co-opting ethnic Chinese outside China.
Shen, of DoubleThink Labs, is less optimistic. 

He says that civil society needs physical protection from Chinese agents, especially when they move beyond fact-checking to exposing influence networks.
“There are so many agencies bought or ordered by the Chinese government right now,” Shen said. “We might be attacked by them, and some of them are gangsters.”
One of Taiwan’s largest “triad” gangs, the Bamboo Union, is overtly pro-Beijing. 

Its members attacked students protesting closer ties to Beijing during Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Movement. 

The gang also was associated with anti-democratic repression in the 1980s.Civil society can handle content farms and trolls, Shen said, but the government still needs to protect the fact-checkers and democracy advocates in the real world.

China Has Lost Taiwan, and It Knows It

So it is attacking democracy on the island from within.
By Natasha Kassam

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan and her running mate, William Lai Ching-te, campaigning in Taipei on Nov. 17. Ms. Tsai has vehemently denounced interference from Beijing.

“Not a chance,” the president’s tweet said, in Chinese characters. 

That was the message from Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of Taiwan, on Nov. 5, after the Chinese government announced a string of initiatives to lure Taiwanese companies and residents to the mainland.
“Beijing’s new 26 measures are part of a greater effort to force a ‘one country, two systems’ model on #Taiwan,” Ms. Tsai’s tweet said, referring to the principle according to which Hong Kong — another territory Beijing eventually hopes to fully control — is supposed to be governed for now and its semiautonomy from Beijing guaranteed. 

“I want to be very clear: China’s attempts to influence our elections & push us to accept ‘one country, two systems’ will never succeed.” 

The protesters who have mobilized in Hong Kong for months say, in effect, that the principle is a lie.
In Taiwan, the Chinese government’s objective has long been what it calls “peaceful reunification” — “reunification” even though Taiwan has never been under the jurisdiction or control of the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party. 

To achieve that goal, Beijing has for years tried to simultaneously coax and coerce Taiwan’s adhesion with both the promise of economic benefits and military threats. 

Early this year, Xi Jinping reiterated that “complete reunification” was a “historic task.” 

“We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means,” he added.
Taiwan is gearing up for a presidential election in January. 

On Nov. 17, Ms. Tsai announced that the pro-independence William Lai Ching-te, a former prime minister, would be her running mate. 

On the same day, China sent an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait. (In July, China had released its defense white paper, and it stated, “By sailing ships and flying aircraft around Taiwan, the armed forces send a stern warning to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”) 

Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, reacted by tweeting: “#PRC intends to intervene in #Taiwan’s elections. Voters won’t be intimidated! They’ll say NO to #China at the ballot box.”
The Chinese government also seems to suspect as much: Even as it holds fast to its usual (ineffectual) strong-arm tactics, it is employing new measures as well. 

It no longer is simply supporting candidates from the Kuomintang, a party that now favors closer ties with Beijing. 

It is also trying to undermine Taiwan’s democratic process itself and sow social divisions on the island.
It seems clear by now that even Beijing-friendly candidates cannot deliver Taiwan to China. 

Only about one in 10 Taiwanese people support unification with China, whether sooner or later, according to a survey by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University in October. Given public opinion, presidential candidates are likely to hurt their chances if they are perceived as being too close to the Chinese government.
Beijing, by flexing its muscle, seems to have succeeded only in pushing the Taiwanese away. 

A series of missile tests by the People’s Liberation Army in the lead-up to Taiwan’s March 1996 presidential election was designed to intimidate voters and turn them away from re-electing the nationalist Lee Teng-hui. 

One of his opponents, Chen Li-an, warned, “If you vote for Lee Teng-hui, you are choosing war.” 

Mr. Lee won comfortably over three other candidates, with 54 percent of the popular vote.
The Chinese authorities also seemed to think that increasing economic interdependence across the Taiwan Strait would be a pathway to unification. 

At some point, the theory went, it would be too costly for Taiwan to unravel economic links.
And yet. 

Trade between China and Taiwan exceeded $181 billion in 2017, up from about $35.5 billion in 1999. 

But even as the two economies grew closer, the number of people who identified as Taiwanese increased: from more than 48 percent to about 60 percent between 2008 and late 2015, during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, of the Kuomintang.
The Sunflower Movement of 2014, a series of protests led by a coalition of students and civil-society activists, marked the rejection of close relations with China by Taiwan’s younger generations. So did the election of the pro-sovereignty Ms. Tsai in 2016.
Ms. Tsai’s popularity then slid — mostly because she couldn’t sell significant reforms on pensions and same-sex marriage or make progress on stagnant wage growth and pollution control. 

By the time local elections were held in late 2018, her chances at a second presidential term seemed to be next to nil. 

But now she leads opinion polls.
For her renewed popularity, she can thank, in part, the monthslong protests in Hong Kong. 

Beijing designed the “one country, two systems” model in place in the city also with Taiwan in mind. The idea, long unpopular with many Taiwanese people, seems less credible than ever.
China casts a wide net, and it will persist in pulling its military and economic levers. 

No doubt, too, it will continue to manipulate news coverage to try to buoy Beijing-friendly candidates in the upcoming election. 

But now it is also launching a disinformation campaign to sap Taiwanese’s trust in their institutions and sow discontent among them.
Late last month, Ms. Tsai accused China of “producing fake news and disseminating rumors to deceive and mislead Taiwanese” in hopes of “destroying our democracy.” 

Ms. Tsai herself has struggled to shake off the accusation that she did not earn a doctorate from the London School of Economics, even though the university has confirmed that she was “correctly awarded a Ph.D. in law in 1984.” 

Chinese officials have privately admitted that Russia’s tampering with the United States’ presidential election in 2016 caused them to reconsider ways of meddling with Taiwan’s.
China has also made no secret of its intention to exacerbate social rifts in Taiwan. 

An editorial from April in The Global Times, a Chinese state-owned tabloid, stated: “We don’t need a real war to resolve the Taiwan question. The mainland can adopt various measures to make Taiwan ruled by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) turn into a Lebanon situation which ‘Taiwan independence’ forces cannot afford.” 

Meaning: The Chinese government believes it can pit various ethnic, political and social groups in Taiwan against one another.
China can also be expected to exploit the soft underbelly of Taiwanese politics: patronage networks. Those are less important today than during Taiwan’s authoritarian days, but they continue to allow community leaders, farmers’ associations and even organized-crime figures to buy votes.
Social media platforms are another key battleground: Nearly 90 percent of Taiwan’s population is active on them, and traditional news outlets have been known to republish fake posts without fact-checking. 

According to Reuters, Chinese government agencies paid Taiwanese news outlets to publish pro-Beijing content.
By some accounts, a disinformation campaign conducted by a professional cybergroup from China, which was traced back to the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party, helped the pro-China Han Kuo-yu get elected mayor of the southern city of Kaohsiung: One (false) story claimed that during a debate, Mr. Han’s opponent wore an earpiece feeding him talking points. 

China is trying to erode Taiwan’s body politic from within.
But Taiwan is pushing back. 

Legislators have recently accelerated efforts to pass a law against foreign infiltration and political interference before the election. 

An adviser to a presidential candidate told me this summer in Taipei, “The question for voters this election is: Do you want a quick death or a slow one?” 

Is it, though? 

Despite Beijing’s efforts at sabotage, Taiwan’s democracy is proving well and truly alive.

Taiwan Detains 2 Executives of Firm Accused of Spying for China

The executives were detained as officials look into accusations that the company’s workers intervened in Taiwan’s looming national election campaign.
By Steven Lee Myers and Chris Horton

The building listed as the address of China Innovation Investment Limited in Hong Kong on Saturday.

BEIJING — Taiwan has detained two executives of a Hong Kong-based company accused of acting as a front for Chinese intelligence agencies working to undercut democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the official news agency there reported on Tuesday.
Taiwan’s justice ministry ordered the two executives, Xiang Xin and Kung Ching, to remain in Taiwan while investigators looked into the assertions of a defector in Australia that their company, China Innovation Investment Limited, acted on behalf of Chinese intelligence.
The defector, Wang Liqiang, said he worked for the company and took part in — or knew of — covert intelligence operations that included buying media coverage, creating thousands of social media accounts to attack Taiwan’s governing party and funneling donations to favored candidates of the opposition party, the Kuomintang.
Mr. Wang, 26, detailed his accusations in a 17-page appeal for asylum in Australia, where his wife and child had previously moved to study. 

People briefed on his appeal in Australia said his claims were considered serious and reliable enough to warrant a deeper investigation.
Xiang, the executive director of the company, denied even knowing Mr. Wang, and the company said that Mr. Wang was not an employee.
Xiang and Kung, a deputy, were in Taiwan when the accusations emerged last week, and were stopped at Taoyuan International Airport on Sunday and questioned by prosecutors in Taipei.
The Taipei district prosecutors office is investigating Xiang and Kung under suspicion of violating Taiwan’s National Security Act.
“At present, the two individuals are barred from leaving Taiwan,” a spokeswoman for the office, Chen Yu-ping, said in a phone interview. 

“They have both been willing to cooperate with our investigation.”
If charged, the two men could face up to five years in prison.
The accusations against them came only weeks before Taiwan’s Jan. 11 presidential election and underscored what officials and experts have long warned: that China would attempt to interfere in the campaign. 

China has made no secret of its opposition to the incumbent, Tsai Ing-wen, who was elected in 2016.

Her challenger from the Kuomintang is Han Kuo-yu, a populist who was elected mayor last year of the southern city of Kaohsiung. 

Mr. Wang alleged that the Chinese had directly supported Mr. Han’s candidacy in those elections with donations funneled through Hong Kong.
The accusations have roiled politics in Taiwan, as well as in Australia, where reports about Chinese influence in the government have become a political lightning rod.
Ms. Tsai, speaking to more than 10,000 supporters at a Sunday rally in Taichung, Taiwan’s second-largest city, reiterated her warnings about China, saying the Communist Party’s goal was to prevent her re-election.
“China’s ability to influence Taiwan’s election will only increase, it’s not going to decrease,” she told the rally. 

“China will do whatever it takes to take down the presidential candidate they detest. Are you ready? Are you ready to protect democracy together and stand up to Chinese meddling?”

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen calls on the international community to stand by Hong Kong

DPA
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's comments came one day after Hong Kong police entered several university campuses, using tear gas to violently suppress pro-democracy protests, mainly involving students.

TAIPEI - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday (Nov 13) called on the international community to take action to stand by Hong Kong after a number of universities there were stormed by riot police the previous day.
"I want to call on the Hong Kong government to pull back just in time and not to respond to the people with violence," Ms Tsai wrote on Facebook.
Ms Tsai's comments came one day after Hong Kong police entered several university campuses, using tear gas to violently suppress pro-democracy protests, mainly involving students.
Ms Tsai said that a government would eventually lose the people's confidence when citizens get no police protection.
"The international community and people upholding values of democracy and freedom must take action and pay attention to the situation in Hong Kong, which is out of control," Ms Tsai said.
Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party's deputy secretary-general Lin Fei-fan on Wednesday said that Hong Kong is now "already a police city".
He condemned the Hong Kong police for turning university campuses into battlegrounds and conducting inappropriate arrests.
"The Hong Kong issue is an international one," Mr Lin told a news conference in Taipei.

China Is Sabotaging Itself in Taiwan

The logic of politics in the Xi Jinping era makes a softer line untenable, even if it’s having the opposite of the desired effect.

By Richard McGregor

China has a lot at stake in getting its favored candidate across the line in Taiwan’s presidential election in January, so it’s strange that Beijing is doing so much to sabotage Han Kuo-yu’s chances. Without a change in its approach, the Communist Party risks making the already difficult task of winning over the self-governing island next to impossible without force.
Over the past year, Beijing has single-handedly revived the electoral prospects of its political adversary, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. 

At the turn of the year, Tsai’s approval rating was a miserable 24%. 

Now polls show her with more than 53% support versus about 31% for Han, whose Kuomintang is the natural ally of Beijing. 

That nationalist party retains deep ties to the mainland as the former government of China until it lost a civil war to the communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949.
China’s increasingly hardball tactics have helped to drive Tsai’s resurgence, along with its call for Taiwan to return to the fold on the same terms as Hong Kong. 

In January, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping urged unification talks on a “one country, two systems” model, saying the political impasse could not be passed from generation to generation and reiterating that Beijing wouldn’t promise to refrain from using force if Taiwan refused to discuss terms. 

Tsai’s support leaped after she rejected the overture. 

This year’s unrest in Hong Kong has further boosted the popularity of Tsai, a vocal supporter of the protesters, who have complained of China’s encroachment on the former British colony’s autonomy and called for greater democracy.
Why has Beijing resorted to such a self-defeating strategy? 

China is a vastly richer and more powerful country than in the past, with a military that towers over Taiwan. 

It is also governed by a leader in Xi who has amassed more personal power than any leader since Mao Zedong. 

In this more confident and muscular era, the Communist Party seems determined to set its own path toward unification, taking little account of the views of naysayers.
The logic of Chinese politics in the Xi era makes a softer, more accommodating line from anywhere in the system untenable, unless it comes from the top. 

In turn, Xi himself is determined not to display any weakness on either issue, lest he should give his critics ammunition that can be used against him.
Under Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao, China displayed some sensitivity to Taiwan’s internal politics and kept a relatively low profile in Hong Kong. 

Under Xi, the opposite is the case. 

Far from finessing China’s position to reassure disillusioned Hong Kongers and influence Taiwanese voters, all the incentives in Beijing are pulling in the direction of being as tough as possible. 

Through four months of unrest, the Hong Kong government has been powerless to respond to protesters’ demands without Beijing’s say-so. 

That paralysis has undermined a core promise from China, that the territory would run its own domestic affairs for half a century after the handover.
The “one country, two systems” formula was devised by Deng Xiaoping and once sounded like an ingenious way to win over Hong Kongers and bring them gradually and willingly under Chinese rule. Now it just looks like another form of colonization. 

It’s no wonder that the model is a turn-off for voters in Taiwan, where boisterous democratic elections and free speech have become an entrenched part of the island’s politics and society.
Amid the Hong Kong protests, the last thing the Communist Party should want is a rebuff from voters in Taiwan. 

Yet Beijing has shown little interest in modifying its stance. 

The inevitable result is that Taiwan has become even more alienated from China, while sympathy for the island’s plight in the outside world has grown.
China has been squeezing Taiwan on other fronts, stepping up a campaign to isolate the island diplomatically and launching an information war. 

It’s been taking a leaf out of the Russian playbook by overtly and covertly influencing the local media and community groups, taking control of some newspapers and television stations, and seeding money to candidates through temple associations.
This uncompromising approach is magnifying the risks of further miscalculations. 

Both sides have much to lose. 

Taiwan plays an outsize role in global technology value chains and is at the center of growing U.S.-China tensions and Xi’s long-term plans for his country’s revival as a great power.
A decisive victory for Tsai in January’s election might chasten Beijing and cause it to return to a more consensual strategy. 

But the example of Hong Kong doesn’t so far give much hope that Xi will change course. 

If China continues to double down, the eventual denouement for Taiwan may be far more dangerous.

The Growing Hong Kong-Taiwan Axis

By TED GALEN CARPENTER 

Hong Kong’s most visible pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong joins Taiwan’s New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang, Taiwan’s “Sunflower Movement” leaders Li Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting chant slogans to demand the Chinese government release detained Taiwanese rights activist Lee Ming-cheh in Taipei.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations appear to be having a major impact on Taiwan’s presidential campaign in advance of its January 2020 election.
Protest leaders urge the Taiwanese to express emphatic vocal support for Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations. 

To a large extent, that is already happening. 

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, frequently speaks out in favor of the Hong Kong demonstrators and their demands, infuriating Beijing. 

Protests in Hong Kong have made the Taiwanese “increasingly treasure” their democracy and “deeply feel” what it would be like if China treated them the way it’s handling Hong Kong, Tsai said in June.
The emergence of a de facto Hong Kong-Taiwan democratic political axis has heightened Beijing’s nervousness and paranoia. 

Not only do Communist Party leaders have to deal with the rising popular defiance in Hong Kong to Beijing’s authority, but the prospect of any negotiations for Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland now looks utterly remote. 

Xi Jinping’s government is not likely to tolerate high-profile policy defeats on two fronts, yet that outcome is a growing possibility. 

The situation has become a ticking time bomb.
Joshua Wong, a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s street protests, is stepping up his efforts to enlist the Taiwanese. 

“We hope that before Communist China’s National Day on Oct. 1, our friends in Taiwan can express their support for Hong Kong through street protests,” Wong said at a news conference on September 3. 

“A lot of people in the past have said ‘today Hong Kong and tomorrow Taiwan.’ But I think the most ideal thing we’d say is ‘Taiwan today, tomorrow Hong Kong.’ Hong Kong can be like Taiwan, a place for freedom and democracy.”
Such sentiments by themselves are enough to enrage Beijing. 

But Wong also urged Taiwan’s government to let Hong Kong protesters seek political asylum. 

Worse from Beijing’s standpoint, he made those statements not in Hong Kong or some neutral location, but in Taipei following meetings with Taiwan’s governing, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). 

Communist Chinese leaders are likely to interpret such a venue as further evidence of a Hong Kong-Taiwanese political alliance against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Beijing’s persistent attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s political autonomy under its “one county, two systems” arrangement has caused Taiwanese attitudes to turn emphatically against such a formula for their island. 

Most Taiwanese were never enthusiastic about that proposal, but the proposed Hong Kong extradition law (just now withdrawn) that would have enabled Chinese authorities to try Hong Kong-based political dissidents in mainland courts has soured Taiwanese public opinion even more. 

A poll that Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council published in late July found that 88.7 percent of respondents rejected one country, two systems, up from 75.4 per cent in a January survey.
The Hong Kong democracy campaign is strengthening hardline, anti-PRC factions in Taiwan. Incumbent President Tsai appeared to be in deep political trouble earlier this year. 

Taiwan’s continuing economic malaise had undermined her presidency, and the DPP suffered huge losses in November 2018 local elections. 

Indeed, the losses were so severe that Tsai had to quit her post as party chair. 

She also faced a strong primary challenge for the DPP’s presidential nomination from her onetime prime minister, James Lai.
But Tsai has shrewdly exploited public anger at Beijing’s crude attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy to rebuild her domestic political support. 

“As long as I am here, I will stand firm to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty,” Tsai pledged in July. “As long as I am here, you would not have to fear, because we will not become another Hong Kong.” 

That message resonated with voters, and not only did she defeat Lai, but her fortunes against the opposition Kuomintang Party in the upcoming general election appear far more favorable than they did a few months ago.
The Hong Kong developments have created a political nightmare for the Kuomintang. 

The party’s nominee, Han Kuo-yu, the maverick populist mayor of Kaohsiung, had long advocated closer relations with the mainland. 

To that end, he sought to resume the policy that the last Kuomintang president, Ma Jing-jeou, pursued from 2008 to 2016. 

Earlier this year, Han visited China and had cordial meetings with Communist Party officials. 

He has always seemed highly favorable to the PRC’s one country, two systems arrangement for Taiwan as well as Hong Kong. 

Both the Chinese government and pro-Beijing media outlets in Taiwan (the so-called red media) were decidedly enthusiastic about Han’s candidacy against more moderate opponents in the Kuomintang Party’s primary election this summer.
But the popularity of the Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations among Taiwanese voters has thrown Han on the defensive, and he is beating a very fast retreat from his previous position. 

In a desperate attempt to rebut allegations that he would embrace an appeasement policy toward Beijing, Han even asserted that, if he is elected president, Taiwan would only accept China’s one country, two systems proposal “over my dead body.” 

It is not clear how credible his eleventh-hour political transformation is with Taiwanese voters.
A Tsai victory is now a serious possibility, even though such an outcome would infuriate the Chinese government and lead to a spike in Taiwan Strait tensions. 

Her re-election might well lead China to conclude that achieving Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland by peaceful means is no longer feasible.
The DPP’s landslide victory in 2016 came as a shock to Beijing. 

PRC leaders had counted on growing cross-strait economic ties to gradually erode the Taiwanese public’s resistance to political reunification. 

It seemed a logical approach under Tsai’s accommodating Kuomintang predecessor, but the DPP’s electoral triumph underscored its defects. 

Beijing reacted harshly, with a surge of provocative military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait, strident denunciations of Taipei’s leaders and their policies, and a revived campaign to poach Taiwan’s handful of remaining diplomatic partners. 

That campaign has accelerated dramatically in recent weeks. 

Beijing has enticed both the Solomon Islands and Kiribati to sever diplomatic relations with Taipei.
The United States already is entangled in the dispute over Taiwan’s political status. 

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington made a commitment to provide Taipei with “defensive” weaponry and to regard any coercive moves by Beijing as a threat to the peace of East Asia. 

Under the Trump administration, U.S. policy has become even more supportive of Taiwan’s de facto independence. 

American officials complained about the decision of the Solomon Islands to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei and threatened to reconsider aid to that country.
Even more significant, for the first time since Washington severed formal diplomatic ties with Taipei and switched them to Beijing in 1979, high-level U.S. security officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton, have met with their Taiwanese counterparts. 

The Trump administration has also approved an $8 billion arms sale that includes F-16 fighters.
Chinese leaders suspect that the United States is fomenting much of the trouble in Hong Kong. 

Such accusations are nothing more than typical propaganda and scapegoating on the part of a beleaguered communist regime. 

The sight of more and more demonstrators waving American flags understandably makes Beijing suspicious and nervous. 

Moreover, there have been statements of support for the protests from congressional leaders and Democratic presidential candidates, and meetings between Hong Kong opposition figures and administration officials. 

One such meeting with a diplomat in the United States Consulate in Hong Kong has been seized on by China, as was another in Washington with Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.”
Chinese now face the prospect of twin humiliating political defeats.

One only hopes that they do not adopt reckless policies towards either Hong Kong or Taiwan. 

A Tiananmen Square-style crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators would poison Beijing’s relations with the United States and China’s other trading partners, and (at a minimum) force them to impose economic sanctions. 

Any Chinese military move against Taiwan would be even worse, creating an immediate, potentially lethal, crisis between Beijing and Washington. 

The next few months, perhaps even the next few weeks, may determine whether East Asia remains at peace.

Hong Kong protests: The Taiwanese sending 2,000 gas masks

By Cindy Sui
Alex Ko holding a gas mask in a church storage room

Soft-spoken, bespectacled, and based 650km (400 miles) from Hong Kong, Alex Ko is far removed from the widespread protests sweeping the former British colony.
But he's exactly the kind of person China is worried about.
In recent weeks, when protesters were battling police on the streets of Hong Kong demanding universal suffrage, and their freedoms to be preserved by China, Mr Ko, 23, didn't just watch idly online.
He launched a donation drive for gas masks, air filters and helmets at his church.
He's since collected more than 2,000 sets of such gear, and sent them to Hong Kong protesters to protect them against tear gas regularly fired by the police.
"I've never been to Hong Kong, but I feel I have no reason not to care," he says.
"As a Christian, when we see people hurt and attacked, I feel we have to help them. [And] As a Taiwanese, I'm worried we may be next."
While Hong Kong is a former British colony that reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Taiwan has been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

But Beijing sees the island as a province to be reunified with China one day -- by force if necessary.
Fears that China will one day control Taiwan, turning it into the next Hong Kong, have made Taiwan's government and people the strongest supporters of Hong Kong's protesters.
Taiwan's government has repeatedly urged Beijing and Hong Kong's authorities to respond positively to protesters' demand for democracy -- and fulfil their promises of maintaining freedoms and autonomy.
And Taiwanese people -- while previously more concerned about Hong Kong's Cantopop and dim sum -- have turned out in increasingly large numbers to show support for the anti-extradition-turned-pro-democracy movement.Around 300 students in Taipei formed a human chain to support the Hong Kong protesters in August

"Even though Taiwan is separated from China by the Taiwan Strait, our political status is not a Special Administrative Region like Hong Kong," Mr Ko says.
"We are not a part of China, it could invade us one day. By joining forces [with Hong Kong], we are stronger. One day we might need their help too."
Beijing meanwhile has accused Taiwan, along with the United States, of being "black hands" fomenting the protests.
While there's no evidence of Taiwan helping to organise or fund the protests at a state level, there has been contact between activists since Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement and Taiwan's Sunflower Movement in 2014. 

Both stemmed from fears of Beijing rolling back democracy in their respective societies.
Hong Kong democracy activists, such as Joshua Wong, have visited Taiwan to meet Taiwan's activists. 

The founding of Mr Wong's Demosisto party was reportedly inspired by Taiwan's New Power Party.
The recent storming and trashing of Hong Kong's parliament also mirrored a similar incident in Taipei, Taiwan's capital. 

And Taiwan's ruling party and an opposition party recently voiced support for granting asylum to Hong Kong protesters who need it.
This joining of hands by Hong Kong and Taiwan could mean double the trouble for Beijing. 

But not everyone thinks Taiwan will be the next Hong Kong.

"Taiwan has independence and democracy; what Hong Kong people are fighting for, we already have -- universal suffrage," says Yen Hsiao-lien, a retired lawyer.
Since the protests, President Tsai Ing-wen 's approval ratings have risen significantly.

President Tsai, from the pro-Taiwan independence ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is ahead of Han Kuo-yu from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT).
None of this is lost on Beijing, says academic Andy Chang.
Partly because of fears of President Tsai being re-elected, Beijing was willing to withdraw Hong Kong's extradition bill in early September when faced with large-scale protests, Mr Chang says.
"It [the Chinese government] doesn't want to give Tsai Ing-wen more advantage in the upcoming election," he says.
But China's leaders will only give in so much. 

They are more concerned about their biggest threat -- challenges to their power from within.
They think democracy movements could usurp their power or become tools for their rivals to oust them.
"They feel if they totally accept the protesters' demands, it will release the floodgates and make other places in the mainland become unstable. After all, the kid who cries gets candy," says Mr Chang.
"It doesn't want to show that people who use forceful methods to make their demands will get Beijing's support. This is totally different from how leaders in a democratic society think."
Increasingly, Beijing is taking action to discourage Taiwanese people from supporting their neighbour's fight for freedom and self-rule.

Lee Meng-chu, photographed in June 2019.

Recently, Chinese authorities arrested Taiwanese businessman Lee Meng-chu on suspicion of taking part in activities that threaten national security. 

Mr Lee's friends say he is an ordinary small trading company owner who simply visited Hong Kong protesters to cheer them up, two days before crossing the border into mainland China.
But, in a show of defiance, Taiwanese people have helped previously detained Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee raise money to reopen his Causeway Bay bookstore in Taipei.
His Hong Kong store sold politically sensitive books about Chinese leaders and mailed them to the mainland, which led to him and four colleagues to be detained in 2015. 

The store was later shut down. 

Mr Lam fled to Taiwan in April, because of the extradition bill.
In just the past week, Taiwanese donors helped him raise more than $5.4m Taiwanese dollars ($174,000; £140,000) in his crowdfunding campaign -- nearly double his funding goal.
Slowly but surely, the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan see their fate as tied.
They are the only two places in Greater China that have tasted freedom -- and some believe by joining forces, they could show the Chinese leadership and people how much democracy is worth fighting for.

Taiwan warns citizens not to travel to Hong Kong and China after businessman detained

By Ben Westcott and Isaac Yee

Taiwanese businessman Lee Meng-chu, 43, disappeared after he crossed over the border from Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen on August 19

Hong Kong -- Taiwan's ruling party has warned citizens against traveling to Hong Kong or mainland China, saying the situation is "severe," after a Taiwanese businessman was detained following a visit to the protest-wracked city.
Lee Meng-chu, 43, disappeared after he crossed over the border from Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen on August 19. 

He was reported missing by a friend, Chen Ya-lin, who was supposed to meet him at Jakarta airport two days later. 

Chen said Lee had attended a protest in Hong Kong before crossing the border.
On Wednesday a spokesman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office confirmed that Lee was being questioned for "criminal activities that could jeopardize China's national security." 

The spokesman did not elaborate on the specific accusations against Lee.
Hsueh Cheng-yi, a spokeswoman for Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said that the detention had led to fears in Taiwan over the safety of travelers heading to Hong Kong or mainland China.
"The situation inside Hong Kong and China is severe and travel should be reduced. If you have to go to these areas, you must pay close attention to your own safety, and keep your friends and relatives informed of your whereabouts," Hsueh said in a statement.
Taiwan has been self-ruled since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, which saw the Communist Party take control of the mainland and the Nationalist government forced to flee to the island. 

Since then, as Taiwan has transitioned from one-party rule to democracy, Beijing has not given up on one day taking control the island.
Cross-strait tensions have only worsened since the Hong Kong protests began in June, sparked by a now-withdrawn extradition bill between Hong Kong and mainland China. 

Officials said the law was originally designed to plug a loophole and allow Hong Kong to extradite an accused murderer to Taiwan, but early on Taipei said it would not cooperate with a law that risked its citizens in the city being sent to China.
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen has also spoken out strongly in support of the protesters, even saying she would consider asylum requests from demonstrators.
There is no indication at this stage whether Lee's detention was related to his attendance at the August 18 protest. 

According to his friend Chen, Lee was the director of the United Nations Association for the Advancement of Taiwan, an organization which advocates for the entry of Taiwan into the UN.
But Chen said that despite his political activism, Lee had no "hard feelings" towards China and wasn't a vocal critic of the Chinese government or the Communist Party. 

Lee regularly traveled to China a number of times a year for his business, Chen added.
Lee's family said he was not a threat to Beijing and called for the Chinese government to explain his detention. 

In a statement, they said Lee was "just an ordinary person."

Joshua Wong Visits Taiwan to Meet With Ruling Party

By Samson Ellis

Joshua Wong arrives in Taipei on Sept. 3. 

Leading Hong Kong pro-democracy activists including Joshua Wong arrived in Taiwan for a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen’s ruling party, just days after Taipei denied playing a role in Hong Kong’s unrest.
Wong was scheduled to meet with Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Cho Jung-tai on Tuesday, as well as representatives of the pro-independence New Power Party, before giving a talk in the evening. 

The 22-year-old Demosisto party secretary general was accompanied by Hong Kong lawmaker Eddie Chu and former student leader Lester Shum.
Wong -- the subject of a Netflix documentary titled “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower” -- said in a Facebook post he was in Taiwan to arrange what he called a “large-scale gathering” to show support for Hong Kong. 

“A large display of support for Hong Kong by the Taiwanese public, showing the Chinese Communist Party the unity between the peoples of Taiwan and Hong Kong, would give us a huge amount of strength,” Wong said.
Tsai, whose DPP supports independence, has stepped up her criticism of Beijing as the Hong Kong protests fuel new skepticism about unification with China. 

Her critiques have led Chinese officials to list Taiwan, along with the U.S. and the U.K., among the “black hands” it says are behind almost three months of historic protests.
Wong was among several Hong Kong activists arrested last week in a crackdown on protest leaders condemned by Tsai. 

Earlier Tuesday, Wong said another Demosisto leader, Ivan Lam, was detained by authorities at Hong Kong’s airport. 

Wong was released on bail shortly after his arrest.

Chinese Peril

The United States must help Taiwan resist Chinese dominance
By Josh Rogin

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaks in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 21. 

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- During a Hawaiian “transit stop” Wednesday, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen praised the U.S.-Taiwan relationship as “stronger than ever.”

But here in Taiwan, it’s China that dominates every discussion. 

Beijing’s malign influence is apparent everywhere, while the United States is seen as largely absent. 

Washington must wake up to the danger of China’s massive effort to infiltrate, undermine and eventually abolish Taiwan’s democracy.
Tsai called for Washington’s help to confront Beijing’s comprehensive campaign to exert control over Taiwanese politics and society, which is steadily eroding a 40-year status quo that has kept a shaky peace. 

The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which governs the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, stipulates that the United States will consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.
In 2019, those words ring hollow. 

Xi Jinping’s government brazenly uses economic and political pressure to interfere in Taiwan — an attempt to turn the Taiwanese people and their leaders toward Beijing and against the West. 

Xi himself smashed the status quo in January when he publicly called for Taiwan to rejoin China under the “One Country, Two Systems” model. 

One look at Hong Kong should be enough for any Taiwanese citizen to realize that means a steady erosion of their freedoms and sovereignty.
During interviews with Taiwanese politicians, officials and national security experts, our delegation in Taiwan, organized by the East West Center, heard grave warnings. 

Following its successful interference effort in last November’s local elections, Beijing is now focused intensely on ousting Tsai and her Democratic People’s Party in next January’s presidential contest.
“Next year’s election might be the last meaningful election in Taiwan. After that, it will be a Hong Kong-style election,” said Chen Ming-Chi, deputy minister of the Mainland Affairs Council. 

If China succeeds in returning the Beijing-sympathetic Nationalist Party (KMT) to power, that could be the tipping point after which Taiwan can never again exert its own sovereignty. 

“2020 would be the beginning of the reunification.”
In other words, a Chinese military invasion is no longer the scenario Taiwanese fear most. 

China’s strategy to take over Taiwan is focused now on the hybrid warfare tactics authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy in free societies. 

Pro-Beijing interests have bought up a huge portion of Taiwanese media and coordinate with Beijing to spread propaganda and fake news and manipulate social media.
The Chinese government uses economic coercion to both recruit and punish Taiwanese leaders. Meanwhile, China is working overtime to strip Taiwan of its diplomatic allies and keep it out of multilateral institutions. 

Beijing is literally trying to erase the country from the map.
Taiwan is the testing ground for these methods, but China is now exporting them to other places, including the United States. 

That’s a threat not just to Taiwan but also to democracies worldwide, said Deputy Foreign Minister Hsu Szu-chien.
“Taiwan is only the beginning,” he said. 

“They want their new civilization to become a new global order. That’s what they are thinking. And together with an expansion of their physical power, now they are putting their dreams into reality.”
Several KMT officials insist they support the U.S.-China relationship and are not trying to appease Beijing. 

But actions speak louder than words. 

While Tsai was speaking to Americans, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu, a rising KMT leader and presidential prospect, was holding controversial meetings with Chinese Communist Party officials in Hong Kong and Macau. 

It’s clear which relationship the KMT prioritizes.
The U.S. interest in helping the current Taiwanese government defend its democracy from Chinese interference and aggression is understood — but our will is under question. 

The Trump administration, despite being full of pro-Taiwan officials, has been inconsistent. 

There’s progress on arms sales but no progress on what Tsai wants most, a U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement. 

There’s not enough U.S. support for Taiwan’s fight against China’s hybrid warfare approach.
In reality, accommodation with Beijing likely won’t work and China’s appetite in Taiwan will only grow with the eating. 

Taiwan proves that democracy and Chinese culture can work together and that prosperity need not require repression. 

This is an example that Beijing, for obvious reasons, cannot tolerate. 

Taiwan’s very existence plays into the Chinese Communist Party’s deep insecurity.
But time is running out fast for the United States to show the Taiwanese people they have international support for refusing to acquiesce to Beijing’s dominance over their politics, economy and society.

Chinese Peril

Facing a bellicose Beijing, Taiwan's president issues a warning to the world
By Matt Rivers, Steven Jiang and Ben Westcott

Taipei, Taiwan -- Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has sent out a warning to Asia in the face of mounting aggression from Beijing.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Tsai said the military threat posed by China was growing "every day" in line with a more assertive foreign policy under its dictator Xi Jinping.
"If it's Taiwan today, people should ask who's next? Any country in the region -- if it no longer wants to submit to the will of China, they would face similar military threats," said Tsai.
Taiwan and China are separated by fewer than 130 kilometers (81 miles) at their closest point.
For seven decades, the two have maintained an uneasy truce following their split at the end of a destructive civil war in 1949.
Annexation is a long-term aim for China's ruling Communist Party, which considers democratic Taiwan -- an island of 23 million people -- to be a renegade country.
But it was the election of Tsai and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2016 which sent relations between the two governments spiraling.
Beijing has placed mounting diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan, conducting live-fire drills in nearby seas and flew H-6K bombers and surveillance aircraft around the island.
"With China becoming increasingly strong and ambitious, we are faced with growing threats," Tsai said.
"Our challenge is whether our independent existence, security, prosperity and democracy can be maintained. This is the biggest issue for Taiwan."
Taiwan's unofficial ally the United States has for decades acted as the island's security guarantee against the threat of Chinese military action. 

But when asked directly, Tsai wouldn't be drawn on whether she believed US President Donald Trump would come to her aid.
Instead the Taiwan leader said she is focused on strengthening Taiwan's own defense capabilities in the face of an "imbalanced war," as China's military modernizes.
"We have to be prepared at all times," she said.
CNN has reached out to the China's Taiwan Affairs Office for comment.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in conversation with CNN's Matt Rivers on February 18.

Growing threats
As the first woman to be elected Taiwan's leader, Tsai was carried into office on a swell of anti-Beijing sentiment following attempts by the Kuomintang party to move closer to China.
But her popularity has fallen steadily in the face of domestic opposition to her policies and a struggling Taiwan economy battling to keep up with the mainland.
In November Tsai's DPP suffered a bruising defeat in local elections, losing by as much as 10% across the island. 

Tsai said the 2018 result was due to what she called a "challenging" domestic reform agenda.
"The people don't feel the result of the reform so much when you've just started," she said.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will run for re-election in 2020

The setback has not deterred Tsai who revealed to CNN she would stand for re-election in 2020. 

"It's natural that any sitting president wants to do more for the country."
Xi Jinping is unlikely to welcome a second term for Tsai. 

Since she came to power, the Chinese government has increasingly tried to exert pressure on Taiwan, known officially as the Republic of China, to unify with the People's Republic of China, as the mainland is officially known.
In January, Xi Jinping called for the "peaceful reunification" of China and Taiwan in a speech, warning that Taiwan independence was a "dead end."
"We make no promise to renounce the use of force," the Chinese leader said.
Tsai said Xi's January speech had caused concern within Taiwan. 

She said the island refused to become another Hong Kong or Macau -- both semi-autonomous cities under Beijing's rule.
"(The speech) has alarmed us that Taiwan's independent existence may be changed," she said.
But Tsai said the threats and intimidation out of Beijing are counter-productive to Xi's goals, and serve only to push the island further away from the Communist Party and strengthen support for democracy.
"China may feel such (pressure) would create a sense of failure for people in Taiwan and deal a blow on our morale. But every such move has only further upset and alienated Taiwanese people," she said.
"China's behavior has only backfired in Taiwan."

Xi Jinping (L) and US President Donald Trump review Chinese honour guards in Beijing on November 9, 2017.

Warmer ties with President Trump
In January Taiwan held military drills intended to ready its troops in the event of an invasion from the mainland. 

Photos showed dramatic images of helicopters and artillery launchers conducting live-fire exercises.
Tsai said she was strengthening Taiwan's military capabilities in the face of China's rapid modernization. 

She said Taiwan was "on alert 24/7" for the first sign of a Chinese strike.
"What we are expecting is, after withstanding the first wave of Chinese attacks ourselves, the rest of the world would stand up to exert strong pressure on China," she said.

Taiwan holds military drills to halt invasion amid rising China tensions

While Tsai did not say it specifically, it's likely any pressure exerted on China will come from Washington. 

For years, the United States has provided a tacit guarantee of protection from Beijing.
Under Trump, the relationship between Washington and Taipei has grown closer with expanded weapons sales and greater support from US politicians.
In 2018 Trump signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act, encouraging "visits between officials of the United States and Taiwan at all levels." 

Months later, the US approved the sale of submarine parts to Taiwan.
In June, the US opened a new, $255 million de facto embassy on the island, known as the American Institute in Taiwan.
Many leaders around the world have criticized President Trump for focusing on domestic US interests at the expense of the international community but Tsai said she didn't see it that way.
"Any president has to take multiple factors into consideration when making decisions, especially domestic decisions. That's why President Trump has been emphasizing 'America First'," she said.

Trump broke decades of protocol and took a brief congratulatory call from Tsai upon his election in 2016, but the two have yet to meet in person.
There is an outside chance that could change this year. 

A group of US lawmakers, led by well-known China hardliner Marco Rubio, have asked US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to invite Tsai to address a joint meeting of the US Congress.
But Tsai declined to say whether she would accept an invitation to speak, a move that should it go ahead would be sure to infuriate China.
"It's not a simple question of invitation and acceptance," said Tsai. 

"Whether or not to go deliver a speech in Washington would depend on whether such a move benefits Taiwan, our relations with the US and regional stability."
The US has been careful, at least publicly, to adhere to a so-called "one China" policy, acknowledging Beijing's assertion that Taiwan is part of China, as well as the People's Republic's status as the sole legitimate government of China. 

It is this policy that sees the US base its embassy in Beijing, but not in Taipei.
But Washington has also maintained deliberate ambiguity on the status of Taiwan, only encouraging both sides to engage in dialogue to settle their long-running disputes.

Tsai meets with her constituents on a street in the capital Taipei on February 18.

Caught in the middle
Trump's foreign policy hasn't all been good news for Taiwan. 

As the US President tries to drive down the trade deficit, Taiwan has become caught in the middle of a US-China trade war.
"There's a lot of trade and economic flow between Taiwan and the US as well as investment and trade with China," said Tsai. 

"We have to make sure that we can lessen the impact of any kind of uncertainty on Taiwan's economy."
Tsai said with no clear end to the trade dispute in sight, she was taking actions to protect Taiwan, including government spending to stimulate domestic consumption and investment.
"So that the growth of our economy can be driven by domestic demand instead of an over reliance on exports," said Tsai.
But while the trade war may cause difficulties for Taiwan's exports, it could present an opportunity for the island's tech sector.
The US is currently ramping up its opposition to Chinese technology, in particular the telecoms giant Huawei, over concerns of potential security threats.
Both US Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have warned countries that using Chinese 5G mobile phone technology will make it more difficult to work with the US.
Tsai said that unlike Chinese products, other countries had no such security concerns about Taiwan's technology. 

"Taiwan is a very secure location for the manufacture of such products," she said.
"We manufacture and design a lot of high-tech products such as semiconductors and we rank in the front in terms of worldwide production."

Taiwan faces down China
Throughout her interview, Tsai painted the picture of Taiwan as an underdog facing down the growing might of Beijing, the first line of defense for the liberal, democratic world order.
"If a vibrant democracy that champions universal values and follows international rules were destroyed by China, it would be a huge setback for global democracy," she said.
Set against that backdrop, military tensions between Taiwan, China and the US have continued to rise.

China and Taiwan clash in Lunar New Year military propaganda videos

On January 2019, Washington sent two guided missile destroyers, the USS McCampbell and USNS Walter S. Diehl, through the Taiwan Strait in a message of defiance to Beijing.
In February, China's People's Liberation Army issued a propaganda video juxtaposing images of Chinese jets and bombers with famous landmarks across Taiwan.
In reply, the Taiwan military posted dramatic footage of soldiers, tanks and explosions, followed by a simple message -- "On standby 24/7."
Tsai said China wants to become a "global hegemony" and if Xi's attention turns to expansion outside of the country's borders, Taiwan would be "first to be hit."
"I believe this is not just an issue of Taiwan under attack, but a reflection of China's willingness to use force for its expansionist policy," she said.
"It's not just Taiwan's interests at stake, it's the whole region's or even the whole world's."