China, which makes no secret that its ultimate goal is to annex Taiwan, has of late made engaging young Taiwanese a top priority in its “united front” strategy against Taiwan.
At the two-day “2015 Workshop on Taiwan Affairs” in Beijing that concluded on Tuesday, in addition to affirming the so-called “1992 consensus” and an anti-Taiwanese independence stance, officials made a point of stressing that measures would be taken to “actively promote cross-strait visits and expand exchanges among young people and members of the general public on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.”
The tone echoed the statement by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) last summer that Beijing wishes “to hear what Taiwanese people have to say,” in particular those Beijing has dubbed the “three middles and the youth” — residents of central and southern Taiwan; middle and low-income families; small and medium-sized enterprises; and young people.
In line with this so-called “three middles and the youth” policy, one may also recall that during China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Deming’s (陳德銘) visit to Taiwan last month, he emphasized that he wishes to promote more exchanges between young volunteers on both sides of the Strait.
China’s latest emphasis on engaging young Taiwanese came after witnessing the impact of the Sunflower movement in March and April last year, during which many of the young people who participated in the protests expressed concerns about finding decent jobs and anxiety over their futures being increasingly dictated by China.
Aside from repeating the same old rhetoric stressing the importance of “developing mutual trust” and that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the Zhonghua minzu (Chinese ethnic group, 中華民族), it appears that Beijing is also employing economic means in its attempts to woo the hearts and minds of young Taiwanese.
And all these attempts are obvious.
Other than the ongoing offering of various kinds of attractive scholarships to lure elite Taiwanese senior high-school students to the other side of the Strait, founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Jack Ma (馬雲) has also been seen of late touting to a Taiwanese audience, particularly the younger generation, the job opportunities in the Chinese market.
It is worth noting that former Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) also sang a similar tune last week, appealing to young Taiwanese to look to the other side of the Strait for more employment opportunities.
All these moves are not without their lure.
After all, there is no question that Taiwan is faced with high youth unemployment.
According to the latest information from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, people aged 15 to 24 had the highest unemployment rate at 12.79 percent, compared with 4.02 percent for the 25-to-44 age group and 2.04 percent for the 45-to-64 age group.
Media reports are full of young Taiwanese either lamenting the notorious “22K curse” — which refers to the NT$22,000 average starting salary for university graduates — or having to seeking entry-level employment overseas.
No one is against cross-strait exchanges among young people, because a healthy exchange promotes understanding of each other and helps improve competitiveness in the international community.
However, young Taiwanese must be vigilant if behind China’s so-called cultural exchanges and rosy pictures of the business opportunities it can offer them lies a malicious political ambition.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS