China’s United Front Work Department has ratcheted up influence operations targeting young Taiwanese seeking to study or work in China, the Mainland Affairs Council said.
The council issued the warning in a report released on Tuesday titled The Current and Future Developments in Cross-Strait Relations, which was prepared for the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
Propaganda portraying model Taiwanese students who have prospered in the “motherland” has been observed with increasing frequency in Chinese state-owned media in the past few years, the report said.
Summer camps have been established in a bid to win the sympathies of Taiwanese students, while attention is paid to recruiting the children of Taiwanese-Chinese couples to be pro-China agitators, it said.
Beijing officials have also stepped up efforts to recruit the children of Taiwanese-Chinese couples as potential agents for “united front” work by offering special summer camps, it said.
The government is committed to maintaining healthy and orderly interactions with China that promote peace in the Taiwan Strait and benefit the public, which includes accepting Chinese students, the council said.
Taiwanese universities enrolled only 576 Chinese students after Beijing last year unilaterally suspended study and work programs in Taiwan, it said.
The public needs to be aware of Beijing’s political agenda, the social, political and economic realities in China, and the risks people working and living there face, the report said.
Schools are now required to register students and faculty members involved in education exchanges in China via the Mainland Educational Exchange Registry Platform, the council said, adding that people who are registered would be warned of risks and briefed on emergency assistance arrangements should they need help from the government.
The registration rule applies to all education exchange programs, including in-person and virtual events, it said, adding that it has set up a dedicated information page on its Web site for Taiwanese students, which would be constantly updated.
The Straits Exchange Foundation has established a consultation hotline to advise young people about working or studying in China, it added.
The report said that the Taiwanese government has completed an overhaul of national security laws in response to infiltration by “external hostile forces,” and adjustments to rules and regulations would be made as necessary.
Meanwhile, 3,516 Chinese visited Taiwan in the first seven months of this year, down 94.83 percent from the 68,000 who visited in the same months last year, council data showed.
The decline was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said.
Taiwanese-Chinese marriages during the same period declined to 1,207, compared with the yearly average of 12,000 marriages from 2008 to 2012, it said.
Since the two governments opened cross-strait family visits in 1998, 30.47 million Chinese have visited Taiwan, it said.
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
Taiwanese barista Xie Yi-chen (謝溢宸) recently triumphed at the 2024 World Coffee Championships, taking home 1st place in the World Latte Art category. Xie, 28, impressed the judges in the final round with patterns of a whale, a moose, and a dragon in the three-day competition that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark from June 27-29, clinching the title of latte art world champion during his first time representing Taiwan on the world stage. At a press conference held by the Taiwan Coffee Association on Thursday, Xie said that creating latte art gives him a tremendous feeling of achievement. Speaking about his entries in
TRAVEL CONVENIENCE: The program is to shorten wait times while passing through airport checks and would start for Taiwanese from January next year Japan is to launch a new program to expedite entry procedures for Taiwanese starting from January next year. The Japanese government is planning to introduce new rules to shorten the time it takes foreign travelers to pass through immigration, thereby attracting more tourists to visit, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported yesterday. An airport preclearance program would be implemented to allow foreign travelers to finish some screenings at their departure airport’s terminals and undergo simple confirmation procedures upon arrival, it said. The program would initially be applied to travelers from Taiwan from January next year and could be extended to travelers from elsewhere depending
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to