Sun, Sep 05, 2021 page3

• Beijing boosts influence drive: report

  RECRUITMENT: Along with summer camps used for indoctrination, there has been an increase in propaganda depicting students who have done well in China, the report said

  • By Chen Yu-fu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  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.
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