Beijing’s entreaties for young Taiwanese to work or study in China are part of a coordinated campaign to shape their perception and sympathies to its liking, a Mainland Affairs Council official said yesterday.
The comments came a day after China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said Beijing has created thousands of job opportunities for young Taiwanese via state-backed work programs this summer.
The official said on condition of anonymity that any internship or job offered by the Chinese communists would obviously be an exercise in “united front” tactics aimed at sowing division in Taiwan.
Photo: Taipei Times files
Ploys in the service of “united front” work tend to be more talk than substance, and the jobs offered by China are likely to be gone at the end of the year when funding runs out, the official said.
China faces a slew of economic woes from slowing growth, difficulty recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, provincial governments’ declining fiscal health and soaring youth unemployment, the official said.
Unemployment among young Chinese aged 16 to 24 years residing in urban areas surged to a record 20.8 percent last month, while 11.6 million people are to enter the workforce for the first time this summer, the official said, citing official statistics.
Under these adverse economic conditions, offering thousands of jobs to Taiwanese is not likely to be more than an empty boast made for a propagandistic purpose, the official said.
Young Taiwanese should think hard before opting to work in a country where they have no relationship network to fall back on and may face discrimination due to the perception that they are stealing the jobs of locals, the official said.
TAO spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) earlier this month told a routine news conference that China has prepared a smorgasbord of job programs to hire young Taiwanese in collaboration with local governments and the private sector.
An upcoming job fair in Beijing and the Straits Forum are to create 1,300 and 1,200 jobs for young Taiwanese respectively, while internship programs in Shenzhen and Jiangsu provinces offer opportunities in journalism, healthcare, law, information technology and finance, she said.
Separately, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that a prominent Taipei-based group is planning to open a Confucius and traditional Chinese culture-themed summer camp in China’s Shandong Province, citing a confidential source.
The group has instructed its local branches to each recruit at least one young person aged 16 to 35, explicitly stating that the purpose of the activity is to inculcate in young people’s minds their Chinese identity, the source was cited as saying.
The group’s members include many Taiwanese civil and business leaders, and is well funded, the source said, adding that Beijing is likely to use the camp to identify potential assets in Taiwan through which it could interfere with Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections in January.
The camp offers free room and board, and covers all travel expenses of participants, suggesting funding by Beijing or its affiliates, the source said, based on the group’s registration information.
Taiwan Association of University Professors chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has personally issued the directive for “united front” work agencies to target young Taiwanese.
Luring young Taiwanese to China with promises of educational credentials or employment is one of the last avenues for Beijing to counter pro-independence sentiment in that demographic, as Chinese students are no longer allowed to study in Taiwan, he said.
China’s institutions of higher education allow Taiwanese to apply with their college entrance exam score and study there for free, Chen said.
Beijing utilizes carefully packaged free tours to portray a favorable image of China in hopes of shaping a Chinese national identity among young Taiwanese, he added.
Lo Cheng-chung (羅承宗), director of the Institute of Financial and Economic Law at the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, was skeptical about the effectiveness of Beijing’s tactics.
Any goodwill Beijing hopes to achieve through its cultural outreach is more than canceled out by the backlash against the military threat China’s fighter jets and warships pose to Taiwan, he said.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
RSS