Beijing has urged Taiwanese businesspeople based in China to vote for pro-China candidates in next month’s elections, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported, adding that the move reflects Beijing’s anxieties.
About 300 Taiwanese executives from 152 Taiwanese businesses based in China were at a gathering in Beijing called on to return to Taiwan to vote on Dec. 7, the newspaper reported on Thursday.
The gathering was hosted by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤), Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “close ally,” it said.
Photo: Reuters
It aimed to encourage Taiwanese businesspeople to “vote for the opposition candidates seeking friendlier ties with China” in the presidential and legislative elections, the Nikkei cited people familiar with the matter as saying.
Xi’s administration regards Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate, “as a radical advocating for Taiwan’s independence,” and has sanctioned former representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Lai’s running mate, twice, the newspaper said.
Shi Yinhong (時殷弘), a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, was quoted by the Nikkei as saying that if the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), wins the election, “China will likely ease its pressure on Taiwan.”
Chao Chun-shan (趙春山), an emeritus professor at the Institute of China Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, was quoted as saying that Beijing’s wariness over the presidential election arises from Xi’s sense of urgency.
If Lai wins the election and re-election four years later, he could remain in office until 2032, when Xi would be nearly 80, it said.
Xi wants to surpass the legacy of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), who was credited with Hong Kong’s return to China, and therefore would deem Lai’s victory unacceptable, Chao was quoted as saying.
Beijing might attempt to unify with Taiwan through a combination of economic sanctions and the use of force after the election, he said.
While the US has taken a neutral stance on the elections and has refrained from commenting on it publicly, US President Joe Biden asked Xi not to interfere in Taiwan’s elections during their meeting last month.
The US is believed to hope that the DPP remains in power, the Nikkei said.
The newspaper said that US Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, told it that Hou is “essentially a ‘puppet candidate’ installed by China.”
However, if Lai vocally advocates for independence, it would go against US interests and probably cost Taiwan much of the international support it has gained, said Simona Grano, a senior fellow on Taiwan at the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
More than 80 percent of Taiwanese want to maintain the “status quo,” while Xi refuses to renounce the use of force to achieve unification with Taiwan, the Nikkei said.
Taiwan’s “new leader is expected to face a complex balancing act between the US and China,” it said.
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