The Taiwanese vice minister’s “not today policy” and the Taiwan Council for Mainland Affairs, the office that handles bullying in the People’s Republic of China
Taipei, from our correspondent. “Chinese leader Xi Jinping has become increasingly arrogant and unscrupulous,” Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister tells Il Foglio Wu Chih-chung. At a certain point, European countries stopped thinking that Vladimir Putin could really attack Ukraine, explains Wu, who knows Europe because he was Taiwan’s representative in Paris for many years. But Putin was as unscrupulous as Xi, and today the simplest strategy to avoid another war in Asia is to avoid thinking that it cannot happen: “We must not lower our attention.” But on the one hand there is politics and theory, on the other there is practice. In a smaller office that is part of the Legislative Yuan complex, the Parliament of Taiwan, one can better understand the certainties, concerns and strategies of the Taipei authorities. When he speaks, the deputy minister of the Continental Affairs Council, Wen-chieh Liang, weighs every word: “The reason why China supports Russia in its war against Ukraine,” he tells Il Foglio, “it is because he thinks there will be a war with America in the Straits, and that Russia will be on his side.”
The Taiwan Council for Mainland Affairs has the structure of a ministry, but is formally an administrative office. In the Taiwanese government cabinet he is the only one who actually deals with relations with Beijing (his counterpart in the People’s Republic is the Taiwan Affairs Office). Wen-chieh Liang, who is part of the Democratic Progressive Party, explains to Il Foglio that unlike years ago, today direct communications with Beijing are reduced to a minimum, filtered by intermediaries, but if there is an emergency it is his office and the Chinese “Taiwan Affairs” one that speak to each other, as in the case of February, when a Taiwanese Coast Guard boat collided with a Chinese speedboat in the waters of Kinmen, and two people died. Xi’s unscrupulousness, even in his relations with Russia, Iran and North Korea, can be seen in his attempt to use the hybrid warfare method he applies to Taiwan in the rest of the worldthe de facto independent island that Beijing instead claims as its own territory, despite never having governed it. It does this for example with disinformation and with the use of the diaspora and groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party such as the United Front.
For Deputy Minister Liang, in Europe “certain methods work less only because of the language barrier. In any case, the leadership uses the Chinese diaspora abroad to promote its interests, or supports certain parties or leaders to manipulate the political situation. In the past it was also done through the Confucius Institutes and university collaborations, now there is more attention on certain themes”, explains Liang – even if in Italy, for example, no Confucius Institute in any university has ever closed. Some time ago the Council increased the alert for Taiwanese who decide to travel to China, given the number of detentions, interrogations and arrests: according to several observers, the target of the Beijing authorities is increasingly ordinary travelers from Taiwan, those who do not make the news, arrests which have no consequences but which are intimidating. What is less and less intimidating, however, are the increasingly aggressive military exercises that China carries out around the island and which fill the pages of international newspapers: “The Taiwanese have become accustomed to that kind of intimidation, even if we are very cautious and we prepare for every eventuality.” In Taipei, few think that the invasion of the island could be a viable tactic: “Many people talk about 2027 as the time horizon, it is the year in which Xi Jinping ends his third term and he may need a moral boost to be reconfirmed, but personally I think that Xi, if he wants to take Taiwan, wants to use the method that would cost him the least possible.”
First of all, diplomatic isolation, economic and international bullying. This is demonstrated by the news released yesterday by Reuters, according to which during the meeting between Xi and American President Joe Biden last November in California, the Chinese leader asked Biden to change the formal language with which the White House refers to Taiwan, moving from “we do not support independence” to the more explicit “we oppose Taiwanese independence”. The request was not accepted.
America, although in the midst of the uncertainty of the pre-election phase, is with Taiwan and “personally I think that if the Strait has been peaceful for so many years it is because American deterrence has worked”, says Vice Minister Liang. “But now, if it continues to work, it is also the responsibility of the Taiwanese.” It’s something that we often hear in Taipei, among public officials and analysts close to the government: no one wants to explicitly say that Republican candidate Donald Trump’s statements on the fact that Taiwan must pay more for that American defense were alarming . But the new course – also in light of the situation in Ukraine – is to seek diplomatic allies but prepare to defend themselves. And there is talk more and more often, rather than of a “Normandy-style” landing, of a naval blockade – the anaconda strategy – which Beijing has demonstrated in every way it can do, and putting a lot of effort into it: according to estimates, China reportedly spent $15 billion, 7 percent of its budget, on war games around Taiwan in 2023. Vice Minister Wu calls it the “not today policy, a way of telling Xi that if he is thinking about military action he better think again.”
