Beyond Missiles and Trade: China’s Use of Cultural Ties to Influence Taiwan

[ad_1] Lately, China has employed all kinds of navy ways to coerce Taiwan. Navy workout routines involving missile launches into waters close to Taiwan have develop into more and more widespread, as evidenced by the 2 Joint Sword drills performed final 12 months. Simply final week, Taiwan accused China of sabotaging an undersea cable in northern Taiwan. Additional investigations revealed that the vessel accountable belonged to an organization based mostly in Hong Kong. Day by day intrusions by China’s fighter jets have practically quadrupled, from 380 in 2019 to over 1,700 in 2023. These developments have undoubtedly heightened safety issues within the Taiwan Strait.

Equally, China has employed varied instruments of financial coercion. Beijing has imposed restrictions on its residents and college students touring to Taiwan since former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen got here into workplace in 2016, considerably weakening Taiwan’s tourism and better schooling industries. In 2021 and 2022, China halted imports of essential Taiwanese agricultural merchandise, akin to pineapples and apples, that are key exports for Taiwan. This motion prompted panic amongst native farmers.

Moreover, China has used financial incentives to poach Taiwan’s diplomatic allies by providing them financial incentives, main nations like Nicaragua and the Solomon Islands to sever ties with Taiwan. Since 2016, 10 of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies have switched to acknowledge the Folks’s Republic of China as a substitute.

Whereas navy ways and financial statecraft have garnered a lot of the world’s consideration, there was little dialogue about how China leverages cultural and ethnic connections with Taiwan to realize its political targets.

Taiwan has deep cultural ties to China; each share comparable languages and dialects, traditions, festivals, and values. Till just lately, Taiwan’s formal schooling system relied closely on Chinese language literature, that includes traditional texts that promote Confucian values, in addition to programs on Chinese language historical past and geography. It's unsurprising, then, that students have discovered Taiwanese residents proceed to treat Chinese language tradition as an integral half of what's thought-about genuine Taiwanese tradition, regardless of escalating tensions throughout the strait.

Not like navy and financial approaches, the place operations, incentives, and impacts are extra readily detectable, the softer, cultural strategy based mostly on commonalities provides Beijing an alternate instrument to affect Taiwanese residents. A long time of analysis on social identification principle reveal that cultural closeness and familiarity strengthen in-group cohesion. In apply, this means that emphasizing cultural connections might make Taiwanese residents much less delicate to the varied types of threats posed by China. This strategy additionally displays the philosophy of the Chinese language strategist Solar Tzu, who acknowledged, “The supreme artwork of struggle is to subdue the enemy with out combating.”

Examples of this technique might be seen on the flip of the brand new 12 months. On January 1, the Folks’s Liberation Military’s Japanese Theater Command launched a New Yr’s video that includes the track “ Chinese language Folks ” (中國人). The video was rigorously tailor-made for the Taiwanese public, utilizing conventional Chinese language characters in its subtitles fairly than the simplified model generally utilized in China. The track is well-known in Taiwan, as it's a traditional by Andy Lau, who just lately carried out it throughout a live performance in Taipei. Along with clips of PLA jets and naval vessels, the video additionally deliberately included clips of Chinese language college students visiting Taipei to extend its enchantment.

This isn't the primary time the Japanese Theater Command has relied closely on cultural similarities to affect individuals in Taiwan. Within the New Yr’s video of 2024, it rewrote a track extensively fashionable in Taiwan to convey the message, “ Reunification is Successful .” (回家才贏). No different Chinese language Theater Command uploaded comparable movies.

Such cultural-themed propaganda is unlikely to enchantment to nearly all of Taiwan’s citizenry. As of this writing, the video titled “Chinese language Folks” has garnered solely 5,500 views. In line with analysis by Nationwide ChengChi College in Taiwan, solely 2.2 p.c of residents determine as “Chinese language solely,” whereas the bulk (64.3 p.c) contemplate themselves Taiwanese.

Nevertheless, the dearth of clear affect from such movies doesn't recommend that such issues are overblown; it could merely point out that Beijing must refine its messaging and make investments extra time in crafting narratives that resonate with the general public in Taiwan. One innovation Beijing might experiment with is infusing cultural operations alongside different current ways.

The “Chinese language Folks” video from the Japanese Theater Command is clearly an instance of a mixture of navy and cultural components. It's cheap to imagine that extra subtle operations incorporating cultural components will emerge within the close to future. At present, the Chinese language app TikTok boasts a person base of 5.65 million in Taiwan, which is quickly rising. Such apps and different social media platforms are probably to supply the mandatory channels for these operations to achieve traction.

For Taiwan, countering cultural operations and safeguarding its democracy requires the next important actions. First, you will need to determine weak populations that could be inclined to such operations. Methods to reinforce media literacy inside these teams might be applied with the help of native NGOs.

Second, Taiwan ought to harness its burgeoning cultural identification by embracing its journey of democratization and emphasizing its variations from China’s political system, notably in values akin to respect for democracy, the rule of legislation, freedom of speech, and human rights. Collective achievements, akin to profitable the latest World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Premier12 championship , can additional solidify this identification.

Within the context of nearer Taiwan-U.S. relations, it's vital to increase past navy and financial cooperation to incorporate extra people-to-people exchanges. These interactions can assist foster new cultures, shared identities, and collective reminiscences, forming a robust basis for a worldwide alliance towards authoritarianism.