Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Mussi Katz/Flickr/CC0
THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT has decided to allow residents of Shanghai to travel to Kinmen and Matsu. Previously, only residents of Fujian were allowed to travel to Kinmen and Matsu, with close to 200,000 Fujian residents traveling to Kinmen and Matsu last year.
The Taiwanese government has responded that such moves are politically motivated. Namely, travel was previously freely allowed through the “Three Mini-Links” between China and outlying islands of Taiwan.
For its part, government spokespersons have suggested that there is no need to be grateful to China for this move. Likewise, doubts were raised about whether Shanghai residents would, in fact, take a lengthy ferry to Xiamen or Kinmen.
Even so, this move continues efforts by the Chinese government to influence Taiwan through tourism, particularly via outlying islands of Taiwan. Chinese tourists once came to Taiwan in large numbers, before the Chinese government cut off tourist numbers after the Tsai administration took office.
Through massive amounts of tourism, the Chinese government was attempting to create the perception that Taiwanese society was entirely dependent on Chinese tourism, and that by cutting off tourism, China could effectively “turn off” the Taiwanese economy. After the decline in Chinese tourists, as well as in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an end to tourism altogether, this seems to have put an end to such perceptions. As it transpires, Chinese travelers to Taiwan largely stayed in tourist bubbles for just Chinese tourism, without interacting with society at large.
After ending Chinese tourism to Taiwan, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has mostly sought to depict Taiwan as the one being unwilling to allow for Chinese tourists. The Lai administration has stated that it would welcome tourist exchanges, however.
China continues to have major economic influence on outlying islands of Taiwan that are only a stone’s throw away from China. This is why China continues to make moves directed at outlying islands of Taiwan, in the hopes that they will provide a concrete example of the benefits for Taiwan through closer economic and political relations with China. China previously allowed Chinese groups to resume, but only in Matsu.
The velvet glove goes hand-in-hand with the iron hand, however, in that China also threatens outlying islands of Taiwan. Examples include searches of tourist ferries conducted by the Chinese Coast Guard, as well as the repatriation of Taiwanese prisoners without advance warning. China has specifically used an incident involving a fatal collision between the Taiwanese Coast Guard and Chinese fishermen intruding in Taiwanese territorial waters as pretext to escalate grey-area activity directed toward Taiwan, leading to such ferry searches.
In the meantime, the KMT and its ally, the TPP, have also sought to create means of expanding Chinese influence in outlying islands of Taiwan. Proposals advanced to this effect include allowing for the establishment of casinos, free trade zones, allowing Chinese companies to bid on infrastructure projects, and constructing a bridge between Kinmen and China.
It is unclear as to the impact of such actions by China. Exchanges between the Taiwanese mainland and outlying islands of Taiwan are not large enough that they are likely to persuade the public at large of the benefits of unification with China. Even so, given the proximity of such islands to China, Chinese efforts to influence them present a security issue for Taiwan as a whole.
Indeed, just as there has been more talk in past years of how China hopes to pacify Taiwan to take it with minimal resistance–avoiding loss of life for Chinese soldiers and the destruction of costly military equipment–if China were ever to make a military move directed at outlying islands of Taiwan, this would be the same. In this sense, one wonders if China has strategic aims for pacifying outlying islands of Taiwan that are already underway.