China-Taiwan Weekly Update, July 20, 2023

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: July 17 at 5pm ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party's paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

1. Foxconn founder Terry Gou published an article in the Washington Post urging high-level dialogue between the ROC and PRC. The article likely will further CCP information operations that aim to exculpate the party from blame for exacerbating cross-strait tensions. This assessment is independent of Gou’s intentions for publishing the article.
2. The Taiwanese media outlet United Daily News (UDN) falsely alleged the United States pressured Taiwan to develop biological weapons. The UDN allegation likely will further CCP information operations that aim to decrease the confidence of the Taiwanese population in the United States as a reliable partner.
3. The CCP is likely to fuse human and technological surveillance methods in implementing its anti-espionage law.
4. The CCP criticized Japan’s release of over one million tons of water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, possibly to buttress the party’s image as a responsible regional power.
5. The CCP messaged its alignment with Russia’s view of NATO as an instigator in other regions’ affairs to signal its opposition to greater NATO involvement in East Asia.

Taiwan Developments

This section covers relevant developments pertaining to Taiwan, including its upcoming January 13, 2024 presidential and legislative elections.

Elections

The Taiwanese (Republic of China) political spectrum is largely divided between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT). The DPP broadly favors Taiwanese autonomy, Taiwanese identity, and skepticism towards China. The KMT favors closer economic and cultural relations with China along with a broader alignment with a Chinese identity. The DPP under President Tsai Ing-wen has controlled the presidency and legislature (Legislative Yuan) since 2016. This presidential election cycle also includes the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je who frames his movement as an amorphous alternative to the DPP and KMT. It is normal for Taiwanese presidential elections to have third-party candidates, but none have ever won. The 2024 Taiwan presidential and legislative elections will be held on January 13, 2024 and the new president will take office in May 2024. Presidential candidates can win elections with a plurality of votes in Taiwan.

Foxconn founder Terry Gou published an article in the Washington Post urging high-level dialogue between the ROC and PRC. Gou was a leading contender for the opposition KMT presidential nomination, but the party selected Hou Yu-ih as its candidate for the 2024 election. He framed the United States, China, and Taiwan as all sharing responsibility for cross-strait tension.[1] He repeated the KMT position that the PRC and ROC engaged in fruitful cross-strait dialogue under the 1992 Consensus even while holding different interpretations of “One China.”[2] Gou argues that President Tsai’s inflexibility on the 1992 Consensus places the onus for cross-strait tension on the DPP for allegedly aggravating the threat of war.[3] The 1992 Consensus refers to a mutual yet contested understanding of “One China” that the CCP and KMT claim emerged from a series of 1992 meetings in Hong Kong between the semiofficial Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits. The KMT interprets “One China” to refer to the ROC while allowing the ROC and PRC to have conflicting interpretations of China. The CCP interprets “One China” as referring to the PRC, including Taiwan. The DPP has never fully accepted the consensus and has sought to move away from any “One China” framework.[4]

The article likely will further CCP information operations that aim to exculpate the party from blame for exacerbating cross-strait tensions. This assessment is independent of Gou’s intentions behind publishing the article. Placing the blame for cross-strait tensions on the current DPP administration ignores the CCP’s military and economic coercion measures that exacerbate cross-strait tensions. This coercion involves normalizing violations of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone as well as suspending Taiwanese imports before resuming them as the election neared.[5] Failing to address these measures allows the party to frame itself as willing to resolve cross-strait tensions while ratcheting up its coercive activities that contribute to that tension.

Gou’s blaming of cross strait tensions predominantly on the DPP is consistent with KMT presidential nominee Hou Yu-ih’s rhetoric. ISW previously assessed that this rhetoric exacerbates CCP leverage points targeting the DPP under the dominant but contested “war versus peace” election narrative.[6]

China Developments

This section covers relevant developments pertaining to China and the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Taiwanese media outlet United Daily News (UDN) falsely alleged the United States pressured Taiwan to develop biological weapons. UDN leans heavily toward pan-blue parties such as the KMT. The UDN report falsely claimed that the United States urged the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense's National Defense Medical Center to develop biological weapons.[7] These claims are consistent with false CCP messaging over the past three years regarding United States biological laboratories operating in other regions of the world.[8] Taiwanese Presidential Office Spokesperson Lin Yuchan stated that Taiwan does not and will not in the future have any plans to develop biological weapons.[9] An unnamed spokesperson from the US Department of State also stated to the Taiwanese Central News Agency that UDN’s report had no factual basis.[10]

The UDN’s allegation likely will further CCP information operations that aim to decrease the confidence of the Taiwanese population in the United States as a reliable partner. The purpose of the UDN article is to harm the DPP’s standing in the presidential elections by falsely framing the party as irresponsible for seeking to develop biological weapons with the United States.[11] This is in line with the CCP’s objective to degrade the pan-blue electorate’s trust in the United States. In the event of a future KMT president, this could create a leverage point for the CCP to coerce Taiwan away from US security collaboration. The CCP does not risk blowback from the article because it is not overtly linked to the publication.

The CCP is likely to fuse human and technological surveillance methods in implementing its anti-espionage law. The anti-espionage law came into effect on July 1 and expands the definition of espionage to any item related to national security interests, without a clear definition of that term.[12] Chinese Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote an article instructing party cadre on how to implement the anti-espionage law in which he emphasized the “subversive characteristics” of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, but also the necessity to utilize them more effectively to carry out the law.[13] Chen also referred to the anti-espionage fight as a people’s war, the same terminology CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping used to refer to Chinese society’s efforts to fight COVID-19, indicating his intent for broad societal implementation of the anti-espionage law.[14]

Prior societal control mechanisms in China during the pandemic also relied on combining human and technological surveillance. The CCP divided urban communities into grids beginning in 2013 in order to “let high-tech digital platforms, social volunteers, and local police jointly and actively find and handle social issues.”[15] This unit of organization played a key role in the party’s resource allocation and social control response during the pandemic by allowing for “nationwide instructions, policies and rules to reach every resident” regardless of citizenship status.[16] This grid system combined with the mobilization of party cadre and migrant laborers converted to rule enforcing healthcare workers demonstrated the party’s usage of technological surveillance conjoined with community policing for governance.[17]

In the online environment, the Cyberspace Administration of China renewed the enforcement of digital state censorship by cracking down over the past week on “self-media,” content published online by individual autonomous users rather than through traditional state outlets, as well as announcing a measure aimed at restricting generative artificial intelligence that is scheduled to come into effect on August 15.[18] The party also draws on offline societal policing groups like the Wulin Aunties to ensure “correct” behavior that does not stray from the party’s political line or breach societal norms.[19] The CCP’s fusion of human and technological surveillance during Covid and for enforcing digital as well as societal norms suggest that the party will take a similar approach for implementing the anti-espionage law.

The CCP criticized Japan’s release of over one million tons of water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, possibly to buttress the party’s image as a responsible regional power. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved Japan’s discharge plan by stating that it complied with global safety standards and would have “negligible radiological impact to people and the environment.”[20] Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin framed the release as an irresponsible regional action that endangers the environment by treating the Pacific Ocean as a sewer.[21] Chinese state media published articles to exacerbate rifts over the nuclear discharge between the Japanese government and domestic constituents like fishermen as well as regional partners like South Korea.[22] The CCP’s portrayal of Japan as acting irresponsibly contrasts with the party’s long standing narrative of China as a responsible international stakeholder.[23] This framing indicates that the party aims to increase the prominence of this narrative by portraying itself as the rhetorical champion defending the rights of fellow Pacific countries that it frames as the victims of the IAEA-approved nuclear discharge.

Chinese Director of the Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi stating that China aims to expand “mutually beneficial cooperation” at the ASEAN summit underscores the party’s messaging to portray itself as a responsible regional power. He claimed that China promotes regional stability and prevents interference in Southeast Asia.[24] His comments about regional interference imply that the United States is the irresponsible provocative power in the region. In both the context of Japan and ASEAN, the party rhetoric suggests that it is a reasonable power compared to America and its regional allies.

The CCP messaged its alignment with Russia’s view of NATO as an instigator in other regions’ affairs to signal its opposition to greater NATO involvement in East Asia. NATO’s Vilnius Summit Communiqué condemned the People’s Republic of China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies” as it “strives to subvert the rules-based international order” via decisions such as its strategic partnership with Russia. [25] Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized the communiqué and urged NATO to stop “smearing China.”[26] Chinese state media also endorsed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s framing of NATO as an instigator of European and Asia-Pacific regional instability.[27] The promulgation of this narrative portrays China as the victim of aggression in order to shift attention away from destabilizing Chinese regional military activity such as normalizing daily People’s Liberation Army Air Force violations of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the past three years.[28]