When is a carrot not a carrot? Beijing’s economic incentives to Taiwan are not aimed at Taiwan
Conventional frameworks that interpret Beijing’s rhetoric and behavior using the China-Taiwan relationship are often incomplete and sometimes downright misleading.
”Among today’s young students… there are those who have embraced treachery, using big exaggerations like so-called ethnic self-determination, Taiwan self-rule, or Taiwan independence.” — Japanese official visiting the Japanese colony of Taiwan in 1928
Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese working in China. Policy measures that allegedly make it easier for Taiwanese firms to move there. Purchases of Taiwanese goods expressly intended to create “goodwill”. Tens of thousands of Chinese tourists to Taiwan. It has become conventional in international media discourse to highlight these items as “economic carrots” aimed at “bringing Taiwan into the fold”, a common euphemism for China annexing Taiwan.
In Taiwan, these “carrots” are having little effect. “The more they understand China, the more they hate China.” admitted Chen Yi-hsin, a former spokesman for the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party, describing Taiwanese workers in China recently. He added, “This is the biggest blind spot in mainland China’s policy toward Taiwan.” Polls show that Taiwanese remain solidly in support of independence, and that Taiwanese do not identify with China.
Beijing is well aware that Taiwanese reject being annexed to China, and that Taiwanese workers in China are simply there to make money and then go home. Why then, does it keep offering alleged economic incentives which it knows have no effect on Taiwanese attitudes? The answer is simple: because these policies are not aimed at Taiwan. They are aimed at two audiences: Beijing’s own people, and media workers who report on China-Taiwan affairs.
These policies are not aimed at Taiwan, but towards two audiences: Beijing’s own people, and media workers who report on China-Taiwan affairs.
Like all authoritarian governments, Beijing has a legitimacy problem. The Party’s intensifying control of all public institutions and organizations, as well as its drive to extend its influence into Chinese communities overseas, signals that deep insecurity. It knows that “China” is like Europe, a massive region with some broad cultural similarities that hosts scores of wildly different ethnic and cultural groups. Modern China is like 17th century France, an empire struggling to weld disparate regions into a modern state. Throughout China the government is in the process of stamping out local identities. Westerners can see this most easily in the changes in Hong Kong, where the international media community frequently reports on them. These local identities, along with class identities (such as workers or teachers) represent nodes of resistance to authoritarian power in China. A war could severely stress Beijing’s ability to control them.
It is a striking feature of the China-Taiwan relationship that while researchers and journalists frequently (and often disparagingly) ask whether the Taiwanese will fight China, they seldom inquire of the Chinese whether they are willing to send their sons and daughters out to die in a major war over Taiwan. In The Chinese Invasion Threat (Amazon), Ian Easton’s thorough study of Chinese plans to invade Taiwan, Easton observes that Chinese military thinkers have warned of the effects of the savagery of modern combat on their own troops, and on the home front, where security will have to be intensified to prevent uprisings in restive border regions and at home — presumably when the first long casualty lists begin to arrive.
The Chinese people are like any other people: they do not want war. Yet, war over Taiwan (or one of Beijing’s many other territorial demands) appears to be all but inevitable. Hence, a major headache for Beijing is convincing its people that war is both necessary and legitimate. The “economic incentives” and other policies that Beijing aims at Taiwan are part of this effort. They will never change Taiwanese minds, but Beijing can use them to document to its own people that it has made every effort to annex Taiwan peacefully, and regrettably, the Taiwanese have rejected these actions. In the best this-hurts-me-more-than-you style, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will say to its people, “We’ve tried everything. Now we have to attack Taiwan.” In providing “economic incentives” to Taiwan, Beijing is selling the coming war to its people.
Anyone who has listened to Chinese complain about how well the Tibetans are treated compared to Chinese can see another effect of the “economic incentives”: they help create resentment of Taiwan among those who might otherwise have no opinion. “Ungrateful wretches!” such people will say as they nod along with Beijing.
The second audience for the rhetoric of “economic incentives” is the international media. Beijing has learned over the years how to manage the international media by, on one hand, deploying the idea of “tensions” in the Strait, which the media loves to report on for its guaranteed clicks, and on the other, making “soft power” gestures like “economic incentives”. The CCP knows that the media will present these measures in a positive light (“olive branches”), often neglecting to mention their only practical effect (they are intended to poach Taiwan’s technology and hollow out its economy, the basis of its independent existence).
These gestures towards Taiwan help the media create the illusion that Beijing is being “reasonable”. They also enable Beijing to paint the Taiwanese as provocative, obdurate, and irrational. This helps weaken international support for Taiwan, and more importantly, displace tension in the US-China relationship to the US-Taiwan relationship, a key goal of Beijing in using “tension” to influence US policy toward China and Taiwan.
Conventional frameworks that interpret Beijing’s rhetoric and behavior through the China-Taiwan relationship are often incomplete and sometimes downright misleading. In Beijing’s carrot-and-stick approach to Taiwan, the carrots are aimed at its own people. Media workers and government officials in the West need to stop portraying Beijing’s activities as benign, and start identifying their real targets.
Media workers and government officials in the West need to stop portraying Beijing’s activities as benign, and start identifying their real targets.
Please clap to let us know if you like this article, and make sure you follow American Citizens for Taiwan to be notified of future articles!
American Citizens for Taiwan Foundation articles, the Congressional contact tool, and Congressional/Voter Guide remain free, but take an enormous amount of time to research, write, and post — and thousands of dollars to sustain each year.
If you find any value in our work please consider becoming a Friend of ACT with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner is suggested, to help ACT continue to educate Americans about Taiwan and to press our government to strengthen U.S. Taiwan relations and be fully supportive of Taiwan’s right to self-determination.
MONTHLY DONATION — START NOW
You can also become a Friend of ACT with a single donation in any amount:
ONE-TIME DONATION — GIVE NOW
