‘I have never seen Taiwan this divided': Fears grow that China is plotting to take over from within

Irish Times

3 days ago

Chen Ru-fen's life has changed beyond recognition. The angel investor has moved from air-conditioned meeting rooms to
Taiwan
's sweltering streets. Instead of helping start-ups she is now campaigning to rescue her country from what she believes is a surreptitious
Chinese
annexation push.
She and thousands of other activists suffered a crushing defeat in their first battle. An unprecedented mass recall vote last month failed to unseat a single lawmaker from the Kuomintang (KMT), the largest party in Taiwan's parliament, whom activists like Chen accuse of undermining democracy so that China can seize the island.
'I thought I'd go back to my usual life after the vote,' says Chen. 'But now we have to keep going. If we don't stop them, we will lose our sovereignty and our freedom forever.'
Her anxiety reflects growing fears that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be inching closer to taking the island it has long claimed is part of China. Xi Jinping, China's president, has repeatedly declared that the Taiwan issue 'cannot be passed on from generation to generation.'
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Concerns in the West have centred on the risk of a Chinese invasion, with US military commanders warning that the manoeuvres the Chinese People's Liberation Army is conducting around Taiwan are no longer exercises but 'rehearsals' for an attack.
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But many Taiwanese are far more concerned that Beijing could subvert their country from within, by tapping into long-standing cultural and economic links, grooming collaborators and sidelining the country's elected government.
Since the Democratic Progressive party (DPP), which Beijing denounces as 'secessionist', won the presidency in 2016, the CCP has stepped up its efforts to win over political parties, interest groups and segments of society more amenable to closer relations across the Strait.
'China has a long history of playing on Taiwan's complex history and political scene to undermine its internal unity,' says Scott Harold, a Taiwan expert at the Rand Corporation, a Washington think-tank. 'And Taiwan struggles with the political and societal cohesion it needs to become resilient against that.'
The country has a fractured national identity forged by the Chinese nationalist ideology of the Kuomintang, the island's historical ties to China and its international diplomatic isolation.
Although the island's original residents and the descendants of those who fled there following the communist revolution in 1949 all overwhelmingly reject unification with China, disagreements are becoming more public and more acrimonious under the mounting pressure from Beijing.
'China and international observers look at this and say that Taiwan's voters have got behind the pro-China stance,' says Shelly Hsu, a Taipei headhunter who participated in the recall campaign.
Hsu believes Xi is bent on taking Taiwan so he can to hold on to power, and that the cheapest way for him to do so 'is to scare the Taiwanese into surrendering'. Like Chen she sees the recall vote defeat as an existential moment for the country. 'We must abandon our illusions and prepare for battle. Those without a second passport should start exercising and stock up on food,' she says.
Taiwanese residents cast their vote during a recall election in Taipei, Taiwan, in July. Photograph: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA
For her and others, the KMT, which fought the communists for decades in the first half of the 20th century, is now best described as a party of traitors and a fifth column. 'The KMT are the CCP's fellow travellers; they are the CCP's biggest agent in Taiwan,' says Hsu.
The KMT fiercely rejects being described as 'pro-China' and insists that they are true patriots. But the country's undercurrent of competing nationalisms has now burst into the open.
'I have never seen Taiwan this divided,' says Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University.
Xi's approach to Taiwan conforms to an age-old CCP playbook that involves a mix of enticement, deception and coercion to control or defeat its adversaries.
Through so-called United Front work, the CCP builds relationships with members of ethnic minorities and religious communities in China, and politicians, entrepreneurs and opinion leaders abroad, to ensure these groups will help further its interests.
Xi's own father, Xi Zhongxun, deployed similar tactics in 1941, asking intelligence official Bu Lu to deal with a KMT commander who was causing the communists trouble in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. Bu wined and dined the target until his superiors became suspicious and transferred him away. Xi complimented Bu for having 'won without firing a shot'.
The approach reached its zenith in 1949 revolution, when communist party troops persuaded the KMT commander in Beijing to hand over the Chinese capital without a fight. In recent years Chinese scholars have advised the communist party to use this 'Beiping model' to conquer Taiwan.
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Hu Xijin, a Chinese propagandist and former editor of the CCP-owned tabloid Global Times, has said that China should 'Lebanonise' Taiwan – incite internal strife that would plunge society into a state of chaos, ripe for Beijing to take over.
Despite Xi's refusal to talk to Taiwan's DPP government, he is pushing for 'integrated development' policies that seek to incorporate Taiwan into China's society and economy bit by bit.
While his government halted the flow of Chinese tourists to Taiwan and blocked Taiwanese agricultural exports to China after the DPP's victory, it selectively made deals with local KMT politicians to buy their agricultural produce.
The divide-and-rule gambit prompted Taiwanese tourism companies and farmers to urge their own government to adopt a softer stance towards Beijing. 'Our family's income declined because suddenly we could no longer sell to our biggest market, mainland China,' says Weng Chi-hung, a pomelo farmer in southern Tainan. 'The DPP is to blame for that.'
Chinese government departments regularly pay for Taiwanese village heads to visit China ahead of elections in Taiwan, invitations many accept in violation of local law, raising concerns about political interference as those officials play a key role in election campaigns at the grassroots.
Beijing offers financial support for young Taiwanese to set up businesses in China and organises pilgrimages to temples in China that have historic links to Taiwanese deities, aiming to strengthen emotional and cultural ties to the 'motherland'.
The CCP has also targeted Taiwan's military, inviting veterans who fought with the KMT against them to celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Whampoa, the military academy that trained early generations of both Nationalist and communist officers.
That appropriation of the KMT military's Chinese roots complicates Taiwan's efforts to create armed forces wholeheartedly committed to defending against an invading Chinese army.
At the same time, Beijing is recruiting serving officers as spies. 'We have a massive problem with the infiltration of our force now,' says a senior official at the justice ministry's investigation bureau. In 2024 the number of Taiwanese prosecuted on charges of espionage for China jumped to 64, up from just 10 in 2022, while at least two retired officers have been indicted.
This is paired with a disinformation campaign. The National Security Bureau, Taiwan's version of the CIA, said in January that the amount of disinformation China distributed into the country had risen 60 per cent over the past year.
One area of particular concern is social media apps widely used by teenagers and even primary school pupils. 'Although other democracies also observe adverse effects of Chinese apps like TikTok, the impact goes much deeper here because content travels so much easier due to the shared language,' says Eric Hsu, a researcher at Doublethink Lab, a Taiwanese nonprofit that researches Chinese disinformation and influence operations.
Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office keeps close tabs on Taiwanese entrepreneurs and executives living and working in China. Almost 20 businesspeople have said that TAO officials approach representatives of their business associations ahead of elections in Taiwan, seeking pledges they will donate to parties other than the DPP and organise trips back to Taiwan to bring out the anti-DPP vote.
The CCP has also been fostering political parties. In January, Taiwan's ministry of the interior asked the constitutional court to rule on dissolving the Chinese Unification Promotion party, set up by organised crime boss Chang An-lo, on the grounds that it illegally received money from China and violated Taiwanese national security laws.
A woman holds flags while waiting for the results of the recall election in Taipei. Photograph: I-Hwa Cheng/AFP via Getty
Overtly pro-unification groups such as the CUP have had no impact on Taiwan's elections as only a tiny minority of Taiwanese would consider becoming part of China even as a future option.
But the KMT is a different matter. After ruling Taiwan for four decades, it began allowing a gradual transition to democracy in the late 1980s and became one of the country's two main political forces along with the DPP.
Like the CCP, the KMT holds that Taiwan is part of a greater Chinese nation, although the former enemies disagree on how to define this. Ever since a KMT chair visited China for the first time in 2005, the two parties have engaged in regular dialogue.
For some, that relationship has become too cosy in recent years, with prominent KMT politicians accused of parroting CCP rhetoric on visits to Beijing.
Wang Hung-wei, one of the lawmakers targeted in the recall, badmouthed Taiwan's government on a Chinese state television talk show in 2021, while former president and KMT chair Ma Ying-jeou claimed during the last presidential election campaign that Taiwan was too small and weak to defend itself – and urged his compatriots to 'trust Xi Jinping'.
Such comments could once be dismissed as posturing or awkward or sentimental behaviour. But they took on greater significance in January last year, when the KMT won the largest number of seats in Taiwan's parliament.
Within weeks of taking office, it allied with a smaller party to push through a series of highly controversial Bills, including an expansion of parliamentary powers at the expense of the executive and the judiciary.
After Taiwan's top court found those amendments unconstitutional, the KMT and its allies raised the quorum the court needs to rule and blocked new judges nominated by the president. That left the court inquorate – and thus paralysed.
Other manoeuvres included unprecedented budget cuts and a redistribution of funds from the central to local governments, of which a majority are run by the KMT.
It has also proposed a controversial Bill that would restrain Taiwan's use of its military to push back against Chinese incursions. It says this reduces the risk of conflict between two parties which, the Bill argues, are technically still at war with each other.
The opposition's moves to paralyse the government of President Lai Ching-te triggered confrontation with the DPP. But they also inflamed the wider public.
In May 2024, when the KMT voted on the expansion of parliamentary powers, tens of thousands of protesters gathered outside. Addressing the crowd, Wu Rwei-ren, a prominent political scientist and historian, called the move a 'parliamentary coup' and accused the KMT of 'co-ordinating from within in support of a Chinese annexation of Taiwan'.
DPP lawmakers said the opposition was usurping power following a script provided by Xi Jinping. Although the KMT dismissed such accusations, the rhetoric stuck and the campaign to petition for recalling KMT lawmakers quickly gained traction.
Eric Chu, the chairman of Taiwan's main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT). Photograph: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA
Angel investor and activist Chen was on board from the beginning. 'They are hollowing out our courts, they are undermining our democracy, they echo the way China talks,' she says.
In Hsinchu, the centre of Taiwan's vital semiconductor industry, law professor Carol Lin led a campaign against Cheng Cheng-chien, the KMT legislator who defeated her in the January 2024 race for that seat.
Lin filed a criminal complaint against Cheng, alleging that he illegally received campaign finance from the Chinese government. A special prosecutorial group for national security cases has opened an investigation. 'Cheng is probably the case with the clearest evidence of KMT lawmakers colluding with China,' says Lin. Cheng denies the accusations.
President Lai went on a tour of the country, giving speeches ostensibly aimed at uniting the nation against the threat from China. But his rhetoric left no room for those with emotional bonds to China. Lai compared the search for national unity to the process of forging iron, during which the nation must 'remove impurities'.
The KMT has denounced the DPP as 'green communists' in a reference to their party colour, compared the party with the Nazis, and called Lai a dictator.
China was quick to take advantage of the infighting. State media and social media accounts affiliated with the Taiwan Affairs Office have been trumpeting the vote as a rejection of Lai's 'dictatorial' tendencies.
A growing chorus of voices is warning that deepening internal division is just what the CCP needs. Former DPP lawmaker Lin Chuo-shui last week warned members of his own party against being overzealous in identifying alleged Chinese collaborators.
Optimists believe that Taiwan will pull itself together. James Chen, a political scientist at Tamkang University who supports the KMT, sees the recall results as a demonstration of Taiwanese voters' judgment and maturity.
'The DPP and President Lai should develop better approaches to truly unify the country', he says, but warns that if the opposition fails to meet the public's demands 'they will not be able to return [to the presidency] in 2028″.
But Chen, the activist, is no longer content to simply put her faith in politicians. 'What the recall taught us is that there is still a lot to be done to make our citizens more resilient against Chinese interference,' she says.
One next step that she and her fellow activists are considering is running for elected office at the grassroots level. 'Our village heads and borough wardens have often become tools of Chinese influence operations,' she warns. 'It is time that we, the citizens, take this into our own hands.' –
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Opinions on key issues are deeply split along party lines
70%
of DPP supporters blame China for rising cross-strait tensions. But 61% of KMT supporters blame the DPP itself, according to Doublethink Lab
88%
of DPP supporters are satisfied with the way democracy in Taiwan works. But only 31% of KMT supporters are, says Doublethink
81%
of KMT supporters agree with the idea that the US cannot be trusted. Almost exactly the same percentage of DPP backers say they disagree.