The Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army constantly threaten the people and government of the Republic of China.
The Party propaganda and the line-crossing military drills by PLA ships and planes in the Taiwan Strait are overbearing and vicious. Since 2024, the explicit threats have included the death penalty for Taiwanese “diehard separatists.” Not a softening of position. Meanwhile, citizens of the Republic of China must by and large know that they are governed by the ROC and not by the PRC. Do they also know what is the exact degree of acceptance of the obvious constituting “diehard” separatism?
The party-state doesn’t want to seem too negative. So in addition to promising to conquer or murder everybody in the Republic of China, the CCP wields carrots as well as sticks (Reuters, April 22, 2025).
Nearly 40,000 Taiwanese joined [more than 400] industry events in China such as conferences and trade fairs supported by the Chinese government in 2024, a study showed on Tuesday, as Beijing ramps up a charm offensive toward the island alongside military pressure.
This is nothing new:
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own despite Taipei’s objections, has long taken a carrot and stick approach to Taiwan, threatening it with the prospect of military action while reaching out to those it believes are amenable to Beijing’s point of view….
The 2024 events surveyed by IORG [Taiwan Information Environment Research Center] included a June job fair in southeast China’s Fujian province targeting more than 1,500 Taiwanese university graduates.
“Reward and punishment always go hand-in-hand in the Chinese influence campaigns on Taiwan,” IORG co-director Yu Chihhao told Reuters. “Military drills and intimidation are punishment; cross-strait business cooperations are reward.”
These tens of thousands of ROC citizens are making themselves more vulnerable; perhaps they trust the PRC not to do anything to hurt them. But the mainland government does not take care to refrain from hurting innocent people. And suppose it does one day attack the island? Would it then regard Taiwanese working on the mainland as off limits or as hostages?
Also see:
Taipei Times: Taiwan’s citizenship conundrum
“Accepting immigrants from the PRC is a double-edged sword.”
