Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/26
By: Chiang Chin-yeh and Frances Huang 

Washington, June 25 (CNA) China has sensed it has failed to win over the hearts and minds of people in Taiwan despite Beijing’s economic clout and efforts to woo young Taiwanese talent, a former United States government official said Monday.

“You would think given trends in the region, that mainland China would have reasons to be supremely confident,” said Thomas J. Christensen, former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2007 to 2008.

But “they realize they have failed miserably in one persistent fashion, and it is that they have failed miserably to win over the hearts and minds of the Taiwan public, despite all the economic interaction, despite all the attraction of places like Shanghai,” he said.

Christensen, who now teaches at Princeton University, was speaking at a seminar held by the Stimson Center in Washington to commemorate the late Alan D. Romberg, an expert in cross-strait relations, who died in March 2018. [FULL  STORY]