Image Credit: Presidential Office of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

This goes beyond dislike for the DPP – it’s a long-term strategy from Beijing.

The Diplomat
Date: August 03, 2018
By: Chih-Cheng Chang

Since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by Tsai Ing-wen, won Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections in January 2016, China has taken a series of steps to isolate the self-governing island from the international community. These steps have included prevailing upon four countries – Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, Burkina Faso, and the Dominican Republic – to sever their long-term diplomatic relationships with Taiwan, as well as depriving Taiwan of its observer status at the World Health Assembly. In the most recent such incident, China successfully pressured 44 airlines from around the world, including four based in the United States, to remove “Taiwan” as keyword from their booking systems. At the same time, China moved to deprive Taichung City in central Taiwan of its host-city status for the upcoming 2019 East Asian Youth Games, which it had been awarded in 2012.

Why is China continuing to bully Taiwan? Many analyses fail to look beyond the communist mainland’s reflexive dislike for democratic Taiwan’s new pro-independence regime. If that is indeed China’s motivation, these moves are counterproductive. China’s intimidation against the DPP regime will only serve to make China and the Kuomintang (the KMT), with its anti-independence stance, even less popular among the Taiwanese people. Indeed, in the wake of the aforementioned incidents involving international airlines and the East Asian Youth Games, some Taiwanese media and commentators have been making more sanguine predictions about the DPP’s likely performance in the November 2018 local elections. In other words, China’s intimidation of Taiwan may indeed only add to the electoral woes of the ever-weakening KMT.

Nevertheless, China’s recent coercive actions must be recognized as elements of a precisely calibrated strategy on the part of Chinese cross-strait policymakers. The logic of this strategy is not to win over the hearts of the Taiwanese population, but rather to weaken the authority of the government of Taiwan, due to the latter’s strong opposition to the “one China” principle.    [FULL  STORY]