路透社特別報導,寫得超詳細,訪問兩岸超多單位,讓世界看到台灣!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/27/us-taiwan-china-special-report-idUSKCN0JB01T20141127
2.完整新聞標題:
Special Report: How China's shadowy agency is working to absorb Taiwan
先重點摘要+翻譯:
1.大批挺國民黨台商將搭優惠機票回台投票，目的就是和平統一。有100萬人居住於中國
，其中80%在2012年投馬英九。華航表示半價賣票一定會虧錢，但會全力滿足台商需求。
2.中國統戰部將1980年以來在香港運作的經驗移來台灣，先從商界跟學界滲透打壓對中國
不利的言論，再走上檯面與街頭。
3.很多台灣商人想成為政協代表以保護企業，但台灣政府以取消台灣護照禁止。
4.部份僑委會官員向立委抗議統戰部的作為，但陸委會官員認為統戰部的作為不應總被視
為是負面的，並認為可透過互動來影響中共。國民黨大陸事務部主任則認為國民黨不可能
被中共影響或控制。
5.張安樂說他的統促黨黨員可獲中國政府全額補助去中國玩，有胡蘿蔔吃總比被棍子打好
。
3.完整新聞內文:(真的要貼嗎....)
(Reuters) - Ever since a civil war split the two sides more than 60 years
ago, China has viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be absorbed
into the mainland. To that end, the legion of Taiwanese businessmen working
in China is a beachhead.
In June, hundreds of those businessmen gathered in a hotel ballroom in the
southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. They were there to toast the new head of a
local Taiwan merchants’ association. They sipped baijiu liquor and ate
seafood as a troupe performed a traditional lion dance for good luck. An
honored guest, senior Communist Party official Li Jiafan, stood to deliver
congratulations and a message.
“I urge our Taiwanese friends to continue to work hard in your fields to
contribute to the realization of the Chinese dream as soon as possible,”
said Li, using a nationalist slogan President Xi Jinping has popularized. “
The Chinese dream is also the dream of the people on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait – our dream of reunification.”
Li, who ended his speech to beating drums and loud applause, is a department
chief in the Shenzhen arm of the United Front Work Department, an organ of
the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Its mission: to spread China’s
influence by ultimately gaining control over a range of groups not affiliated
with the party and that are often outside the mainland.
United Front documents reviewed by Reuters, including annual reports,
instructional handbooks and internal newsletters, as well as interviews with
Chinese and Taiwanese officials reveal the extent to which the agency is
engaged in a concerted campaign to thwart any move toward greater
independence by Taiwan and ultimately swallow up the self-ruled island of 23
million.
The United Front’s 2013 annual work report for the Chinese province of
Zhejiang, for instance, includes the number of Taiwanese living in the
province, the number of businesses they run as well as an entry on background
checks that have been conducted on the Taiwanese community in the province,
an entrepreneurial hub near Shanghai.
The United Front hasn’t confined itself to the mainland. It is targeting
academics, students, war veterans, doctors and local leaders in Taiwan in an
attempt to soften opposition to the Communist Party and ultimately build
support for unification. The 2013 work report, reviewed by Reuters, includes
details of a program to bring Taiwanese students and military veterans on
visits to the mainland.
INFLUENCING POLITICS
Through the United Front and other Chinese state bodies like the Taiwan
Affairs Office, which is responsible for implementing policies toward Taiwan
on issues including trade and transport, Beijing has also tried to influence
politics on the island, in part by helping mobilize Taiwanese businessmen on
the mainland.
Many of them are heading back home this weekend to vote in mayoral elections
that are being viewed as a barometer of support for Taiwan’s ruling
Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which favors closer ties with China
than does the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A large
number of those businessmen, who a senior KMT source said will largely vote
for the party, will be flying on deeply discounted airfares being offered by
Chinese and Taiwanese airline companies.
“The goal is simple – peaceful unification,” said a person with ties to
the Chinese leadership in Beijing. Soft power, not armed force, is the
strategy. “To attack the heart is the best. To attack a [walled] city is the
worst,” the source said, quoting Sun Tzu’s “Art of War.”
Questions sent by fax to the Beijing office of the United Front Work
Department were not answered. The Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office
referred Reuters to a statement on its website saying it does not comment on
elections on “the island.”
What’s happening in Taiwan is part of a broader effort by Beijing to bolster
its control over restive territories on its periphery.
The United Front has long been active in Hong Kong, which is ruled under the
“one country, two systems” model that enshrines a wide range of personal
freedoms for its residents and which China’s leaders have proposed as a
model for Taiwan. Reuters reported in July that United Front operations in
Hong Kong had shifted from the backroom courting of academics and businessmen
to the streets, where new groups of pro-Beijing agitators were attempting to
silence critics of China.
“What the United Front is doing to Taiwan now is the same as what it has
been doing in Hong Kong since the 1980s – a quiet, slow but extensive
penetration," said Sonny Lo, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of
Education and author of a book on China's covert control of the city.
Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is a fully democratic entity. It has an army but
does not have membership in the United Nations, and China has refused to rule
out the use of force to gain control of the island.
Since the KMT won the presidential election in 2008, cross-Strait ties have
been warmer than ever. More than 20 trade deals, including the establishment
of the first direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland, have been inked.
No trade agreements were signed under the previous DPP-led administration.
Earlier this year, Chinese and Taiwanese officials held their first official
meeting since 1949.
Taiwan’s economy has become increasingly intertwined with China’s. About 40
percent of Taiwan’s exports are to China and some key sectors like
technology have much of their manufacturing on the mainland. The world’s
biggest electronic components maker, Foxconn Technology Group ,, which
assembles Apple Inc’s iPhones, has many of its plants in China.
Taiwan presidential spokesperson Ma Weikuo said Taiwanese heading home to
vote were exercising their right as citizens. “It is normal that Taiwanese
businessmen living in Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Europe, Japan and
other parts of the world want to return to Taiwan to vote,” she said.
PRIZED HONOR
The United Front’s annual work reports and handbooks provide a window into
the agency’s methods. It has at least 100 offices in Zhejiang. The 2013 work
report said 30,000 Taiwanese businesspeople and their families were living in
the province and 6,800 Taiwanese enterprises had operations there at the end
of 2012.
United Front officials reported creating a more friendly business environment
by helping to smooth investment problems and resolve legal disputes for
resident Taiwanese. In the Zhejiang city of Ningbo, one United Front office
said it spent 110,000 yuan (about $18,000) to buy life and traffic accident
insurance for 137 Taiwanese businessmen.
Under a “three must visit” system in effect across the mainland, United
Front officials are instructed to visit Taiwanese businesspeople and their
families during traditional holidays, when a family member is ill and when
someone is facing economic troubles.
“They help with our business as well as little problems in daily life such
as car accidents, illness and schooling for kids," said a Taiwanese man
surnamed Lin, who works in the property sector in Changsha, the capital of
Hunan Province.
One enticement China has dangled in front of the Taiwanese business community
residing on the mainland, is provincial and municipal membership in the
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which serves as
an advisor to the government. It is a prized honor for businessmen whose
livelihoods are directly dependent on the mainland. The position affords
access to government officials and a form of protection in a country that
lacks an independent judicial system.
“There will be a force that helps protect your business on the mainland,”
said Lin. “They won’t make trouble if you are a CPPCC member.”
Holding CPPCC membership is a violation of Taiwanese law that bars citizens
from taking positions in state or party bodies in China. It is, however,
legal to be an honorary, non-voting CPPCC member. The Association of Taiwan
Investment Enterprises on the Mainland (ATIEM), which lists some 130
Taiwanese business associations across China as members, met with Taiwanese
President Ma Ying-jeou in December 2012 to try changing that.
Their bid to persuade him to allow Taiwanese citizens to become full-fledged
CPPCC members ultimately failed. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council announced
that same month that Taiwanese could not sit on the CPPCC.
Earlier in 2012, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau had handed a list of 169
Taiwanese suspected of being CPPCC members to the island’s Mainland Affairs
Council, which implements policy toward China on a wide array of issues
including business, shipping and travel. The council whittled the list down
to 32. Ultimately, no one was punished after Taiwanese authorities determined
those named were all either honorary CPPCC members or weren’t holders of a
Taiwanese passport.
FAR-REACHING DEALS
Taiwanese working on the mainland have actively lobbied for increased trade
ties with China. ATIEM, the business lobby, lists some of Taiwan’s largest
companies as members on its website. Several of the group’s founding members
urged the Taiwanese government to sign far-reaching deals with China, arguing
it would boost Taiwanese business on the mainland. They held meetings with
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council to help lay the groundwork, a senior
member of the organization told Reuters.
Their efforts were rewarded when Taiwan signed trade deals in 2008 that for
the first time allowed direct flights, shipping and mail links with the
mainland.
ATIEM hasn’t always been on the winning side. In March, students occupied
the Taiwan legislature in a bid to block passage of a deal that would have
allowed for freer trade with China. The protests, dubbed the Sunflower
Movement, fed off fears the pact would give China greater sway over Taiwan.
The protest ended when parliament agreed to suspend a review of the bill.
ATIEM did not respond to questions sent by email.
Some Taiwanese officials warn against United Front encroachment. In late
September, the head of Taiwan’s Overseas Community Affairs Council, which
handles matters related to citizens living overseas, told a parliamentary
committee that the United Front was stepping up work among Taiwanese business
leaders and younger Taiwanese on the mainland and abroad.
“They are drawing the Taiwanese who are more receptive to China over to
their side, exerting pressure on Taiwan’s government and affecting its
mainland policies,” Alexander Huang, a former vice chairman of Taiwan's
Mainland Affairs Council, which is responsible for ties with China, told
Reuters. He didn’t cite specific examples.
Mainland Affairs Council spokesperson Wu Mei-hung said United Front activity
shouldn’t be interpreted in an “overly negative way.”
“China has some political intentions,” she said. “But Taiwan has its own
advantages in terms of systems, core values and soft power. All of these, we
hope, will impact China via exchanges.”
The ruling KMT dismisses charges from the opposition DPP that it is
benefitting from United Front activity. Kuei Hung-cheng, the KMT’s director
of China affairs, acknowledged the close relationship between Taiwanese
businessmen on the mainland and the Chinese authorities, but said that did
not mean Beijing held sway over the party. “The KMT will not be influenced
or controled by the Chinese Communist Party. That is not possible,” he said.
A MAGIC TOOL
The United Front is a legacy of the earliest days of Leninist communist
revolutionary theory. China’s version of the United Front, dubbed a “magic
tool” on the agency’s own website, helped the Communist Party become
established on the mainland and ultimately prevail in a civil war that forced
Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) to retreat to Taiwan in 1949. The United
Front has as its primary goal the promotion of “motherland unification” and
blocking of “secession.”
A 2007 handbook for United Front workers in Beijing instructs cadres to “
unite neutral forces in order to divide and attack enemies.” It also directs
them to “make friends extensively and deeply with representatives from all
sectors” in Taiwan and abroad to “form a mighty troop of patriots.”
A senior Taiwanese defense official, who did not want to be named, referred
to the United Front’s tactics as a “war.” The ultimate goal was “to
overturn the Republic of China,” he said, using Taiwan’s official name.
The front’s activities haven’t been confined to harnessing China-friendly
forces. The southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, which is a bastion of the
pro-independence DPP, has been singled out. One group in the city that has
gotten special treatment is doctors, who have been invited on trips to the
mainland, according to a 2011 work report from an organ associated with the
United Front.
The visits had "successfully enhanced identification with the motherland
among some pro-green Taiwanese," the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government
League, a nominally independent political group that is permitted to operate
by the Communist Party, wrote in its report. Green is the color associated
with the opposition DPP.
Some politicians in Taiwan unabashedly favor unification. Among them is Chang
An-lo, the head of a pro-unification party. Known as the White Wolf, Chang
was once a leader in a triad group, a traditional Chinese criminal syndicate,
called the Bamboo Union. He lived for a decade in China as a fugitive from
the law in Taiwan but ultimately was never tried. He also spent ten years
behind bars in the U.S. on drug-smuggling charges.
Sitting in his office in Taipei dressed in a white jacket and black shirt,
Chang says he and his party have regular contact with Beijing’s Taiwan
Affairs Office and he has “friends in the United Front.” The Chinese
government, he says, has provided all-expenses paid trips for members of his
party to the mainland. “Getting carrots from China is better than getting
sticks,” he says.
UNSPOKEN CONSENT
The United Front and the Taiwan Affairs Office are also deeply involved in an
activity that in Communist China is strictly prohibited: democratic electoral
politics.
Taiwanese businessmen based in Shenzhen and Shanghai told Reuters they have
been encouraged by United Front officials to head home to vote in past
elections.
This year, the stakes are high for Beijing. The Democratic Progressive Party
champions independence. The ruling KMT government backs a status quo position
of “no unification, no independence, no war.”
Election airlifts helped the KMT to victory in 2008 and 2012. Close to a
quarter million Taiwanese residents on the mainland headed home to vote in
the 2012 presidential election, according to a senior member of the ruling
party who estimates there are about one million Taiwanese working and living
in China. As many as 80 percent voted for KMT leader Ma, who won a second
term promising closer ties with Beijing, the official said, citing an
internal survey.
This year, the airlift may not be enough to turn the tide in the most
important mayoral run-off – in Taipei. Final opinion polls published by
Taiwan’s leading media outlets showed the KMT’s candidate trailing an
independent by 11.5 to 18 points. A victory for the independent would mark
the first time in 16 years that the KMT has not ruled the capital.
But Beijing isn’t giving up. More than a dozen airlines, including
state-owned Air China and Taiwan’s largest carrier China Airlines, have
agreed to provide discounted flights from the mainland to Taiwan at the end
of November, according to a notice sent to members by ATIEM. The
Beijing-based organization lists the Chinese minister in charge of the Taiwan
Affairs Office as an honorary chairman on its website.
A senior official at Taiwan’s China Airlines told Reuters that “with
tickets selling at 50 percent off, airlines will incur losses.” But the
carrier would nevertheless “100 percent meet the demand from Taiwanese
businessmen.”
China Airlines spokesman Jeffrey Kuo said the company was offering “
promotional tickets for all flights” because November was “the low season.”
Air China did not respond to questions sent by fax and email to its Beijing
office.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said it was aware that Taiwanese businessmen
wanted to vote in the elections. ATIEM had negotiated with airline companies
to allow them to fly home, it said.
He-tai Chen, president of the Taiwan Merchant Association in Shenzhen, said
the Taiwanese business community on the mainland was “China's best public
relations tool.”
“There are 7 to 8 votes in my family,” he said. “And am I not the one who
decides to whom those votes go?”
The United Front has also been working to penetrate other layers of Taiwanese
society. As part of an operation called “Collecting Stars,” it has targeted
military veterans in Taiwan, inviting them to China for visits. In May 2012,
retired Taiwanese and mainland generals who were once sworn enemies met for
an invitational golf tournament in Zhejiang, United Front documents show.
Outreach to students takes the form of summer camps, corporate internships
and discover-your-roots tours to the mainland. Tsai Ting Yu, a 15-year-old
junior high school student who joined a trip in 2013 and in 2014, said she
attended classes with her mainland hosts and visited popular tourist sites,
including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.
“Before the trips, I kind of resisted the idea of China. But through the
programs I got to know them better and that resistance gradually disappeared,
” said Tsai.
She says she is now considering doing an undergraduate degree on the mainland.