Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

In response to requests from businesspeople, the Straits Exchange Foundation arranged an investment event in Kinmen County. No one would have expected that at least 18 senior representatives of a Taiwanese business association in China had been contacted by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), which convinced them not to participate in the event.

The incident harkens back to a Chinese Communist Party propaganda article published in 2015 that tried to convince Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), Hong Kong’s richest man, to keep his assets in China. Li, who had most of his assets in Hong Kong, started to off-load his major property investments in China, a move that triggered a series of discussions in Beijing. The Liaowang Institute, a think tank of Xinhua news agency, published an article accusing Li of abandoning his benefactor upon achieving his goal, especially at a sensitive moment when China’s economy was at risk.

Given the recent and ongoing tensions between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea, Taiwan should look to its south for the future of its maritime competition with the People’s Republic of China.

Like its claims over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, Beijing claims sovereignty over the islands and features within its 10-dash line in the South China Sea. Beijing recently released a new standard map that expands its claims within the region, which has angered Southeast Asian countries. Despite losing a case against the Philippines in 2016 at the Permanent Court of Arbitration regarding its sovereignty claims in the region, Beijing still uses forceful and coercive actions in the South China Sea against other claimants — with the Philippines receiving the brunt of the attention over the past several months.