Taiwan can’t escape China’s shadow

00:00 06:14

Cindy Yu has narrated this article for you to listen to.

The Taiwanese rock band Mayday – ‘the Beatles of the Chinese-speaking world’ – are being investigated by the Chinese Communist party for the crime of lip syncing. Local authorities are combing through recordings of Mayday’s Shanghai concerts from November looking for evidence of ‘deceptive fake-singing’, as the CCP calls it, which has been illegal in China since 2009 (although the law is rarely enforced). Last month, an anonymous Taiwan-ese government source told Reuters that the investigation had been cooked up because the pop stars refused a request from Beijing to say something nice about China in the run-up to Taiwan’s election this Saturday. The band found itself at the centre of a row between the presidential hopefuls about Chinese interference.

Xi has made it clear that, whoever holds power in Taipei, reunification with Taiwan is his ‘unswerving task’

Lai Ching-te, the vice-president, the candidate for the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive party and the favourite to win, lambasted China for meddling in the election ‘if reports are true’. Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Kuomintang (KMT), the more Beijing-friendly of the two main parties, has accused the DPP of whipping up anti-China sentiment with anonymous briefings. The pop stars themselves, who have fans in both Taiwan and China, are staying quiet. Being caught in the crossfire of cross-strait relations isn’t good for business.

Taiwanese voters can’t escape the psychodrama between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China either. Since Taiwan held its first election in 1996, the main fault line in politics has been over the question of how to deal with China, the giant across the narrow strait. Since the last election four years ago, the China conundrum has only become trickier.

In 2020, Taiwan watched with concern as Beijing cracked down on Hong Kong.