TAO WOW: The most important thing you will read this month on Taiwan

Betel nut trees removed from a hillside in Taichung

For a long time I've been resistant to concluding that Beijing was inept and ignorant of Taiwan affairs as so many have asserted privately to me. It looks like I was wrong to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt....

Solidarity translated two reports from Storm Media about Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO). Apparently the anti-corruption drive has now reached into the TAO and is going after Chen Yun-lin...

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) has stationed itself inside the PRC Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), serving notice to China’s Taiwan network and Taiwanese business community. An ROC (Taiwan) cross-strait official divulges that according to the information the office has gotten hold of, after Taiwan’s nine-in-one elections Chairman Xi Jinping in an internal meeting criticized former ARATS and TAO chief Chen Yunlin for his “erroneous methods” which had caused Taiwan policy to produce poor results. Hence, the CCDI’s investigation of Chen Yunlin [S.tw: more on that in the next report] is not just “wind blowing through an opening.” Our government source believes that the PRC anti-corruption campaign aside, the true purpose of the CCDI investigation is to put the nation’s Taiwan network on notice that policy work on Taiwan affairs will no longer run on mutual exchanges of benefits.

You have to read the entire thing, with its rumors, allegations, and descriptions of Beijing's leadership circles being unable to understand a thing about Taiwan even though media and social networks make things abundantly clear. Apparently, Beijing's spy network in Taiwan can't even read the newspapers. It is incredible how stupid things are...

A knowledgeable source says that the TAO’s reports had originally led Xi Jinping to believe that the KMT would hold onto Taipei City. When the TAO’s prediction was proven wrong, Xi was infuriated. He demanded the Taiwan network write a review report of what had happened. In the first report it submitted Xi, the Taiwan network repeated its past rhetoric by blaming the Democratic Progressive Party for “fanning the flames of the Taiwanese citizens.” Xi believed this report was unable to explain the real problem and demanded it be rewritten.

But wait, there's more...

However, last year as the anti-services pact controversy got hotter and hotter, there was word across the strait that Lai Xiaohua had embezzled at least US$10 million through different channels of the TAO and the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland. When it became clear later that the organizations’ books didn’t add up, the TAO was forced to ask Taiwanese businesspeople to use the accounts of Taiwan Associations and the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland to cover the hole. The Taiwanese businessmen were so infuriated by this request that they were speechless, but for the sake of their businesses they gave in and covered the loss.

According to a Taiwanese businessperson, when Chen Yunlin ran the TAO during Taiwan’s Lee and Chen administrations, Taiwanese investment in China was still not systematic, and cross-strait relations were not good, so most things were done through private channels. The line between personal investment and government Taiwan work was hazy. Hence, there have been many unproven rumors of beneficial relationships between China’s Taiwan hands and certain Taiwanese politicians and businessmen.

Such things have long been rumored, but there have been few articles on it. Solidarity and Ben from Letters from Taiwan talked about it on Twitter...

It's pretty obvious that the combination of authoritarian institutional arrangements -- where you can't speak truth to power because it will get you killed -- ideological blindness, faction politics, corruption, and incompetence have created a vast ignorance in Beijing. Cole notes:

For all his faults, Mr. Chen is being unfairly accused by a regime that, despite multiple occasions to learn from Taiwan’s open society, stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the drivers of Taiwan’s distinct identity. Beijing seems to regard the trend lines that indicate a rising self-identification as Taiwanese and single-digit support for unification as a sign that it — the TAO, ARATS — has failed to properly communicate with the Taiwanese people and explain why its Taiwan policy, which is largely influenced by a belief in economic determinism, should be embraced by its 23 million people. The problem is that Beijing appears to have become a victim of its own propaganda, a phenomenon that may have been exacerbated by the authoritarian nature of its political system which discourages officials from providing their superiors with information that doesn’t fit the accepted model.

Not just Beijing has bought into the economic determinism model. How many times has it been said since 2000 that annexation is inevitable and economics will make Taiwan just fall into Beijing's lap, ripe plumlike and all? Quite the opposite: the closer the two sides become economically, the more the Taiwanese reject China. Moreover, the golden age is over. A lot of people have yet to wrap their heads around that. No doubt in 2035 I'll wheeze into a bar in Taipei with my walker and IV drip, and some paleface will inform me with a patronizing sneer that close economic relations between Taiwan and China mean annexation is just around the corner...

Just envision, for a moment, Xi's alleged cluelessness on Taiwan and then extend this kind of information collection regime and response across all areas of China's government. Brr....
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