The first group of Chinese officials to visit Taiwan in three years hid from the public eye over the weekend, illustrating how the pandemic’s border closures and escalating military tensions have further damaged communications with Beijing.
After being greeted by protesters when they arrived in Taipei on Saturday, a six-member delegation from the Shanghai municipal government failed to attend a scheduled visit to the lantern festival, a celebration of the lunar new year, in the Taiwanese capital that same night.
According to the schedule shared with the Taipei municipal parliamentarian, Li Xiaodong, the deputy head of the Shanghai Taiwan Affairs Office, and five other officials are due to visit cultural sites in the capital of Taiwan.
He is expected to hold talks with the mayor of Chiang Wan-an, from the opposition Kuomintang party. But the Taipei municipal government declined to provide any information about the trip.
The sensitivities surrounding the visit highlight how difficult it will be for the Kuomintang – a party that embraces Chinese identity and has a chance of winning the next presidential election in 2024 – to engage with Beijing in the wake of China’s growing military threats to Taiwan.
China restricted most official exchanges with Taiwan, even barring its citizens from visiting as tourists, after President Tsai-Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party took office in 2016.
But local Chinese officials still maintained contact with Taiwan’s KMT-run municipal and county governments until early 2020, when the Tsai government closed the country’s borders to non-residents to stop the spread of Covid-19.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to invade if the island refuses to surrender it under its indefinite control.
Taiwan’s central government approved the Shanghai delegation’s visit on the condition that the group not make any political statements.
A senior Taiwanese official involved in China policy said the government wants Beijing’s visits to resume gradually, to avoid undermining Taiwan’s national security and to manage the lingering risks of the pandemic.
“The higher level of hostility in China has been shown to us and the military threat is one of the factors they are considering, although not the only one,” he said.
The Shanghai official began the visit after a trip to China by Andrew Hsia, vice chairman of the Kuomintang party and a former diplomat, who met with Beijing’s top Taiwan policy official 10 days ago.
China held an unprecedented week-long military exercise around Taiwan last August after Nancy Pelosi, who is the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited Taipei despite Beijing’s objections.
The People’s Liberation Army began terrorizing the country with more frequent and extensive military maneuvers. Taiwan military detected 24 Chinese military aircraft operation throughout the island in 24 hours for Saturday morning, the highest level of activity since February 1.
Taiwan’s government counted just 18,849 Chinese visits in the first 11 months of last year – down from 2.7 million in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, and 4.1 million in 2015, the peak of Chinese tourism to the country under predecessor Tsai Ma Ying – jeou, which promotes closer relations with China.
Analysts say the breakdown of almost all contacts raises the risk of conflict.
“All kinds of exchanges have become extraordinary since 2016, and Covid has put a nail in the coffin of cross-strait understanding. There is a lot of confusion, misrecognition and miscommunication,” said Ian Rowen, associate professor at the National Taiwan Normal University.
“But the fear of any contact and exchange will increase the misunderstanding. It’s scary to think about.