Will Xi Jinping cross the Taiwan Strait? | If You're Listening

On the Chinese island of Dadang, just off the coast of the city of Xiamen, there's an interesting little tourist trap called the Frontier Broadcast History Museum.The centrepiece of the museum is a giant horn.which, according to its plaque, is the world's largest loudspeaker.The volume on the speaker is set to like 1 % power these days.But from the 1950s to the 1990s, pro -communist propaganda messages like this... were being blasted with 20 ,000 watts of power through the horn out over the ocean.These go to 11.

See, six kilometres over the water is an island that belongs to Taiwan.Where there was another set of speakers blasting anti -communist propaganda straight back.The interesting thing is that the speakers were set up on the edge of the islands.But the Chinese speaker isn't on the edge of the island anymore.It hasn't been moved.It's just that a giant international airport has been built in front of it.

The airport has cut the distance between the communist Chinese island of Dadang and the democratic Taiwanese island of Jinmen from 6km to 3km.Plus, China has built a giant new bridge across the harbour.They're calling it the Xiamen -Jinmen Bridge.And they'd like it to cross the border between the two sides and allow people to drive between them.

Taiwan's government has called the bridge a national security risk and has never agreed to it.Despite that, China has gone ahead with building a portion of the bridge on its side.

The new bridge and airport are meant to open later this year.And if Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the opening ceremony,there's one thing that's likely to really annoy him.Despite reclaiming land to halve the physical gap between China and Taiwan, and building half a bridge that's meant to link the two sides, the unification of Taiwan and China seems just as far away a possibility as it was when back in the days when they were blasting propaganda at each other over the ocean.

It's part of Beijing's efforts to integrate China and Taiwan in various ways, with the ultimate goal of bringing Taiwan under its control.

As we've been discussing over the last few episodes of this series, it's a strong ambition of Xi Jinping to bring Taiwan under Beijing's control while he's in office.How does he plan to achieve this?Well, for decades he's been using two methods.The stick and the carrot.The stick is the military threats, basically encircling Taiwan with the Chinese Navy and firing missiles into the sea nearby, that kind of thing.While the carrot is soft diplomacy, where she tries to convince the people of Taiwan to voluntarily submit to Beijing's control.

So today, we're going to look at the two methods, the stick and the carrot, and see whether either is working.I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.OK, so if you want to attend Cornell University in upstate New York, there's an unusual requirement that all incoming students need to meet, and it takes place in one of the university's pools.

The test consists of jumping feet first into the deep end, continuously swimming 75 yards and ending in the shallow end.

Completing this test is a requirement of entry at the Ivy League school.

We are not looking for the next Michael Phelps here.Can you fall in water over your head?gain composure and swim to safety?

So every Cornell alumnus has completed this test.And it's really quite an impressive list of people.Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Christopher Reeve, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, Ann Coulter, 23 Nobel laureates and two presidents of Taiwan.Here's one of them visiting his alma mater in 1995.

After 27 long years, I am back in Osaka.

Lee Tung -hui had been appointed President of Taiwan by the undemocratic National Assembly in 1988, and then a few years later announced the end of the nationalist military dictatorship and a transition to democracy.

My years at Cornell from 1965 to 1968 made an indelible impression on me. I return to my former land determined to make my contribution toward achieving full democracy for our society.

So this was 1995.The first democratic presidential election had been scheduled for early the following year.Lee Tung Hui was planning to run as a candidate and he explained why to the Cornell alumni.

Whatever I have done as president of my nation I have done with the people in my heart.

Now, generally, foreign leader visiting America to speak at a college reunion wouldn't be a big deal.In fact, happens pretty frequently without anyone paying all that much attention.But in the case of President Lee speaking at Cornell in 1995, it drew quite a bit of attention indeed.And that's because for the presidentof Taiwan to visit the U .S.S.

requires a visa.Which again, that doesn't feel like a particularly big deal.But to China, the existence of this visa meant that the U .S.was not only recognizing Taiwan as a separate entity from China, but that it had a legitimate president.And well, they're quite pissed by this, so they decided to get out the big stick to intimidate the Taiwanese.

On Chinese TV, it was announced that the military would start firing missiles into the sea near Taiwan.

This poker -faced announcement on China's state -run national television prompted the new crisis in relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Over the following month, the CCP continued to wield their stick and sent the Chinese army to conduct missile, artillery and naval drills in the Taiwan Strait.

China's move is clearly in retaliation for Taiwan's increasing assertiveness in international affairs.

Seeing all this unfold, the Republican -controlled US Congress decided to ramp things up and annoy Beijing even more.They held a special event honouring the then 97 -year -old widow of the former Taiwanese dictator, Chiang Kai -shek.

It is an honour for us to have you here, Madam Chiang.We thank you for giving us the opportunity to be present with a gracious and great leader to have a sense of touching history by having you here.Needless to say, this also didn't go down well with the Chinese.

And the Clinton administration became increasingly concerned that China might attempt an invasion of Taiwan.So Clinton sent a very strong signal to China to not do that.

We are combining diplomacy

By the time the Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited New York for the UN General Assembly a few months later, tensions were extremely high.Anti -Chinese protesters marched on the streets of Manhattan.

US President Bill Clinton organised a meeting with President Jiang.

But the choice of venue only made things worse.

China refused to hold the talks in the New York Public Library because of a human rights exhibit which included the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Clinton and Jiang did eventually manage to meet, but there was no agreement to back down.The first Taiwanese democratic presidential election was approaching and China wasn't happy about it.They weren't just going to put their stick away and let it happen.The Chinese military is using these exercises to inflame nationalist feelings at home and send an ominous warning to Taiwanese voters to forget about independence.On the mainland, Chinese civilians weren't concerned about the prospect of war.

I'm not worried at all.China has such strong military power.What are we afraid of?When Li Danhui wants independence, we'll destroy him.

While in Taiwan, it was a different story.The situation was getting genuinely terrifying and many Taiwanese people booked flights to the US and Canada.The Taipei stock market plunged.

last July, Taiwanese companies have been shaking in their boots.

There was serious concern that a war between the US and China may begin over Taiwan.

With so much military hardware now concentrated around Taiwan, one fear is that a misdirected missile or some other mishap could trigger a confrontation which nobody had reckoned on.

The message from China to the Taiwanese people was clear.Don't vote in the presidential election if you know what's good for you.They feared that a successful election in Taiwan would set an uncomfortable precedent.

Never before had the people of Taiwan or in any part of China been able to choose their leader in a free election.

When the election day arrived, the people of Taiwan ignored the threats and voted in enormous numbers.

Turnout to the polls was high, an unfamiliar process even for President Lee Tung -hui and his wife.

President Lee won in a landslide.

With this result, Taiwanese voters have delivered a message of defiance to Beijing.And the man who has brought their island into the international spotlight is now emerging from party headquarters to claim victory.

Taiwanese MP Paris Zhang said the massive turnout was a clear rebuke to Beijing's threats.

The people give our reply to China and hope they understand they won't try another military provocation once again in the years to come or in the months to come.But I'm afraid that China may not get that message.

At his inauguration, President Lee made it clear that the thing the authoritarian government in Beijing feared most had happened.

We have already proved eloquently that the Chinese people are capable of practicing democracy.

It was an incredible historic moment.Taiwan did what the mainland explicitly told them not to do.they got away with it.There was no invasion.There was no war.Beijing had tried the stick and it had failed.

Perhaps they would need to switch to the carrot and try some soft diplomacy instead.The Chinese province closest to Taiwan, right across the strait, is Fujian.

With Taiwan just 200 kilometres in that direction, this part of China is waiting for the day when its Taiwanese compatriots can cross that stretch of water on a ferry.

The deputy secretary of the Communist Party in Fujian province was an ambitious man in his mid -forties named Xi Jinping.

It's here Mr Xi spent the longest time.building his political career over a period of 17 years.

While the central government in Beijing tried to scare Taiwan into submission, the Fujian government Xi Jinping was part of was trying to create economic ties across the strait by luring in Taiwanese business and investment.

By night, the city of Xiamen becomes karaoke heaven for Taiwanese businessmen.By day, it's a cheap manufacturing center in a corner of the world's biggest market, a beacon to overseas Chinese investors who feel certain China will never attack its own people.

One of his responsibilities as a senior Fujian government official was to look after Meizhou Island.birthplace of the goddess Mazu.

On Meizhou Island of southern China, believers come from far and wide to celebrate the birthday a thousand years ago of Mazu, goddess of the sea and queen of heaven.

Legends say that Mazu could predict stormy weather and protect fishermen in the Taiwan Strait from harm.That made her quite a big deal on both sides of the strait.

She's worshipped by ten

Now this is an interesting challenge for a member of the Chinese Communist Party.The party is explicitly atheist and has a history of religious persecution.

Thirty years ago all churches in China were closed.

The Communist Party spent decades destroying religious practices across the territory it controlled.

The Chinese sought to wipe out Tibet's religion, its customs, its civilisation.

Religious practices were destroyed or driven underground.But not in Taiwan.

Taiwanese worshippers hold their own celebrations for Mazu's birthday.Free from mainland religious constraints, Taiwanese worshippers are more zealous than their mainland compatriots.

Two thirds of the Taiwanese population are believers in Mazu.But if they wanted to visit the temple where she was born on Meijou Island in the 1990s, they had to go through quite a rigmarole.

There are no direct communications or transportation links between the two sides.So to get here, pilgrims have to first arrive in a neutral territory before journeying on to the mainland.

Xi Jinping and his colleagues in Fujian saw this as a potential opportunity to improve relations between Taiwan and the mainland.They were willing to offer the people of Taiwan a carrot.Mazu worship was reclassified by the central government from being a religion to being cultural heritage, which is a bureaucratic way of saying that the Communist Party decided that it was okay.The government funded the rebuilding of Mazu's temple, which had been destroyed decades earlier.She then championed an expansion of the Communist Party.and to celebrate sent a golden statue of Mazu from the temple to Taiwan for a nationwide tour.

She was carried on foot all across Taiwan before returning home to Meijo Island.The idea was to promote the shared ancestry and culture between people on both sides of the strait.For Xi Jinping, this new carrot method, using soft diplomacy to win over the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people, seemed to be working.Economic investment between the two sides was increasing.Since Xi Jinping became the president of China, he's continued to use his successful carrot strategy, which worked so well in Fujian, but on a larger scale with the resources of the central government.of carrots in his arsenal.

He invested in large infrastructure projects, social programs, offered generous business incentives and continued to invest heavily in the goddess Mazu.Despite inconvenience, people have come to celebrate the 1038th anniversary of Mazu's ascension to heaven.The crowd is packed shoulder to shoulder.Everyone is here to watch the Mazu procession and pray for peace.Beijing pays leaders of Mazu temples in Taiwan around 50 bucks per pilgrim they convince to travel to the mainland, with a bonus if they send more than 100 people.Once pilgrims step off the plane or ferry, All their expenses are covered by the Chinese government.

They're greeted with banners covered in slogans about cross -strait peace and unity.They're encouraged to join up to the Chinese social media service WeChat and get put in group chats with tour guides and other pilgrims.Woven into the program between the incense offerings and the dragon dances are addresses from Communist Party officials about shared identity and shared destiny.After they return home to Taiwan, the messages they get on those WeChat group chats become increasingly political, criticizing the pro -independence DPP party and praising the more China -friendly KMT.The thing is, these soft power tactics and friendly WeChat messages weren't actually effective.

We love freedom!We love democracy!

In the 2024 election, the pro -independence DPP won an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term.

Taiwan has elected the ruling party's candidate, William Lai, angering China and cementing a path towards heightened tensions in the region.

The defeat of the China -friendly KMT was a clear sign to Beijing that the possibility of a peaceful unification with Taiwan was slipping away.Problem for Xi Jinping is that the sentiment of the Taiwanese people towards the mainland has changed a lot since the 90s.Every year, people in Taiwan are polled about whether they primarily identify as Taiwanese, Chinese or both.Before President Lee spoke at Cornell University that day in 1995, about a quarter of people in Taiwan saw themselves as Chinese, another quarter said Taiwanese, and half the populationsaid both.The proportion who see themselves as primarily Chinese has since collapsed to around 2 or 3%.

About 30 % of people see themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese.More than 60 % of people now say that they are just Taiwanese.All of the Chinese Communist Party's carrots and sticks have only served to drive the Taiwanese people further away.None of Xi Jinping's carrots have brought them any closer.And it's not like he's completely abandoned the stick method.Hang on, I'll get the stick back.

But that doesn't seem to be working either.

China wants Taiwan to know it's getting ready.Propaganda videos show a fierce fighting force on the move in its bid to take Taiwan back.

But the people of Taiwan have been living with China's threatening stick waving since the 90s, so they don't take it particularly seriously anymore.People in Taipei have seen it all before.

If nothing happens, then nothing happens.

There's nothing we can do to control it.We just get used to it.Everything Xi Jinping has done in his efforts to bring Taiwan under China's control, the Mazu tours, the blockade drills, the half -built bridge between Xiamen and Jinmen Island, have been exactly as effective as that big horn -shaped speaker blasting propaganda across the water.

Reading the news in Australia, you might think there's a constant sense of panic here in Taiwan.But really, everyday life is very normal.

So the carrot's not working.Brandishing the stick threateningly doesn't work, which is good news on the surface.But what if Xi Jinping actually used the stick?rather than just waving it around?For years, military experts have been talking about 2027 being a deadline for the Chinese military.

The time frame for an assault on Taiwan, I would put it at 2025 to 2027.And this is largely dependent on when I think Xi Jinping can be confident that his military can do this.

And the date that most analysts point to is 2027.That is the date that Xi Jinping has given his military to have the ability to do it.

Well, according to the CIA, China no longer has a fixed timeline for achieving unification with Taiwan.Not for 2027 or any year in the near future.Experts are now saying that it's unlikely to happen this decade.Xi Jinping has recently purged basically the entire senior leadership of the Chinese military.Perhaps it's an effort to protect himself from a potential leadership coup.It's kind of unclear, but what is clear is that is that the military modernisation efforts appear to be in disarray.

The CIA now says that Beijing hopes to get the job done by 2049, which is the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party's victory over Chiang Kai -shek and the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War.But that's more than two decades away.Xi Jinping will be nearly 96 by then.The window for him to cement his legacy as the leader who unified Taiwan with the mainland will have closed.At the beginning of this four part series, we were talking about how Xi Jinping has been wasting enormous amounts of time, money and resources planning for a war that he does not have to fight.He's spent money trying to reach Taiwan diplomatically.

He's spent money beefing up the Chinese military.He's also spent hundreds of billions trying to make sure that China could survive.a war with the United States over Taiwan.If he decides to give up on trying to take control of Taiwan, all of that will have been wasted.Then again, it would also mean that he could focus on improving the standard of living for people he already controls.War or peace?

It is really just a puzzle.