A new report finds that around 16,000 Taiwanese people joined Beijing-backed religious events in China last year. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council says such activities are part of China’s united front tactics. To learn how religion can be used as a political tool, TaiwanPlus spoke with Yu Chih-hao, co-director of IORG, which studies Taiwan’s information environment.
00:00Your report shows in 2024, about 16,000 Taiwanese people took part in religious activities in China.
00:07How do you view this number?
00:08We parsed through some 7,000 articles published by China Taiwan Net,
00:16which is a website run by the Taiwan Affairs Office under the State Council in the People's Republic of China.
00:25And the numbers show that there's two peaks.
00:28One is around March, and one is around October.
00:32Especially for October, it's due to what's called the mazu yu hua sheng tian,
00:39the becoming of gods, of the mazu goddess, which is a sort of special day for the mazu folk religion.
00:49So it means that, of course, China's propaganda only shows what's favorable for China.
00:55So we could reasonably assume that there's a lot more so-called exchange activities that are unreported by these state media reports.
01:07And we're trying to assess the risk that this pose to Taiwanese, not just national security, but also Taiwanese culture and Taiwanese identity.
01:16Like you mentioned, Beijing uses religious exchanges as a tool for political propaganda.
01:22What do you think is the actual impact on Taiwanese people?
01:25So we did observe those two, let's say, those two sides of Chinese propaganda.
01:31On the one side, it claims that between Taiwan's people and people in China, we have so-called common values.
01:39These gods are all Chinese gods.
01:41And then Taiwanese people are longing to go back to the so-called motherland to find our roots, so to speak.
01:52On the other side, the Chinese propaganda attacks the current Taiwanese government for trying to sever that tie using politics, using manipulation in politics.
02:05So in terms of the actual impact, this is really difficult to assess because from the Taiwan side, we actually encourage healthy cultural exchanges between Taiwan and China.
02:22This is not, this, Taiwan is a free country.
02:26We're a democracy and we want to make friends with people around the world.
02:31But we cannot overlook the risk.
02:36United Front work is usually subtle and hard to detect.
02:39What do you think Taiwan, as a democracy, can do to counter China's United Front work and religion?
02:45Well, we need to understand the contemporary China a lot better.
02:49The China under the rule of Chinese Communist Party.
02:52If we were to engage with China and Chinese communities with that knowledge, there's less risk of us being influenced without us knowing.
03:06Both civil society and governments are responsible for raising awareness and raising the literacy on China.
03:14And of course, strengthening the legal frameworks.
03:17These are not partisan issues in our eyes.
03:20These are common issues.
03:22These are national issues and needs cooperation from all parties.
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