Interview: How China Pressures IPAC and Its Members

TaiwanPlus News

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China has faced many pressure tactics from China over the years. TaiwanPlus speaks with IPAC Executive Director Luke de Pulford to find out more.

Transcript

00:00You've said lawmakers from the Gambia, Malawi, and the Solomon Islands were pressured by China

00:05to withdraw from IPAC. What did that pressure look like? When we were in Taipei last year,

00:11in August, we announced that several new countries had joined IPAC. In amongst them were Malawi,

00:18the Gambia, and Solomon Islands. Only one member from either three of those countries turned up

00:24in Taipei. That was Peter Keniloria Jr. from the Solomon Islands. And after the summit had taken

00:32place, there was a lot of activity. We heard fairly early on that Malawi had come under pressure from

00:40the PRC, but not the politicians directly. It was actually the Malawian government. It was the

00:46presidential office who had heard directly from the government of the People's Republic of China

00:52who had threatened them. And they had indicated that the presence of the Malawian president

00:58in China would not be welcome unless the two co-chairs for Malawi for IPAC left the network.

01:08So we then heard from our Malawian politicians who confirmed that they had indeed been under pressure

01:14to leave. And they wrote us a letter effectively leaving IPAC, which looked like it had been dictated

01:22by the embassy of the People's Republic of China because it contained language in it about the

01:28one China principle and particularly mentioned Taiwan. So it was pretty clear what had happened

01:33there. Something similar happened in the Gambia, but we're not totally sure about the details because

01:39our lawmakers in the Gambia didn't confirm what kind of coercion had been employed by the PRC

01:45in that case. What they did was they sent a letter and the letter was substantially similar

01:50to Malawi. The Solomon Islands was different. In effect, Peter Keniloria Jr.'s other co-chair from

01:59another different political party had decided that the political party that he led, which was a small

02:05political party in the Solomon Islands, was going to join the government side after a vote of no

02:10confidence had happened in the Solomon Islands. And after that happened, there was correspondence

02:17between the PRC again and the Solomon Islands government, which said, we have conditions for

02:24engagement with your government, meaning this guy's new political party having joined the government

02:30side. And those conditions were number one, these people have to leave IPAC. Number two, you have to

02:38make a statement in support of the one China principle. So we lost that member from the Solomon

02:43Islands. Very notably, though, Peter Keniloria Jr. wouldn't leave and has stayed firm.

02:50And aside from these incidents, have there been any other times when China has put pressure on IPAC

02:55members? There were many other attempts at coercing IPAC members. Before the Taipei summit took place,

03:03somehow China got hold of our delegates list. So everybody that we were going to invite to the

03:09summit. I still don't know how they did that, but it was leaked to them. And in the days leading up to

03:15the summit, they contacted lawmakers in 11 countries to try to pressure them to stop them from going to

03:21Taipei. Now we're talking very undiplomatic approaches here. It's not like they wrote a formal letter

03:26to the Speaker of these people's parliaments, or they wrote a formal letter with a formal invitation

03:32for a meeting. They were by and large WhatsApp messages either individually to the legislators

03:37or to their party leaderships in order to try to put them under heavy pressure for what they

03:43described as urgent meetings. They weren't urgent meetings. It was just China trying to threaten

03:47people, stopping them from coming to Taipei. And are there any other notable examples of Chinese

03:52pressure over the last few years that you think are important to point out?

03:56Yeah, well, they've sanctioned a bunch of IPAC members in 2021. And that's very direct pressure.

04:02And it's intended to try to dissuade politicians worldwide from speaking out on issues related to

04:08the People's Republic of China. So they've taken that tack. They also cyber attacked the whole IPAC

04:14network through APT31 in 2021. But it wasn't revealed until 2024 by the United States government,

04:22where it became apparent to us that there had been this state-sponsored cyber attack.

04:27So there have been a number of different ways that they've sought to do this.

04:30They've also had somebody impersonating me for about five years, who sends emails to colleagues

04:36within IPAC claiming that events have been cancelled, sends emails to family members to say

04:41things about me which are not true. But more recently, the PRC has been on more of a charm

04:47offensive. And they're wanting to speak to our members. And they're wanting to draw them into

04:52slightly more routine, quasi-diplomatic exchanges in order to try to discover what they're up to,

04:59and exert pressure in the usual way, you know, through bilateral meetings, as opposed to direct

05:06coercion, which is what IPAC has experienced too much of, I think.

05:09Are you seeing any patterns in terms of what countries China's been targeting?

05:14I think it's fair to say that for Northern European democracies or the United States,

05:20the PRC still would not try to tell them who they could associate with. So they don't seek to do that

05:28in places like Germany, the UK, the United States, Canada. They're not trying to tell them who they

05:33can and cannot associate with. But most of the countries that were pressured ahead of the Taipei summit

05:40were emerging economies. They were not among the richest economies in the world. And they were places,

05:47generally speaking, that had deep dependencies upon the PRC. We took the view at the time that

05:54that was a pattern. They were acting in a very bullish and intimidating way in places where they

06:01thought they could, because of their economic leverage in those places. That was our read.

06:05I guess the only exception to that was Sweden, where they still sought to try to pressure

06:11members of parliament in Sweden and prevent them from coming to Taipei.

06:16I also wanted to ask about Taiwan Vice President Bi Kim Xiao's speech at this year's IPAC summit

06:21inside the European Parliament. I'm wondering, did China do anything to try to stop that speech from

06:27happening?

06:27So they didn't put any pressure on IPAC over it. But I think they have put pressure on the

06:32various institutions that allowed it to go ahead. So within the European context,

06:37and particularly the European Parliament, there are a number of different authorities that had to allow

06:42it and different kind of layers of bureaucracy. The first and most important in a way is the Belgian

06:50Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who needed to give permission for the VP of Taiwan to come.

06:57In addition to that, you had the President of the European Parliament. In addition to that,

07:02you had the European External Action Service. And then you've got the other institutions of the

07:07European Commission, who will have a view. And any of those institutions could have stopped this visit,

07:13and all of them are susceptible to pressure from China. So, I mean, we know that there was

07:20correspondence certainly between the Chinese and at least the European External Action Service in the

07:27Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And after the event, we know that there has been contact from the

07:32PRC to the European Parliament President. So they're complaining about it, but you know,

07:38they can complain what they like.

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