China is ramping up the pressure for Taiwan’s election

BBC News:

The December sun is baking on the Heng Chun peninsula, the tongue of land that juts out from the bottom end of Taiwan into the Philippine Sea.

A half-smoked cigarette pokes from the corner of Hsu Keng-Jui’s mouth. He is part of a network of volunteers – most of them veterans like him – who track the now-constant presence of Chinese ships and aircraft just outside Taiwan’s territorial limit.

Using plastic zip ties, Mr Hsu straps a long radio antenna to a steel railing, then sits down with his portable radios and begins to scan the military channels. At first all we hear is the soft southern lilt of the Taiwan coastguard directing sea traffic. Then a different accent and a different tone comes through the heavy static. It’s the Chinese navy.

China has been ramping up the pressure ahead of a pivotal presidential race in Taiwan, an island it has long seen as a renegade province. With just weeks to go, Beijing looms larger than ever before – on the ballot, and at Taiwan’s borders.

“We represent all the people of China,” the voice from the Chinese navy intones. “The People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China, and Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.”

Dragging on another cigarette, Mr Hsu looks unmoved: “I hear it every day now. It’s like they’re reading from a script.”

Another voice comes across the airwaves. It’s the captain of a Chinese tugboat, just three miles off Taiwan’s coast.

The captain has been asked to move out of Taiwan’s territorial waters, but he refuses: “What territorial waters are you talking about? Taiwan doesn’t have any territorial waters!”

Mr Hsu is suddenly furious. He leaps up, grabs a handset and lets loose a stream of invective over the airwaves. He swears as he sits back down, muttering, “Who does he think he is?”

For decades the governments in Beijing and Taipei had an unwritten agreement not to stray across a median line that divides the 110-mile-wide strait between them. Now China is crossing it almost daily, at sea and in the air. On one day in September the People’s Liberation Army sent more than a 100 aircraft towards Taiwan, 40 of which crossed the median line.

This so-called “grey zone warfare” is meant to “subdue the enemy without fighting” to borrow the words of a legendary Chinese military strategist. In this case the enemy is Taiwan’s government, those who support Taiwan’s permanent separation from China, and its foreign allies in the United States and Japan.

“China is sending a very strong message to the United States and even Japan,” says retired Admiral Lee Hsi-min, a former commander of Taiwan’s armed forces. “It’s telling them that Taiwan is part of China. That this is our area so we can do whatever we want here. Meanwhile it’s aimed at making Taiwanese people scared and making them capitulate.”