Standing on his boat, his nose in the wind and his mind already at sea, old Li Chen, a squid fisherman in the small port of Hsinchu, a few kilometers west of the Taiwanese capital, especially wanted to laugh, rather than cry. ” The war ? Why not start one? Right away, even? We should fight against each other to see if it will stimulate the economy, to see if people will stop suffering and to see also if it will allow us to live in peace. »
Famous for its fish market, the municipality of Hsinchu, in Taiwan, is also famous for being the closest point to China: 68 nautical miles, or 126 km, separate the two countries, a space that bisects the line median of the Strait of Formosa, which the fishermen of the area graze daily, with, for several months, the feeling of a growing threat coming from the other side.
“The tension has always been there, drops Aldam Chen in front of his stall of live shrimps swarming in tubs filled with water. The presence of Taiwanese military patrols is also increasingly felt. A few days ago, a Chinese fishing boat crossed the line to hurl insults at the fishermen here. But this remains an isolated case. »
Until when ? This is the question that many are now asking on the autonomous territory of the young Taiwanese democracy, claimed by Beijing with sustained intensity and above all military maneuvers close to the island, which are increasingly worrying.
The latest, launched after the visit in early August of the number 3 of the US government, Nancy Pelosi, and congressional leaders, described as a provocation by the Xi Jinping regime, were seen by the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense as the “simulation of an attack” from Taiwan in order to “test the military capabilities” of China, at sea and in the air, in view of an imminent invasion.
A perspective amplified six months ago by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine led by Russia, which everyone here has in mind and which has raised a risk latent for several decades to the rank of increasingly probable events. .
“The war in Ukraine raised awareness in Taiwan that conflicts between authoritarian regimes and democracies were no longer just ideological. They can now turn into wars”, summarizes the young politician Vincent Chao, met in his campaign office in Taipei. The man, former chief of staff at the National Security Council, is seeking a position on the Taiwanese capital’s city council for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which claims the sovereignty of the island, in view of the elections. this autumn.
Taiwan is not a weak country. We are smaller than the great and mighty China, but not defenseless.
“Ukraine has changed our perceptions,” notes Vincent Chao. But that hasn’t changed the political outlook in Taiwan, where Blue Coalition parties [prochinois] still call for a dialogue with China to maintain the status quo and where those of the green coalition [protaïwanais et souverainistes pour la plupart] believe that cooperation with other democracies is more crucial than ever to strengthen our own defense, ensure our survival and assert our very real sovereignty, which China contests. »
The spirit of war
In the small town of Tainan, in the south of the island, the spirit of war was inevitably present on this Sunday afternoon in July in front of a demilitarized Taiwanese army frigate that had become a tourist attraction for local families. In the park bordering the strait, a group of young reservists had gathered there to promote the professions of the army to the few children passing around them.
“The Chinese threat does not change our approach, drops timidly Lin Wing, the oldest of the group of trainers. We come here regularly to talk about the importance of the army to children. Because it matters. And that is what we will continue to do in the future, without thinking about what is happening higher above us. »
In the big leagues, however, the level of alert seems to have risen several notches since the announcement made earlier this summer by the US government of a proposal for arms sales to Taiwan worth US$108 million. . This is the fourth transaction since the beginning of 2022 and the fifth since the coming to power of Joe Biden, whose government has reaffirmed its support for the autonomous island, while seeking to manage the tensions that this could induce between the United States and China.
After a civil defense exercise conducted with great fanfare across the island in late July, the Wan An Drill, to prepare the local population for the possibility of an attack, Taiwan orchestrated major military maneuvers on land , on its territorial waters and in the air. The annual exercise dubbed Han Kuang also took on a greater symbolic dimension than in previous years and incorporated analyzes of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield to sharpen the Taiwanese defense system, the Ministry of Defense said earlier this year. National Defense.
“Taiwan is not a weak country,” summarizes Taiwanese diplomatic chief Joseph Wu, met at the Foreign Ministry in Taipei by The duty Few days ago. We are smaller than the great and mighty China, but not defenseless. We can count on the help of the United States and other democracies to prepare us to fight, if necessary, now with the resistance of the Ukrainians in mind” and their ability to defend themselves against their aggressor, “who has also become an inspiration for us,” he adds.
Intimidations and Perceptions
The show of force is also on both sides of the strait. In early August, the Taiwanese Defense once again announced that 21 Chinese air force planes had re-entered its air defense identification zone, adding to the approximately 600 already registered since the beginning of the year 2022. Acts of intimidation that are beginning to shake perceptions in Taiwan about the relationship that the island should now have with its threatening neighbour.
In a poll conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation and unveiled last week, more than 55% of Taiwanese believe that these intrusions greatly erode the timid desires to one day reunite the island with China.
Worse, in the same proportion, they now affirm their support for the complete independence of Taiwan, a growing feeling, including within the traditionally pro-Chinese political formations which, for nearly five years, have suffered from an increasingly stretched between the two shores of the strait and see their support decline in favor of the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP), in power since 2016. The Minjindang (advanced people’s party), as it is called here.
“The war in Ukraine has shaken us,” summarizes Steven Wu, young candidate of the Kuomintang (KMT), the Taiwanese conservative party, pro-Chinese, in the local legislature of Hsinchu, on the west coast of the country.
“We remain in favor of a dialogue, of building a relationship of trust with China, so that the Chinese stop considering us as enemies. But at the same time, we now feel within the party the importance of repeating that Taiwan is an independent and free country. »
An independence that is contested by Beijing, which has made reunification a centerpiece of its domestic policy, even going so far as to build delusional scenarios to make people hope for it to materialize soon.
In a recent development plan for its road network, unveiled in February 2021 by the Chinese State Council, Beijing has indeed included a new motorway link between the mainland and… Taipei, with a view to bringing the two capitals closer together. The proposal would force the construction of an undersea tunnel or bridge over the 126 km distance separating the main island of Taiwan from China.
Currently, the world’s largest bridge, China’s Haiwan Bridge, is only 42.4 km long, the engineer’s hand above the water has not yet gone further.
“What we can concede to China at the moment is that it has a lot of dreams,” Vincent Chao quips, speaking of this link as a “laughable fiction”.
The bridge – or the tunnel – should lead to the region of Hsinchu where the perspective does not really move the old fisherman Sun Hsin-Fang, who has seen things go by in 90 springs.
“China will never come here. Things will stay as they are,” he predicts in front of his bins filled with dried fish flakes, very popular for lunch in Taiwan. And he adds: “I have been to China, I have traveled elsewhere in the world, and I can tell you that we are all the same, all human. There is no valid reason to go to war. »
With Alisa Chih Yun Chen
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.