During my last stay in Taiwan, in mid-summer 2019, I had just arrived from Hong Kong, where I had just spent two weeks of high drama intensity.
I had attended two gigantic pro-democracy demonstrations there – gigantic in the “Catalan” sense of the term: five, six, eight hundred thousand people (some estimates went up to a million and a half), all together in the street to proclaim their right to live differently. A world record, as we had seen in Barcelona in previous years. I was also able to follow a pro-Chinese demonstration, significantly smaller than the other two.
These popular plebiscites in the street gave off a curious atmosphere, a mixture of deep conviction and fatalism. I met people there who were frightened by the prospect of forced integration into the Chinese totalitarian system – they who had escaped it between 1997, the year of the handover, and 2019 (Beijing had nevertheless promised until 2047) – but who at the same time felt like they were making a final last stand.
Which, the following year, was confirmed. In 2020, a clever “strategy of suffocation”, put in place by the Beijing authorities, took full advantage (we have not emphasized this enough) of the compulsory confinements of the pandemic. In a few months, without the need for a “Tiananmen-bis”, the matter was closed, and the resistance collapsed. With, at its core, the pernicious and very strong idea that, in the face of the Empire, “all resistance is vain”.
Arriving in Taipei in the following days, I certainly found a few people to express their concern about what was happening in Hong Kong. With the idea that “we are next on their list”… But the streets of Taipei exuded a great impression of normality, far from the political anxiety palpable in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island. No apparent drama here.
* * * * *
The mood has undoubtedly changed five years later, now that Hong Kong has been swallowed up and largely digested by the Chinese political system, and the threats – explicit and verbally very violent – are turning towards the de facto independent island. , which Beijing has sworn to reinstate by hook or by crook.
But reports, even recent ones like an Agence France-Presse “vox-pop” on May 23 in the streets of Taipei, quote people who will tell you things like: “It’s theater; they won’t. »
However, last week, the military maneuvers around Taiwan took on particularly worrying characteristics. The People’s Liberation Army (official name of Chinese military forces) was deployed to encircle the island and simulate a full-scale attack. Naval, submarine, air and even “space” attack, with “unprecedented” (sic) means according to the Chinese media – not exempt of course from propagandist arrogance.
On Friday, the second day of the exercises, state television broadcast an animation simulating a bombing of cities like Taipei and Kaohsiung (the major economic metropolis in the south). The official comments were to the same effect: “The separatists” – Beijing is talking here about the current leaders of Taiwan – “will end in blood. ” Nothing less.
Can we imagine for a second the global reactions to a United States which, for example, would threaten Cuba with such means, and using such terms? The level of rhetorical violence reached, in recent years, by Beijing’s propaganda – as by that of Moscow, moreover, where televised calls to “atomize” Paris or Washington are commonplace – is truly unheard of and too often goes unnoticed here.
* * * * *
This massive intimidation operation, undoubtedly prepared, was officially a “spontaneous reaction” to the inauguration speech delivered a week ago by the new Taiwanese head of state, Lai Ching-te. In this speech, he defended continuity with the policies of his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen. He urged the Chinese to replace “confrontation with dialogue,” to jointly seek “peace and prosperity.”
However, a few rhetorical nuances had the luck of exasperating the adversary. In a passage that drew imperial ire from Beijing, Lai stressed that “neither side is subordinate to the other.” Picking up this passage, Beijing retorted that the new president is fueling anti-Chinese sentiments and seeking independence by force.
Totally false accusation. Not only does Lai Ching-te, even a separatist deep down, not want separation by force (an inconceivable madness), but he even agreed to put his preferred option under a bushel and in the freezer indefinitely. There is absolutely no question of organizing a referendum on independence in Taiwan. However, there is a Taiwanese nation, just as there is a homeland in Quebec or Catalonia. But some are unable to accept it.
In 2024, in this affair, in an ironic twist, it is in Taipei that the active defense of the political status quo (de facto sovereignty, but no formal independence) is found, supported by Washington, which wants always believe in deterrence in the Taiwan Strait.
And it is in Beijing that the destabilizing forces — under the guise of “the search for the integrity of the homeland” — act, with such demonstrations of force, in the hope of provoking in Taipei, as they did previously in Hong Kong , a kind of “unilateral disarmament” of the enemy, an enemy also called “democratic aspiration”.
The question: Is Xi Jinping ready to sacrifice his country’s economy for a political obsession?
The international community must do everything possible to maintain the status quo. The global repercussions of an armed conflict over Taiwan could be of incalculable magnitude. In the meantime, the Taiwanese, to their credit, refuse to give in to panic.
To contact the author: