Read RFA coverage of this story in Chinese.
China’s United Front influence and outreach operations are recruiting children and young adults in democratic Taiwan for heavily subsidized tours to the northwestern region of Xinjiang, in a bid to distract them from widespread human rights abuses in the region, according to commentators and government officials.
The Chinese Communist Party, which has never ruled Taiwan, insists that the island submit to “unification” under Beijing’s rule, whether by through its soft power and propaganda operations, or by military force, if necessary.
Its “soft power” operation has already targeted the island’s social media influencers and celebrities with paid junkets, while key ally and former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April, throwing his political influence behind Beijing’s narrative that Taiwan is a renegade Chinese province rather than a sovereign country.
Now, it seems Beijing is going after children and younger people directly, enlisting them on tours to Xinjiang that take participants on a whistle-stop tour of the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite stereotypes about the millions of Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and Kazakhs who live there, complete with dancing Uyghurs and barbecued meat.
The Xinjiang Provincial Federation of Taiwan Compatriots, a United Front organization based in Urumqi, recently advertised a nine-day tour to Xinjiang on Taiwan’s PTT Bulletin Board discussion forum, calling for participants aged 16-40.
When Radio Free Asia contacted the organizers, they said participants would only need to pay NT$24,800 (US$755) per person, with “tour fees, transportation, accommodation and insurance all covered by the Chinese hosts.”
As well as travel documents, participants would need to share their Taiwanese ID card numbers, their educational background, their company and department, an emergency contact and a mobile phone number before they could be accepted onto the trip, they said.
‘Find out for themselves’
Meanwhile, the Taiwanese volunteer nonprofit group Waker, which sends volunteers around the world, has been criticized on social media for sending groups of volunteers to Xinjiang, with some comments accusing them of whitewashing the mass incarceration of millions of Uyghurs in “re-education” camps and forced labor facilities since 2017.
Waker replied to the comments on Instagram and Facebook, saying it “had never heard of anyone being exploited” in Xinjiang, and called on people to travel to Xinjiang to “find out for themselves.”
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The charity has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, according to reports in Chinese state media. Its founder Shen Yangyang is the daughter of former Kuomintang general Shen Tsui, and has been running “poverty alleviation” programs in remote rural areas of China since 2004.
The group will soon be led by Shen’s son Chu Yung-Hsiang, who led a 46-member youth delegation to Xinjiang in November under the aegis of the Straits Economic and Cultural Interchange Association that was also attended by Chinese Communist Party United Front officials.
‘Spiritual unity of compatriots’
Taiwan has never been ruled by Beijing, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, and is formally governed by the Republic of China government, formed after the 1911 fall of the Qing Dynasty under Sun Yat-sen, which later fled to Taipei after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists on the mainland.
While China insists on eventual “unification” with Taiwan, by armed invasion if necessary, the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their democratic way of life to submit to Chinese rule.
China has threatened the death penalty for supporters of Taiwan independence, while Taipei says Beijing has no jurisdiction over the actions of its citizens.
A recent public opinion poll from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research showed that 67.8% of respondents were willing to fight to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
China’s aim is to underline the “spiritual unity of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” and Beijing sees “uniting Taiwan compatriots and winning the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people” as a “fundamental driving force for unification,” according to an Oct. 16 article by politics professor Wu Guoguang for the Asia Society.
“Ordinary Taiwanese citizens are viewed as ‘family members’ of an imagined reunified China, Taiwan’s political elites who oppose Taiwanese independence are ‘friends,’ and whoever supports independence are ‘enemies’,” Wu wrote.
Planting an illusion
Taiwanese national security analyst Shih Chien-yu said the trips are a way of undermining the reporting of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
“These people may have heard about the re-education camps in Xinjiang, and they may have heard the idea that this is genocide,” Shih told RFA in a recent interview. “But when they visit, they won’t see any of these things.”
“That will plant the illusion that nothing bad ever actually happened in Xinjiang, which is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party wants them to think,” he said.
Waker hadn’t responded to repeated requests for comment by the time of writing.
The Taiwan government’s Mainland Affairs Council said it continues to be concerned about such trips, which it termed “false exchanges” masking United Front infiltration.
“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to lure people from Taiwan, particularly young people, to China on sightseeing trips ... to whitewash its human rights abuses,” it said in a response to a query from RFA.
“The public shouldn’t cooperate with this United Front propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party for personal gain, nor belittle the sovereign status of our country,” it said.
Yet, the trips still seem popular.
In May, a 46-member delegation of Taiwan’s Industrial and Commercial Construction Research Association visited Xinjiang on an “exchange,” Chinese state media reported.
They were warmly welcomed on May 18 by Li Fuqiang, deputy director of the United Front Work Department of the Xinjiang Party Committee.
Hsiao Yu-lin, leader of the visiting delegation, said the group could “get a sense of the great socioeconomic achievements Xinjiang has made.”
“I ... recommend more Taiwan compatriots visit Xinjiang to further promote in-depth exchanges and integration,” Hsiao was quoted as saying in an official report.
Political agenda
But not everyone just swallows Beijing’s narrative, hook, line and sinker.
Hsiao Hau-yu took a two-week trip to Xinjiang in 2019 while he was in high school at the invitation of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, alongside about 40 students from Hong Kong and Macau, with a similar itinerary to those recently advertised for young people.
“The itinerary was very full, with less than an hour of free time after lunch or dinner,” Hsiao remembered in a recent interview with RFA Cantonese. “They took us to a vineyard to see some big, very beautiful grapes, and some very happy local farmers who gave us Xinjiang barbecue.”
But Hsaio also spotted a political agenda, with propaganda suggesting that Xinjiang had been settled by majority Han Chinese from ancient times, and plenty of assurances that the region was “very safe.”
“Their strong desire to create a sense of security made me nervous,” Hsiao said. “The police were carrying pretty big weapons on the street, and we had to go through a security detection scan to go onto public transportation or into our hotel.”
“I still remember there was a guy in sunglasses I’d never seen before following behind the whole time on our trip to the ancient city,” he said. “I don’t know who he was, but he followed us and made sure we didn’t break away from the group.”
He said he was told that the security measures were to prevent “terrorist” attacks, and warned participants not to have private contact with any residents of the region.
On a trip to a local school, he still remembers a general sense of unease, and in particular a slogan written up on the blackboard by students: “Where darkness arises, sweep it away; where evil arises, eliminate it; where chaos arises, govern it.”
“It’s hard to imagine that this was written by a child of maybe 10 or 12 years old,” he said. “They were writing this stuff before they could even speak Mandarin well.”
He said Taiwanese could still benefit from such trips, if they don’t lose their capacity to think critically.
“I still think we should go if we have the chance,” he said. “Just don’t accept everything they try to tell you.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin