It'll be interesting to see if the assassination attempt on the Taiwanese president has an effect on its elections. Meanwhile, discretion is the better part ...
Support for Chen Muted Among Taiwanese on Mainland
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI, March 19 — There seem to be two kinds of people among the large community of Taiwanese in China these days: those who are openly willing to discuss Taiwan's election on Saturday and those whose sympathies make discretion the better part of valor.
While there are surely supporters of the 53-year-old president, Chen Shui-bian, whom Beijing accuses of working for the island's independence, among the estimated one million Taiwanese in mainland China virtually none of them are willing to state their preference openly.
Meanwhile, supporters of the opposition candidate, Lien Chan, 63, are relatively easy to spot. In recent weeks, they have been organizing pre-vote meetings aimed at recruiting travelers for charter flights home to increase voter participation.
Officially nonpartisan, the turn-out-the-vote effort is widely regarded here as not only an effort to help tilt the election in favor of Mr. Lien's Nationalist Party but also to earn some good will in Beijing, and perhaps political insurance for the approximately $35 billion of estimated Taiwanese investment in mainland China.
Like people of German or Japanese extraction living in the United States during World War II, Taiwanese in China, most of whom live in or around this cosmopolitan city, are suspect outsiders. And in this case literally stateless, given that Beijing considers Taiwan an inalienable part of China.
To be sure, there have been no mass arrests here, in part because Taiwanese capital and business savvy have been vital ingredients in China's impressive economic growth.
Still, Taiwanese here do not travel on their own passports, have no diplomatic representation in case of legal difficulties or business disputes and cannot travel directly between the mainland and Taiwan, turning what would be a couple of hours' journey from Shanghai into an arduous daylong trip by way of Hong Kong or Macao. What is worse, Taiwanese business people say, is that they are sometimes subject to kidnappings, or arbitrary arrest, and are watched closely by China's intelligence agencies.
Upon returning home to Taiwan, native Taiwanese do not necessarily find things any easier. Taiwan authorities sometimes extensively interview Taiwanese who live and work in China, and many returning Taiwanese also assume that they are being closely monitored by the island's intelligence services. Taiwanese who marry people from the mainland often find that getting paperwork for their spouses is difficult. Indeed, some say suspicion of Taiwanese who live on the mainland is as intense back home as it is on the mainland.
"When we go home, my daughter doesn't advertise the fact that we live in China," said a Taiwanese editor in Shanghai, whose magazine caters to the Taiwanese immigrant community here. "She's even careful about the way she dresses, not to appear too Chinese."
Problems like these are only a foretaste of what many Taiwanese in China say they fear if on Saturday Mr. Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party should win the election and on the same day win a referendum, which asks whether Taiwan should increase defense spending to counter China's deployment of missiles against the island. Mr. Chen has increasingly and boldly flirted with asserting Taiwan's independence, which China has vowed to prevent by force, if necessary.
Whatever their political sympathies, many Taiwanese in China hope that if Mr. Lien wins there will be an improvement in relations, including, perhaps, the establishment of direct transportation links for the first time. On the other hand, they say, a sharp escalation of tensions is probable in the case of a victory by Mr. Chen.
What is worse, Taiwanese business people here say, the economic dynamic between Taiwan and the mainland has changed significantly with China's stirring growth. Where China once depended on Taiwanese investment, increasingly nowadays it is the Taiwanese economy that is dependent on China for the manufacture and assembly of Taiwanese products or simply as a market.
"Taiwan needs the mainland nowadays," said Eric Teng, a prominent Taiwanese entrepreneur here. "This is an absolute necessity. We can do research and development in Taiwan, but we need factories in China in order to remain a factor in the international economy."
With business interests on the line here, Mr. Teng has led the effort to encourage Taiwanese in China to return home to vote, and he has predicted that as many as 200,000 will do so. "Each of these people could at least influence three Taiwanese votes, which means we could potentially have a huge influence."
Although the return-to-vote movement is officially neutral, Mr. Teng, when asked if he knew of any participants who were openly in favor of Mr. Chen, said: "You never know what someone is feeling inside, but all of my Taiwanese friends are thinking of their well-being."
Some Taiwanese here, however, clearly resent what they see as Beijing's heavy-handedness toward the island and are as smitten with the idea of asserting a separate Taiwanese identity as Mr. Chen's backers in their homeland.
nytimes.com
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