Beware China's fifth-column efforts
By Chen Ching-chih 陳清池

Beijing devised its so-called "one country, two systems" policy for enticing Taiwan to become a part of the PRC. The policy has since been applied to the absorption of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999.

More than six years have passed since Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China, yet Hong Kong has suffered a substantial economic downturn, and its autonomy and political freedom are in question. The way Beijing has dealt with Hong Kong, nevertheless, holds a valuable lesson for the people of Taiwan, who have wisely rejected Beijing's "one country, two systems."

Among others, Beijing's utilization of its fifth-column strategy in Hong Kong should be of particular concern to the people of Taiwan.

Yin Qian discusses China's fifth-column strategy in Hong Kong in his article "Beijing's Fifth Column and the Transfer of Power in Hong Kong: 1983-1997," in Hong Kong in Transition, The Handover Years.
Beijing has manipulated Hong Kong's humanitarian immigration program, which allows people in China to reunite with relatives in the territory, to serve its own purposes. In the 14 years from 1983, when China and the UK reached an agreement on the eventual handover of Hong Kong, until 1997, when the British officially handed over control of the territory to China, more than 83,000 "Chinese officials" entered Hong Kong as immigrants with false names and identities."

According to Yin's calcula-tions, the 83,000 Chinese "fifth-columnists" constitute 1.4 percent of the territory's total population of 6 million and more than 9.12 percent of its active voters.

In substance, these people were employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as "an invisible hand for Beijing to level the political playing field [in Hong Kong], to boost its popular support and to consolidate its power from within. In putting in the fifth column, Beijing hoped that its future interests in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would be accommodated and its long-term political goals catered for."

Beijing's Ministry of State Security and provincial party authorities screened the candidates for the fifth-column unit. When selected, these Chinese were in their 30s and 40s, skilled and well educated. These people were urged to contact Xinhua news agency, Beijing's official representative agency in Hong Kong, from time to time, and to turn to Xinhua for assistance when "encountering difficulties." Yin argues that this is in fact a "reporting system as well as a surveillance mechanism."

Despite repeated denials of its existence by Beijing, "the fifth column in Hong Kong was an open secret and emerged to be a far from negligible political force," Yin said. In addition, while there have been minor changes in the application of the fifth column over the years, Beijing's goal in employing the strategy has remained unchanged "to expand the CCP's political power-base and to influence the future direction of Hong Kong."

It was for the purpose of influencing the direction of changes in Hong Kong that Bei-jing used the fifth-column strategy after it had already been assured of the return of the territory by 1997.
In line with the nature and the history of the CCP, Beijing has done virtually all it can, covertly as well as overtly, to compel the surrender of Taiwan which it has had no control over whatsoever. It has employed against Taiwan a strategy similar and yet more sophisticated than its fifth column in Hong Kong.

In the last decade or so, some 5,000 retired military personnel have moved from Taiwan to China to set up businesses and thus have become targets of recruitment as spies for Beijing. Taiwan has prosecuted several such people spying for China. In addition, close to a million Tai-wanese in China are likewise targets of Beijing's recruitment as tools for its political campaign against Taiwan's continuing democratic reform. It has been widely reported, for example, that Bei-jing has been encouraging Tai-wanese businesspeople to vote for its preferred candidate in the March 20 election.
China's efforts at meddling in Taiwan's coming election even include Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) meeting with leaders of Taiwanese chambers of commerce in China.

One should also not ignore the ever-present threat of Chinese military intimidation. More wea-pons, troops and provisions have been moved into Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in the past month or so in Beijing's campaign to influence Taiwan's election.

In Taiwan itself, the number of Chinese immigrants hit 150,000 at the end of 2002. And today some 16,000 immigrant spouses from China are entitled to register to vote in the March election. This number is 0.1 percent of the total number of 16,500,000 voters.

To a large extent, according to Yin's definition, these people should be viewed as Beijing's "fifth columnists." Many Chinese wives of Taiwanese, for instance, appear to have been organized to demand for an expansion of their rights in Taiwan. And extreme China-friendly elements among the Chinese and their sympathizers have even boldly raised the PRC flag while parading in Taipei.
More importantly, according to the National Security Bureau, Chinese journalists, private Chinese citizens who frequently cross back and forth between Taiwan and China, and Chinese academics attending meetings in Taiwan have all attempted to influence Taiwan's presidential elections.
Beijing's effort, though more subtle this year than in the past, at influencing Taiwan's politics cannot be overstated. In the final analysis, such an effort must be viewed as a part of Beijing's elaborate scheme to annex Taiwan.

Finally, counteracting China's fifth-column activities is understandably difficult in a free and democratic society such as Taiwan. Nevertheless, the people of Taiwan should be fully aware of the possibility of sabotage engineered by Beijing's "fifth columnists" and their sympathizers. More importantly, the government must improve its techniques for identifying these Chinese subversives and preventing them from engaging in anti-Taiwan activities.

Chen Ching-chih is professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and researcher at the Los Angeles-based Institute for Taiwanese Studies