China Looms over Taiwan Election; US-China Military Talks Resume; Bush's Legs and Putin's Eggs; Brittleness in Putin's System; China and Russia in Africa
Natto Thoughts for the Week -- January 11, 2024
Taiwan Election 2024: voters focus on identity, relationship with China and livelihood issues while China sticks to its stance on Taiwan unification
On Saturday, January 13th, Taiwan will have its 8th direct presidential election. This year’s election broke from the traditional two- party race and features a three-way contest between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the more Beijing-friendly party Kuomingtang (KMT), and the newly founded Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The parties’ candidates are as follows:
DPP candidates:
o President: William Lai Ching-te 賴清德
o Vice president: Hsiao Bi-khim 蕭美琴
KMT candidates:
o President: Hou Yu-ih 侯友宜
o Vice president: Jaw Shaw-kong 趙少康
TPP candidates:
o President: Ko Wen-je 柯文哲
o Vice president: Cynthia Wu Hsin-ying 吳欣盈
Issues for Voters in Taiwan
The issue of identity – “Chinese” or “Taiwanese” – and Taiwan’s relationship with China have been two of the most significant political divisions in Taiwan. However, identity questions could play a relatively minor role in the outcome, according to a CNN report interviewing experts. For young voters, this election is about “bread-and-butter” concerns, meaning young voters will choose candidates based on issues of economic well-being.
The Kuomingtang party (KMT) has framed the election as a choice between “war and peace,” suggesting the KMT party brings “peace” for stability and economic development rather than the risk of “war” with China, which they warn that the DPP would likely escalate. TPP candidate Ko Wen-je has drawn popularity from the young population by promising new policies to improve economic well-being.
China’s Messaging
On the other side, China does not use the term “Taiwan presidential election” (台湾总统大选) to describe the race. Instead, it describes the event as “Taiwan regional leadership election” (台湾地区领导人大选) to underline the principle that Taiwan is part of China. At the same time, it has used information operations in an effort to sway Taiwanese voters toward the less anti-Chinese KMT party.
Chinese officials stand firmly on the principle of “reuniting” Taiwan with mainland China. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his 2024 New Year’s address, “The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” (祖国统一是历史必然) (hxxp://www.gwytb.gov[.]cn/topone/202312/t20231231_12590901.htm).
Various reports indicate that Chinese information operations have been targeting the Taiwan election. For example, researchers from Graphika, a US based network analysis firm, have found thousands of inauthentic accounts across Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok attacking pro-independence parties, such as the DPP candidate Lai Ching-de and the TPP candidate Ko Wen-je, instead promoting the KMT party and pushing pro-Chinese propaganda in Taiwan ahead of Taiwan’s election. The operation was active since at least May 2022.
Media reports in China also mainly criticize the DPP candidates. The Natto Team tested the search term “台湾地区领导人大选” (Taiwan regional leadership election) on the Sogou search engine, one of the most popular search engines in China, on January 10, 2024 (see screenshot). The search results suggested that attacking the DPP candidates Lai Ching-de and Hsiao Bi-khim was the main theme. For example, a post from Voice of the Strait (VOS) (海峡之声), a Taiwan-themed broadcasting station that the Strategic Support Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) operates, appeared at the top of the search results. The VOS criticized the DPP’s election campaign video featuring current Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and presidential candidate Lai Ching-de on a road trip. The post stated that “the theme of the campaign ad was ‘hand over the baton’, meaning that Lai and Hsiao will inherit the so-called ‘Tsai Ing-wen line’. The ‘Tsai Ing-wen line’ is the line of ‘Taiwan independence’, the line of confrontation, and the line of harm to Taiwan, and it is the greatest source of chaos that leads to the danger of war in Taiwan, damages the interest of the people, and jeopardizes regional stability.”
The latest opinion polls published on January 3 showed the DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te in leading position. Since Taiwan does not allow new opinion polls to be published within ten days of the election on January 13th, we may not know how much voter sentiment has changed, but we do know the result of this year’s Taiwan election will bring changes.
US-China Military-to-Military Communications are Resuming and the Taiwan issue is still the “core of the core”
The 17th US-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT) took place January 8-9, 2024 in Washington DC, the first such talks in over two years. As Natto Thoughts discussed previously, the DPCT, established in 2006, was the most active and important formal channel between the two militaries and ran every year until 2021. The renewal of the talks, after a suspension in 2021, appeared to signal a lessening of tensions between the two countries. But China made no concessions on its main policy issue: Taiwan. One day before the DPCT dialogue, China flexed its muscles by imposing sanctions on five US defense firms – BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Alliant Techsystems Operations, AeroVironment, Viasat and Data Link Solutions – for selling arms to Taiwan. After the talks, a Chinese Ministry of Defense statement reiterated, “China will not make any concession or compromise on the Taiwan question and demanded the US side abide by the one-China principle, honor relevant commitments, stop arming Taiwan, and not support Taiwan independence.” (hxxp://eng.mod.gov[.]cn/xb/News_213114/TopStories/16279512.html) .
This aligns with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s emphatic statement in November 2022 that “the Taiwan question is the ‘the core of the core interests of China’, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the red line that the United States must not and should not cross in China-U.S. relations.”
From Bush’s Legs to Putin’s Eggs
During his end-of-year press conference on December 14 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has tried to project an image of confidence that Russia will defeat Ukraine and that he would handily win the March 2024 presidential elections, already a largely rubber-stamp affair. However, some viewers’ questions touched on economic hardships exacerbated by the war and by international sanctions on Russia.
One of these issues is the egg crisis. Russia’s poultry industry is suffering from what one Russian restaurant association chief described as “a labour shortage on poultry farms, logistics supply disruptions and a hike in production costs, including those related to poultry feed.” Shortages and skyrocketing prices for eggs have led to Soviet-style lines outside grocery stores. An assassination attempt against a poultry farm executive in December raised fears of social tension over the issue. In response to a viewer’s question on the egg crisis at the December 14 press conference, Putin joked, “’I asked the minister of agriculture how his eggs are” (in Russian, “eggs” is a slang term for testicles), before promising to address the situation. Borrowing the off-color joke, security expert Mark Galeotti entitled a podcast on the crisis “It’s All About Putin’s Eggs.”
Images of long lines and food shortages spark memories of the late Soviet era and the chaotic post-Soviet transition of the 1990s. Citizens remember living on bread and tea and standing in line with ration cards for scarce foodstuffs. Vivid memories surround “Bush’s little legs (ножки Буша)” -- surplus chicken legs that the US, under then-president George H.W. Bush, supplied to the Soviet Union beginning in 1990. (The US remained a top poultry supplier to Russia until 2014). Russian citizens appreciated this “soft diplomacy” during hungry times but later resented it as a symbol of the country’s humiliating dependence on handouts. As the Natto Team has explained, memories of the traumatic 1990s arguably helped bring Putin to power. As a time when political freedom coexisted with hardship, corruption, and national humiliation, the collective memory of the 1990s arguably helps keep Putin in power too.
Signs of Brittleness in Putin’s Rule
Experts are divided on whether the Russian population and elites will continue passively accepting wartime economic and social hardships or will force changes in Russia’s policy or leadership. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) polls experts three times a year to assess whether any of the “pillars of Putin’s stability” are about to crumble. As of November 2023, CNAS experts found “few apparent risks to Putin’s hold on power” but warned, “things look stable, until suddenly they are not.”
Several signs of fragility in Putin’s system cropped up in the January 8 2024 issue of the “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment” that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think tank, publishes. Following are some headlines and Natto Team comments:
“Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on January 8 that recent polling shows decreased domestic support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections… the percentage of Russians who support Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine ‘without achieving the [war] goals’ exceeded the percentage of Russians who support continuing the war.” ISW cites several recent polls showing the decline in support for the war.
“Russian government and media officials recently have died, possibly under mysterious circumstances.” The recent deaths add to a growing list of defenestrations, poisonings and other mysterious deaths of oil executives and other prominent Russians since 2022. Though the circumstances of each one are not always clear, in sum they give the impression of power struggles being settled with increasingly violent means, similar to the bloody “aluminum wars” and other power struggles of the 1990s.
“A Russian state media outlet confirmed that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained three officers of its Directorate ‘M’ in connection with a high-profile bribery scheme.” This is ironic because FSB Directorate M is responsible for combating corruption among law enforcement and intelligence officers. Security expert Mark Galeotti commented on the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform that this shows “The resurgence of 'werewolves in uniform' - organised crime gangs within law enforcement,” a phenomenon that flourished in the 1990s. Galeotti has discussed this and other trends in a recent report, “Time of Troubles: The Russian underworld since the Ukraine invasion,” which the Natto Team will discuss in a future posting.
The Dragon and the Bear: Chinese-Russian Interaction in Africa
Analysts debate whether the relationship between China and Russia can be described as one of allies, friends “without limits,” or big brother and little brother. Contributing to this discussion, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a US think tank, examines the two countries’ interactions in Africa, an area where they have “important but different interests.” In the November 9 2023 report “The Dragon and the Bear: Stress-Testing Chinese-Russian Relations,” author Robert E. Hamilton, Ph.D, a retired colonel, finds that the two countries have very different goals and styles in their relationships in Africa.
Examining their economic and military activities in the region, ranging from China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) to Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, the author concludes,
“Chinese-Russian interaction in Africa is a mixture of cooperative, complementary, compartmented, and competitive behavior. Their major area of cooperation in Africa is minimizing and undermining Western influence.... There is little complementarity to Chinese-Russian relations in Africa. Instead, they are best described as compartmented: rather than coordinating their activities ... the two often simply stay out of each other’s way, both functionally and geographically... While China and Russia do not overtly compete in Africa, some of their objectives are misaligned which could cause problems moving forward. ....
China has an element of win-win cooperation within its interests which is missing from Russia’s. Moscow sees Africa in far more instrumental terms and is more fixated on undermining Western influence, even at the cost of stability. China’s approach is more broad-based, combining infrastructure investment, capacity building for African governments, and regional security engagement. The goal is to extend China’s model of governance to Africa and beyond and build markets for Chinese goods. For China to achieve this, it requires stability, making Russia’s role as an agent of chaos unhelpful. How much disruption Beijing is willing to tolerate is unclear, but the answer will reveal much about the state of their relationship.”
Another unknown: after Wagner organization chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny in June and the fatal crash of his airplane in August, who can replace him as Russia’s deal-maker and enforcer-for-hire in Africa? (The Natto Team has discussed Prigozhin here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Will Russia’s role as an “agent of chaos” change?
Update January 12 2024: Two articles that appeared after this posting went to press pointed to complex new trends: “Russia Steps Up Competition in Africa,” by Raphael Parens of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, outlines Russia’s struggle to maintain its presence in Africa after the demise of the Wagner group. “Beijing Grows Assertive as Chinese Private Military Companies ‘Come Out of the Shadows’,” by Paul Goble, a Russia/Eurasia expert writing for the Jamestown Foundation, points to Chinese public discussions on expanding the use of PMCs [private military companies] for political goals. Goble suggests, “Chinese PMCs … may soon displace Russia’s Wagner Group as objects of primary geopolitical concern.”
For more on China’s relationship with South Africa, see this Natto Thoughts report on the August 2023 summit of the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).