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Friday, July 14, 2017

China Suborns our neighborhood chiefs and precinct captains?

Let them lie...

STORM media reported this week that China is recruiting the most basic level of politicians in Taiwan, the Lizhang (里長) . Lizhang are the neighborhood chiefs/precinct captains, who in the old days monitored the population's political activities. Today they have morphed into the gophers at the bottom of the political order, bringing local requests like fixing broken streetlights to the attention of higher authorities, and handing down official communications, like surveys or election forms.

Beijing has been working on this for a couple of years, apparently. The Chinese have even formed an association, the "China Taipei Village and Li Head Association" (中華台北村里長聯合總會). At first glance these seems terrifying, given the kind of data they have access to, but actually, it probably isn't aimed at Taiwan at all. People seem to forget that Beijing's Taiwan policy has a strong domestic element. China needs organizations like this to convince its own people that it is making progress and keep a lid on nationalism that might get out of hand (recall all the instances in which the people pushed the government to fight harder against foreign powers).

The Lizhang association is a Potemkin Village, entirely show. It's the kind of thing that you do when you have no policy but have a budget and must do something to convince higher-ups that you are actually doing something... because China certainly has spies inside the Ministry of the Interior who can get whatever information the lizhangs have access to.
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2 comments:

  1. I don't know why anyone even bothers to ask Chinese MFA question. Most of their answers come down to this: "It is true because we say so!" Chinese communist party has no respect except for raw power. They believe might makes right.

    China needs to be contained before it is too late.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Look like Douglas MacArthur is very tight with Chiang Kai-shek

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-americas-most-legendary-generals-had-terrifying-plan-win-21563

    If MacArthur went with his plan, I wonder how many Taiwanese would have been conscripted by KMT and died in China.

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