Washington, DC – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet a senior Chinese official in Washington on the eve of Taiwan’s elections, as the United States seeks to discourage Beijing from taking action against Taipei.
Blinken, briefly back in Washington in between his latest Middle East crisis tour and a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, will see Liu Jianchao, who heads the international division of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the State Department public schedule showed.
Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing, heads to the polls on Saturday with Beijing describing the front-runner, Lai Ching-te, as a “severe danger” due to past comments favorable to outright independence.
But Lai has been cautious on the campaign trail and US officials say privately that they do not see Chinese statements and actions as out of the ordinary for a Taiwan election.
The United States, while recognizing only Beijing, provides weapons to Taiwan to ensure its defense, as China has not ruled out force to “reunify.”
The United States has “deep confidence in Taiwan’s democratic process and believe it is for Taiwan voters to decide their next leader free from outside interference,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday.
Meanwhile, China has generated global headlines with warnings of war ahead of Taiwan’s election but, for a domestic audience, there are no verbal fireworks and few reports on the island’s bustling display of democracy.
In self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims is part of its territory, voters head to the polls on Saturday in a democratic election that will set the course of ties across the strait.
China has repeatedly warned Taiwanese voters against re-electing the pro-independence camp, and told its global rival the United States, which has backed Taipei’s rulers, to stay away.
But in China itself, where media is tightly controlled, the ruling Communist Party has made sure the population of 1.4 billion people are kept in the dark.
China’s biggest news platforms — state news agency Xinhua, state broadcaster CCTV, and the party-run People’s Daily — dedicated only scant coverage on Friday to Taiwan’s election the following day.
Other state-backed websites have made scant mention of the vote in recent weeks, while comments on Chinese social media have either denounced the exercise altogether or shown support for candidates calling for warmer ties with Beijing.
The Communist Party tightly censors the domestic news media and scrubs online comments it deems to have strayed from official positions.
In recent months, state media has run some articles blasting election frontrunner Lai Ching-te, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
There have also been pieces emphasizing Taiwan’s economic reliance on the mainland, and coverage of a protest on the island against an alleged DPP policy of removing some classical Chinese texts from the school curriculum.
With its packed rallies and strident public debates, Taiwan’s vibrant election is in itself anathema to China’s one-party system.
Some Chinese outlets have sought to frame democracy as disorder, with the Taiwan Strait Online slamming elections as “chaos from top to bottom”.
“In the end, its political parties cannot represent the will of the people, and the system has shortcomings,” wrote the paper, based in the Chinese province of Fujian, this week.
On Chinese social media, which is strictly monitored and censored by Beijing, the vast majority of posts and comments defended the official position. AFP