Erik Green
In September 2023 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced plans to make Fujian province ‘a demonstration zone for integrated development’ with Taiwan. Looking back at this announcement a year later, this policy seems to have marked the beginning of a new Taiwan strategy that seeks to achieve ‘peaceful reunification’ through bottom-up innovation and regional experimentation, while still preparing for reunification by force if necessary.
Under this new strategy, the CCP encourages officials to devise initiatives for deepening cross-strait integration. These are then tested in areas such as Fujian, with the aim of replicating successful initiatives across China and the Taiwan Strait. This has led numerous national and local actors to implement integration policies focusing on economic and legal cooperation, as well as the building of shared infrastructure. In the last six months, this strategy has expanded; state media have framed the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) incursions into Taiwan’s protected waters around Kinmen – a Taiwanese island group just ten kilometres from Fujian’s coast – as a local experiment in legal integration. Such developments highlight the increasing resources that China is dedicating to achieving ‘peaceful reunification’ through experimentation and innovation. The CCP will likely re-evaluate this strategy in 2025 – the date for achieving significant progress in Fujian, and the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
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