As tourists look on, Taiwanese soldiers fire a demonstration howitzer at a former military installation on Kinmen, an island a few kilometres from the mainland Chinese coast.Photography by James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
The soldiers crouched as the howitzer fired, its retort deafening the dozen or so tourists gathered at a cave overlooking China’s southern coast. There was a smattering of applause as the performance wrapped up, and the soldiers, in green fatigues and helmets, prepared the decades-old weapon for the next demonstration.
This is Kinmen, a tiny, windswept island in the Taiwan Strait, controlled by Taipei but less than 10 kilometres from the Chinese city of Xiamen.
Kinmen’s proximity to China has been a curse and a blessing. The island was shelled heavily in the 1950s during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis and has lived with the threat of violence ever since. But it has also benefited from improved ties between Taiwan and China, with Chinese tourists helping to drive an economic boom visible in new construction across the island.
In the run-up to Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday, Kinmen has been held up as a warning by those who fear an invasion by China – which claims the island and the rest of Taiwan – and as an example of the potential benefits of cross-strait co-operation.
But for many on Kinmen itself, whose votes are unlikely to shape the outcome, the extra attention, which has included visits by all three major candidates, has not been worth the trouble.
“I can’t wait for the election to be over,” said local Mina Li. “Hopefully then mainland travellers will come again and the economy will be better.”
Early in the pandemic, Taipei cut transport links between China and Kinmen, greatly damaging the local economy, and tourist numbers still haven’t bounced back amid election-related tensions.
When The Globe and Mail visited the island this week, even with a recent wave of people coming from Taiwan for the Kinmen marathon, tourist sites were quiet and queues non-existent.
The decision to halt ferries to Xiamen, along with cross-strait mail and commerce agreements – collectively known as the “three links” – was emblematic for many Kinmen residents of how decisions are made over their heads, by both Taipei and Beijing.
“Kinmen is a pawn in a larger game, an island that only emerges to the surface during elections,” said Wang Ting-chi, who was born on Kinmen and ran a historical society before moving to Taiwan’s main island in 2019.
Jincheng is the largest town on Kinmen, a territory about one-third the size of the island of Montreal.
Kinmen is close enough to Xiamen, a Chinese city of more than four million people, that its skyscrapers are visible from the island's coast.
Kinmen has long been a stronghold of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, which supports eventual unification with China – though not under Communist control – and is seen as more conciliatory toward Beijing, despite a long, bloody history between the two sides. During the last KMT administration, in 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a summit with Taiwan’s then-president Ma Ying-jeou, an event still seen as the high-water mark of cross-strait relations.
Unlike in the rest of Taiwan, where there is a strong Taiwanese identity distinct from China, many in Kinmen view themselves as Chinese. The island has one of the highest rates of cross-strait marriages in Taiwan, and many locals have relatives across the water in China and deep historical links to the southern province of Fujian.
But feeling Chinese does not necessarily translate into support for Beijing, and younger Kinmeners are more likely to identify as Taiwanese and vote for parties other than the KMT.
Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has seen its support increase in the last two Kinmen elections, and the centrist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) expects to do well here this month.
For decades, China hoped the type of economic and cultural integration that Kinmen exemplified could result in Taiwan’s peaceful absorption into the People’s Republic. That this argument is losing force even on Kinmen is emblematic of the distrust and hostility many Taiwanese feel toward Beijing under Mr. Xi.
“We don’t want to end up like Hong Kong,” said Maruko Chen, who owns a pair of guesthouses in a village on Kinmen’s northwest coast.
Guesthouse owner Maruko Chen said many younger Kinmeners identify more closely with Taiwan than China.
The “one country, two systems” principle governing Hong Kong, whereby the former British colony retained limited autonomy and democracy under Chinese rule, was once seen as a potential model for Taiwan.
But since anti-government protests in 2019 and a resultant crackdown by Beijing, even the KMT has rejected this, and many Taiwanese see Hong Kong as proof that China cannot be trusted to honour any promises it might make to secure unification.
“People don’t see the Communist Party as a credible partner,” said S. Leo Chiang, a Kinmen filmmaker who recently directed an Oscar-nominated short documentary about the island. “What happened in Hong Kong in the last five years was pivotal in this major shift in opinion.”
Under Mr. Xi, and particularly since incumbent DPP President Tsai Ing-wen was elected in 2016, China has massively ramped up its aggressive posture toward Taiwan – firing missiles, flying sorties and staging military drills in the Taiwan Strait.
If Ms. Tsai’s vice-president, Lai Ching-te, succeeds her, as polls suggest he will, ties are unlikely to improve, though Beijing is not prepared for any immediate military action and has made limited conciliatory approaches in recent months, including dropping some tariffs on Taiwanese goods.
For Kinmen, the major election issue has been a plan – promoted by both the KMT and TPP and supported by China – to build a bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen. Critics fear this could be a “Trojan horse” for China, enabling an easy invasion by the People’s Liberation Army. And even some backers of the plan are wary of tiny Kinmen being flooded by Chinese visitors if controls are not put in place.
Few on Kinmen support the idea of Taiwan declaring formal independence from China, something Beijing regards as a red line, despite the fact the islands have been de facto independent for decades now. While a war over Taiwan would be bloody and difficult, and the main island might prove impossible for China to pacify, Kinmen would be anything but. The next closest Taiwanese territory is more than 100 kilometres away, and Taipei would not be able to reinforce the island.
The best-case scenario for most Kinmeners is the status quo, which has existed for decades now: enjoying the freedoms and self-determination guaranteed by being part of Taiwan, but with close economic and cultural ties to China.
In his New Year’s address, Mr. Xi described “reunification” as a “historical inevitability,” and many in the West often frame a conflict over Taiwan in the same terms. But the status quo, while often confusing and imperfect, has brought peace for most of the past 75 years and has survived worse than the current tensions.
When Randy Wang first came to Kinmen, as a soldier in the 1960s, the island’s garrison would regularly exchange machine-gun fire with Chinese forces across the water. Kinmen was still under martial law, and both soldiers and locals lived under a constant threat of bombardment.
“Back in the day, bullets were flying. It was a battleground,” he said, outside a military observation post-turned-tourist site. “Nowadays, you don’t feel much tension. Things are pretty good.”
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For Taiwanese voters, the unspoken question on the ballot is this: Should they keep a hardline stance against Beijing, or soften it? Asia correspondent James Griffiths spoke with The Decibel about what is at stake for China and the rest of the world. Subscribe for more episodes.