Taiwanese People Need Communist ‘Re-Education’ after ‘Reunification’, Says Chinese Ambassador

TUANHE, CHINA: Picture dated 12 June 1986, shows the "Re-education through labour" camp of
AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The ambassador for Communist China to France said on Monday that the people of Taiwan will need to be “re-educated” after the democratic island nation is “reunified” with the mainland.

Lu Shaye, Beijing’s ambassador to France and Monaco, said on Wednesday that a military operation to “reunify” Taiwan with Communist China is still on the table after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island without incident, despite threats of military action from state media.

Support for the idea of “reunification” — itself a loaded term as the government in China has never ruled over Taiwan, a democratic nation with its own military, currency, culture, and written language — has hit all time lows, with just 1.3 per cent of the Taiwanese public supporting merging with the mainland “as soon as possible” and merely 5.3 per cent backing the idea of eventually falling under rule from Beijing.

In an interview with French broadcaster BFMTV, Ambassador Lu blamed the low level of support for the communist regime in Taiwan on “propaganda” from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of President Tsai Ing-wen.

“Ten years ago, 20 years ago, the majority of the population of Taiwan was for reunification, but why, now, are they against it? It’s because the Democratic Progressive Party has spread a lot of anti-Chinese propaganda,” the former vice-mayor of Wuhan said in comments translated by National Review.

“After the reunification, we will do re-education,” he warned.

The Ambassador did not elaborate on how exactly the communists would “re-educate” the Western-minded and largely liberal Taiwanese population. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a long and sordid history of using extreme methods of bending populations to their will.

The Mao Zedong policy of láodòng jiàoyǎng or “re-education through labor” was used for decades within mainland China for those who were accused of smaller crimes such as theft or prostitution to political dissidents and practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

More recently, the CCP has interned millions of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in internment camps, which Beijing has attempted to brand as “vocational training centres”. Numerous accounts from survivors of the Xinjiang camps have recounted the use of torture, rape, and organ harvesting against those imprisoned in the camps as well as the sterilisation of women.

Mr Lu said that a military invasion of the island was still on the table, but said that it would “not be against the people of Taiwan,” claiming that it would only be to “deter or warn secessionist forces aiming for Taiwan’s independence and anti-Chinese forces” internationally.

Turning his attention to the visit to Taiwan by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Chinese ambassador branded the trip an “unnecessary provocation” that has “created a lot of danger, a lot of crises.”

“We are responding to a provocation,” he said. “If we do not answer, they will continue, and little by little, they will achieve Taiwan’s so-called independence. This is the will of the Taiwanese authorities!”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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