One Island, One Message

Beijing’s aggression is paradoxically uniting Taiwan around the defence of its democratic identity.

For years, China has tried to prise Taiwan from the inside. It has offered economic incentives to Taiwanese businesses, funnelled disinformation through social media and quietly courted politicians on the island through patronage and pressure. More recently, it has escalated its coercive campaign with sabre-rattling military drills and ‘grey-zone’ incursions that stop short of open war. But now, Beijing’s meddling is producing a reaction it did not intend: unity.

Last month, a remarkable demonstration unfolded on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei as thousands of protesters gathered under the slogan ‘Reject United Front Tactics, Safeguard Taiwan.’ But what made headlines was not the crowd size, nor the slogans, but the symbols. For the first time in memory, the red-and-blue flag of the Republic of China (ROC) flew alongside the green-and-white standard of Taiwan’s independence movement. These banners, long seen as emblems of opposing visions for Taiwan’s future, were raised together in defiance of a common adversary: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

This convergence signals a tectonic shift in Taiwan’s political landscape. The island’s deep-rooted divide between those who favour preserving the ROC and those who demand a Republic of Taiwan is being supplanted by a new consensus: that Taiwan, under any name, must remain free, democratic and self-governed.

That consensus is being tested almost daily. On April 30, Somalia announced that it would bar Taiwanese passport holders from entering or even transiting through its territory. The move, based on China’s interpretation of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, was an unlikely yet telling episode in Beijing’s global pressure campaign.

Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, recognised the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate holder of China’s seat at the United Nations. Yet it did not specify Taiwan’s status, let alone affirm China’s sweeping claim over it. Nevertheless, Beijing has wielded the resolution like a cudgel to bludgeon Taiwan’s international space. Today, only 12 nations formally recognise Taiwan. China’s campaign to force governments, airlines, and multilateral bodies to treat Taiwan as part of the PRC has become so pervasive that even a government in Mogadishu, which barely governs its own capital, feels compelled to fall in line.

The timing is no coincidence. Somalia’s ban comes as Taiwan deepens ties with Somaliland, the breakaway republic in the north that declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but remains diplomatically isolated. In 2020, Somaliland and Taiwan opened representative offices in each other’s capitals, forming a small but defiant axis of unrecognised states.

Beijing’s furious response has been predictable. But its cumulative aggression is proving counterproductive. While China hoped to isolate Taiwan, it is instead catalysing a new form of national unity rooted in territory and democracy.

Historically, Taiwan’s internal political divide was sharp. Those loyal to the ROC saw the island as a bastion of Chinese republicanism, a legitimate government in exile with claims over all of China. Independence activists, by contrast, rejected the ROC’s legacy, viewing it as a colonial import imposed by Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Nationalists in 1949. They demanded a clean break and a new ‘Republic of Taiwan.’ For decades, these groups competed bitterly in elections and public discourse.

Yet today, as the Chinese military sends jets across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, and balloons and drones into its airspace, the salience of this historical divide is fading. China’s strategy is to make Taiwan’s air and sea space feel like Chinese territory by normalizing its military presence.

But that effort has backfired. As threats mount, Taiwan’s national consciousness is becoming more territorialised in return. A sense of shared peril is mobilising the public. When the public perceives that domestic actors such as pro-China legislators are undermining democratic governance from within, outrage is spilling onto the streets.

By targeting all Taiwanese, regardless of political stripe, Beijing has forged unlikely alliances between former adversaries. The ROC loyalists and the independence activists may not agree on what to call their country, but certainly they know it is not the People’s Republic of China.