Taiwan & Cross-Strait

Beijing's Taiwan line is unchanged as of September 21, and the newest document on the file does not touch Taiwan at all — which is itself the signal. The MFA used its September 21 presser to announce Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States at Donald Trump's invitation, casting the two leaders' exchange of visits within half a year as "historic and milestone" and pledging to enrich a "constructive strategic stability" relationship ¹. In a summit cycle this consequential, the Taiwan question appears nowhere in the public framing. Beijing is managing the US relationship from the top, and it is not using the run-up to a presidential visit to sharpen cross-strait rhetoric.

The integrative track continues to run on its own planning clock. The September 9 TAO presser marked the near-third anniversary of the September 2023 Fujian integration opinion: five batches of 74 Fujian-Taiwan measures, 206 key projects worth more than RMB 1.3 trillion, and January–August 2026 traffic of 2.087 million cross-strait passenger trips (+20.64%), 857,500 Taiwan entrants via Fujian ports (+27.94%) and 1.584 million on the "small three links" (+25.34%) ². Spokesperson Chen Binhua tied next steps to the opening of the 15th Five-Year Plan and to "integration via connectivity, benefits and feeling" (以通促融、以惠促融、以情促融) — enmeshment sold as service delivery, not as coercion.

The Xinjiang seminar is that same logic exported. TAO director Song Tao opened the sixth "Join Hands to Realize the Dream" (携手圆梦) exchange seminar in Urumqi on September 11–12, with more than 120 party, academic and youth participants; Xinjiang party secretary Chen Xiaojiang pitched deepened Xinjiang-Taiwan cooperation; delegates adopted five consensus points on opposing separatism and pursuing "national rejuvenation", then toured the region's 70th-anniversary achievements exhibit and a leading wind-power manufacturer ³. Siting a cross-strait unity event in Xinjiang is a deliberate rebuttal to Western criticism and folds the Taiwan question into a broader narrative of ethnic harmony and development. It is a new venue, not a new pressure tool.

The hard edge stays rhetorical. Beijing's named attack on Lai Ching-te's "dollar diplomacy" (金元外交) in Palau — aid up from US$18 million to US$25 million plus nearly US$281,000 in grants to Palau politicians, framed as corruption and money-laundering for "Taiwan independence" — remains words only; no blacklist, trade measure or consular action followed. Taipei meanwhile keeps countering offshore: Lai hosted the Kanagawa Japan-Taiwan Friendship Association, touting a "non-red supply chain" (非紅供應鏈) and citing TSMC's Kanagawa design centre, 13 Taiwanese firms including ASE there, 78 Kanagawa firms investing in Taiwan and US$84.851 billion in 2025 bilateral trade (+17.36%) ⁴; the foreign ministry welcomed the Japan Innovation Party's 13-member delegation, its first large visit since the party entered the LDP coalition ⁵; and Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung opened the "Trusted Semiconductor Supply Chain Partners Forum" at SEMICON Taiwan, invoking EPPD and "Pax Silica" (矽盛世) and claiming over 90% of the most advanced chips ⁶. Domestically Lai called Taiwan a "free, diverse, beautiful country" at an arts gathering ⁷ and accused China of "文攻武嚇" (verbal attacks and military intimidation) and "統戰滲透" (united-front infiltration) while disputing Beijing's reading of UNGA Resolution 2758 ⁸.

The limits are unchanged. Beijing's MFA pressers on September 11, 14, 16 and 21 carried no substantive Taiwan content — BRICS, Nepal relief, Japan's "enemy-state clauses", the China-ASEAN Expo, the Global Development Initiative's fifth anniversary, EU telecom rules ^9,10,11,1 — and US federal action is routine: a September 8 ITC termination of a foreign-fabricated semiconductor investigation ¹² and a September 14 complaint-receipt docket with no Taiwan content on the available excerpt ¹³. Beijing's silence on US state-level engagement persists.

The throughline holds: Beijing treats Taipei's global activism as noise, answers on its own integration timetable, and reserves sharper language for Lai's Pacific spending — while now routing its most important bilateral relationship through summit diplomacy in which Taiwan is conspicuously unmentioned. Watch three breakpoints — whether 15th Five-Year Plan implementation yields a Taiwan-specific section, whether any concrete sanction follows the dollar-diplomacy charge, and whether Beijing finally reacts to US subnational engagement or raises Taiwan at all around the Xi visit. None has triggered.