McCaul warns Xi is plotting to pick Taiwan’s next leader so he can 'win without a shot fired'

Jerry Dunleavy

April 13, 02:26 PM April 13, 02:26 PM

A top House Republican warned that the Chinese government is plotting to pick Taiwan’s next president as Taiwanese leadership also expressed concern about an increasingly belligerent Beijing’s potential election meddling in its 2024 elections.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led a congressional delegation to Taiwan last week, where the House members met with Taiwan’s top political leaders. The trip came as Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited the United States at the same time that Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s former president just before Tsai and a leader in the Kuomintang (KMT) rival party, visited China.

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China has also sought to meddle in elections in Western countries such as the U.S. and Canada, but the threat in Taiwan is most pronounced. McCaul warned the China-KMT meetings were likely part of Beijing’s efforts to help pick the KMT’s next presidential candidate, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping seeks to coerce Taiwan into being absorbed into China.

“They have to have a preferred candidate, and that’s why I think former President Ma is in China right now ... I think they’re probably coordinating who is going to be their candidate, so they can win without a shot fired like in Hong Kong,” McCaul told the Washington Examiner. “I think that is going to be their Plan A. If that fails, they go to Plan B, and that could be a couple things — it could be an outright invasion or a blockade.”

McCaul said he believes if China could “get a preferred candidate” for Taiwan’s elections then Beijing would be “all-in” on trying to influence it, but if Xi’s preferred candidate “doesn’t prevail in these elections, which will buy time, then I think he’s going to move more quickly and get us in a box.”

The House chairman added, “It will be a lot easier for them to influence an election without a shot fired than it would be to go to war.”

Taiwanese Vice President William Lai is the de facto nominee for the DPP, but the KMT is still trying to figure out who their candidate will be.

Ma, who served as president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, traveled to China in late March and early April, becoming the first former Taiwan leader to visit China. He was also the first sitting leader of Taiwan to meet with a Chinese leader when he met with Xi in Singapore in 2015.

Ma said at the start of his recent visit to China that “people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese people.” He declared at the end of his visit the Taiwan government led by Tsai and the DPP “continues to lead Taiwan to danger — the future is a choice between peace or war.”

The Chinese state-run CGTN published a piece this week contending that Ma’s visit “provides, at least, an alternative option for people in Taiwan longing for peace and stability in its relationship with the mainland.”

Ma had reasserted in 2006 that the KMT’s goal was eventual unification with China. But in his first inaugural address, he said his goals were "no reunification, no independence, and no war."

The KMT is considered to have factions that are pro-unification with China, but the KMT did pull its pro-unification plank from its platform in 2017.

The DPP is considered much stronger in standing up to China. One of the top KMT members who met with the U.S. House members last week said that the KMT’s current mantra is “Defense and Dialogue.”

McCaul said the KMT was trying to portray the DPP as a “party of war” and “puppets of the United States” while attempting to fashion themselves as “we don’t want to reunify — we think we should talk to China.” But McCaul said that You told him that the KMT “want to become part of China.”

The 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment on the 2020 election had a split on China, with the majority view saying China did not deploy influence efforts in the 2020 election and the minority view assessing China did exactly that — to hurt then-President Donald Trump’s reelection chances.

The FBI then warned ahead of the 2022 midterms that it believed China had increased its efforts to influence U.S. elections, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned in March about the Chinese government’s “willingness to meddle” in U.S. elections.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced in March that he would appoint a special rapporteur to investigate a host of allegations that China meddled in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections.