‘Letters to Taiwanese Compatriots’: The prc’s Unification Ideology and Taiwanese Response in Cross-Strait Communication

What is it about?

This article presents a political discourse analysis of the People’s Republic of China’s (prc) narration of Taiwan through the cross-Strait epistolary series ‘Letters to Taiwanese Compatriots’ released between 1950 and 2019. This study aims to discern the prc’s intent for domestic and international communication in framing Taiwan’s sovereignty into its own narrative using cultural, ideological, economic, and military appeals. In so doing, it explores the connection between storytelling, political communication, and military operations as evolving through the decades, starting with the cross-Strait crises of the 1950s, China’s establishment of diplomatic relations with foreign countries in the 1970s and its global rise in the last three decades. In the final part, we will analyse the response and several New Year’s addresses by Tsai Ing-wen between 2019 and 2022. This article unravels a crucial difference between the two sides of the Strait, crystallised in the fabrication of a dissimilar understanding of their respective historical, political, and cultural identities

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Why is it important?

Given the current tension in Cross-Strait Relations, it is particularly important to understand how the Chinese Communist Party has modified its stance in regards to Taiwan throughout the decades and how it uses political communication to advance its goals. It is also of crucial importance to see what devices Taiwan uses to counter China's political communication.