People visit an old market decorated with the national flag of Taiwan on Sept. 24, in Kinmen, Taiwan.Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
As dawn broke, Lin Te-wang proudly saluted China’s red and yellow flag, which was being hoisted up a flagpole in celebration of the national day of the People’s Republic of China.
But he is Taiwanese, and this ceremony, held just after 6 a.m. on Oct. 1, took place in Taiwan, a self-governed island that for more than 70 years has resisted Beijing’s efforts to bring it under the control of mainland China.
Mr. Lin, the leader of the Taiwan People’s Communist Party, is part of a small minority in Taiwan who would love to see China’s flag flying all over the island of 24 million.
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An August poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, an independent and non-partisan organization, found that only 11.8 per cent of respondents favoured “unification” with China. Fifty per cent of those surveyed said they would instead opt for independence, and 25.7 per cent backed the status quo. Taiwan has not officially declared independence from China, and Beijing has vowed to invade if it ever does so.
Mr. Lin, 67, spent 20 years doing business in China. He is an admirer of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he believes Mr. Xi’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” model of economic development is the perfect formula for Taiwan.
Years of strong growth in China – although that growth is slowing now – demonstrate that the strong hand Beijing has in the economy works, he said.
Mr. Lin spoke from the party’s office in a diminutive floating red barge on the outskirts of Tainan. Its exterior is emblazoned with slogans. Inside, a red statue of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong looms over the structure’s one and only room, and portraits of Mr. Xi and former Taiwanese ruler Chiang Ching-kuo gaze down on guests.
Mr. Lin’s party, created in 2017, holds no seats at any level of Taiwanese government, but is running a candidate in Taipei’s municipal election, which is scheduled for November. Its flag, in China’s red and yellow colours, shows Taiwan’s main island with a communist hammer and sickle superimposed on it.
“The main reason I am doing this is our ancestors come from China,” he said.
Another local pro-unification party, the New Party, holds two seats on Taipei’s city council.
One of those city councillors is Hou Han-ting, 33.
Mr. Hou said his party believes Taiwan should enter negotiations on unification with China as soon as possible. He argued that Taiwan’s bargaining power is declining in tandem with the rise in China’s economic and military might.
He added that he believes incentives to join that China might offer Taiwan are being taken off the table. “We need a leader who can simply negotiate the best deal possible,” he said.
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He predicted that the time is coming when Taiwan will be forced to choose between negotiation or war. China has not ruled out using force to take Taiwan.
Mr. Hou accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party of manipulating public opinion to ensure that a majority of Taiwanese people don’t trust China.
He portrayed the DPP as subordinate to the U.S. government. “They need to wait for orders from Washington” when reacting to developments such as China’s military drills in August, he said. Beijing surrounded Taiwan with warships and fired missiles over the island in protest of a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, in violation of its pledge to allow the former British colony to retain its civil liberties and autonomy until 2047, figured prominently in Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election. Voters returned incumbent Tsai Ing-wen to power, as they weighed which candidate they trusted to protect them from Beijing’s influence.
Asked whether the New Party is worried about living under Chinese rule, considering the way Beijing has criminalized dissent in Hong Kong, shut down media outlets and disqualified opposition politicians, Mr. Hou said Western journalists don’t know the full story.
He said there is evidence that Western countries were “behind what happened in Hong Kong,” a reference to anti-Beijing protests that accompanied the crackdown. China levelled similar accusations against the West at the time.
Mr. Hou said China is a strong country right now, and that Mr. Xi is a good leader.
He believes the civil war between China’s Nationalists, who retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing to the Communists, has yet to end. “The relationship between Taiwan and China today is a continuation of the civil war,” he said.
Asked why his party isn’t enjoying more success in the polls, he offered a simple explanation. “We didn’t work hard enough,” he said.
The Taiwan Communist Party’s Mr. Lin said Taiwanese people have forgotten their Chinese roots, because the government in Taipei has had educational textbooks rewritten to play down the history of mainland China.
Asked whether he had qualms about China’s record of assimilating territories such as Hong Kong and stifling local news media, Mr. Lin said it makes sense for government “to filter some of the negative sides of stories.”
He is suspicious of polls showing low support for unification. He speculated that Taiwanese people are scared to admit that they are in favour.
Zheng Qing-Li, 86, is among the minority of the Taiwanese public who do favour Chinese rule. He was a soldier for Taiwan during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, fighting against Chinese Communist forces, but now he supports the idea of joining with the People’s Republic of China.
“It was brothers in the same house squabbling, like a fight over money. It doesn’t mean we should be separated,” Mr. Zheng said. He lives on Kinmen Island, an outlying territory held by Taiwan.
He doesn’t worry about preserving Taiwan’s democracy or human rights under a Communist Party government.
“I don’t care if it’s one country, two systems or just one country, one system,” he said.
“We are Chinese. We share the same blood and the same culture and background. We should unite so we become stronger.”
With a report from I-Hwa Cheng