Taiwan to vote in shadow of China pressure, Hong Kong protests

Han has complained of "dirty tricks" being used to smear him as a puppet for China, especially revelations in Australian media from a self-proclaimed Chinese spy who claimed China has supported Han. Han strongly rejects this.

"I beseech Taiwan's people, in the 2020 presidential and parliamentary election, open your eyes. I hope Taiwan's people see these wicked smears to paint me black, red and yellow and make a rational decision," Han said on Tuesday.

"SCARING TAIWAN"

In the run-up to the election, China has repeated its "one country, two systems" offer to Taiwan.

Liu Jieyi, the urbane head of China's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office, wrote in the Communist Party's official People's Daily last week that people in Taiwan were "positively exploring" this model, though offered no evidence.

But one Chinese official, who meets regularly with senior members of the People's Liberation Army, told Reuters that the Hong Kong protests had "increased the difficulty of getting Taiwan back".

"What's happening there is scaring Taiwan," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, referring to conversations with military officers.

While China has denied seeking to interfere in Taiwan's elections, Taiwan's parliament on the final day of last year passed a new anti-infiltration law designed to stop Chinese influence on Taiwan's democracy.

China's military is not idly sitting on the sidelines.

Its newest aircraft carrier, the Shandong, has twice sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait in the past two months, most recently in late December.

The United States, Taiwan's main arms supplier and strongest international backer even in the absence of official diplomatic ties, has said it is concerned at Chinese efforts to sway the election.

Zhou Bo, director of the Center for Security Cooperation of the Office for International Military Cooperation at China's Defense Ministry, said China "of course" wanted to resolve the "Taiwan issue" peacefully.

But China could not sit by while Taiwan continued attempts to distance itself from China, and the United States should heed that warning, he said.

"I don't know whether the United States is prepared to pay the price militarily for Taiwan."




(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Michael Perry)