Beijing pressures lawmakers from 6 countries not to attend conference in Taiwan – Winnipeg Free Press

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese diplomats are pressuring lawmakers from at least six countries not to attend a China-focused summit in Taiwan, participants told The Associated Press.

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and another Asian country that asked not to be named said they were receiving text messages, phone calls and urgent requests for meetings that clashed with their plans to travel to Taiwan, describing it as an attempt to isolate the self-ruled island.

The summit begins Monday and is being held by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies are approaching Beijing. The Associated Press spoke with the organizers and three lawmakers and reviewed texts and emails that Chinese diplomats sent to the lawmakers asking whether they planned to attend the summit.

“I am Wu, from the Chinese Embassy,” read a message sent to Antonio Miloshoski, a member of parliament in North Macedonia. “We heard you received an invitation from IPAC, are you going to the conference that will be held in Taiwan next week?”

In some cases, lawmakers described vague questions about their plans to travel to Taiwan. In other cases, the contact was more threatening: One lawmaker told AP that Chinese diplomats sent a message to her party leader demanding he stop her.

“They sent a direct message to the president of my party, banning me from traveling to Taiwan,” said Sanela Klarić, a member of parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “He showed me the message from them. He said: ‘I will advise you not to go, but I cannot stop you, it is something you have to decide for yourself.’”

China routinely threatens retaliation against politicians and countries that support Taiwan, which has only informal relations with most countries due to Chinese diplomatic pressure. Klarić said the pressure was unpleasant but only made her more determined to travel.

“I really fight against countries or societies where fear is the tool to manipulate and control people,” Klarić said, adding that it reminded her of the threats and intimidation she faced during the Balkan war in the 1990s. “I hate the feeling when someone scares you.”

China has fiercely defended its claim to Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing sees as its own territory that can be annexed by force if necessary. Last week, Beijing criticized Taiwan for its annual Han Kuang military exercises, saying the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan was “carrying out provocations to seek independence.”

“Any attempt to stir up tensions and use force to gain independence or reject reunification is doomed to failure,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told reporters.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which aims to coordinate diplomacy in response to perceived threats from Beijing, has long been under pressure from the Chinese government. Some members have been sanctioned by Beijing and in 2021 the group was targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, according to a U.S. indictment made public earlier this year.

But Luke de Pulford, the alliance’s chief executive, says the pressure from Chinese officials in recent days has been unprecedented.

In previous meetings elsewhere, lawmakers were approached by Chinese diplomats only after they had finished. This year, the pressure has ramped up and it appears to be a coordinated effort to prevent participants from attending.

“This is gross foreign interference. This is not normal diplomacy,” Pulford said. “How would PRC officials feel if we told them about their travel plans, where they could and could not go? It is absolutely outrageous that they think they can interfere with the travel plans of foreign lawmakers,” he added, using the abbreviation for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

According to a press release, lawmakers from 25 countries are expected to attend this year’s summit and there will be high-level meetings with Taiwanese officials. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has been peeling away the island’s diplomatic allies, often with promises of development aid, in a long-running competition between the two that has tipped in Beijing’s favor in recent years. The Pacific island nation of Nauru transferred recognition to Beijing earlier this year, a move that reduced Taiwan’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies to 12.

But China’s sometimes tough approach has also provoked a backlash.

In 2021, Beijing downgraded ties and blocked imports from Lithuania, a member of both the EU and NATO, after the Baltic nation broke with diplomatic tradition by agreeing to have a Taiwanese mission in the capital Vilnius named Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipei, which other countries use to avoid offending Beijing. The following year, the EU passed a resolution criticizing Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan and took action against China at the World Trade Organization over its import restrictions.

Most of the lawmakers targeted appear to be from smaller countries, which Pulford said is likely because Beijing “feels they can get away with it.” But he added that the coercive tactics have only made participants more determined to participate.

Miriam Lexmann, a Slovak member of the European Parliament whose party leader was approached by Chinese diplomats, said the pressure underlined her reason for coming to Taiwan.

We want to “exchange information, ways to deal with the challenges and threats that China poses to the democratic part of the world, and of course support Taiwan,” she said.

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Associated Press video journalist Johnson Lai contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.