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Last week mainland China got angry at something Taiwan’s president said and held a series of military exercises around the island which involved over 100 military aircraft plus dozens of ships. The exercises were framed for domestic propaganda as a show of the mainland’s love for Taiwan, i.e. we love you so much we won’t let you leave.
“While China is thought to be cautious during this period, the drills send the message that Taiwan remains so sensitive, so important and crucial for the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington policy research group.
Indeed, a crucial audience for China’s drills is the one at home. In propaganda messages, the Chinese Coast Guard sought to cast its exercises as a paternalistic gesture of love toward its Taiwanese compatriots, captured in a graphic depicting Taiwan surrounded by a line of red arrows in the shape of a heart.
The gesture fell flat in Taiwan, where on social media and political talk shows, commentators poked fun at the illustration, which was accompanied by the message “The patrol is in the shape of loving you.
