In addition to conducting “grey zone” activities against Taiwan, China is believed to be waging a parallel war that centers on economic coercion. Both methods, however, share a single objective: to conquer the self-governing island state.
China considers Taiwan a renegade province and has openly vowed to occupy it, with force if necessary. It regularly violates the self-ruled island state’s sovereignty by conducting deliberate military intrusions, and simulates encirclement of Taiwan in military drills, as the EurAsian Times has reported on multiple occasions over the years.
At the same time, Beijing has launched a series of direct and indirect measures to undermine the island’s economy, create discontent among its people, and attack its institutions, according to the Taiwanese government.
In one such development, China has now allegedly sought to increase imports of a special Taiwanese fruit—the Atemoyas grown in Taiwan’s Taitung County—a move that Taiwan believes is aimed at economic coercion, Taiwanese media have reported.
China is one of the major importers of Atemoya, but a sudden surge in imports set off alarm bells in Taipei and prompted the Taiwanese government to issue a warning to its farmers. Over the weekend, the Taiwanese Agriculture Ministry issued a press release saying this was a “classic example of ‘China’s raise, trap, kill’ process”, through which it builds export dependency and then leaves farmers exposed to market changes.
As noted by observers, China uses agriculture, in general and fruits in particular, as a popular pressure tactic against Taiwan. “First, China makes large purchases to show goodwill and encourage farmers to grow atemoyas. Next, it unilaterally imposes export restrictions without warning,” the Agriculture Ministry’s press release stated.
The statement emphasized that China halted imports of atemoyas in 2021, citing pest concerns, but reversed its decision and partially resumed imports in 2023, only for it to levy taxes on the fruit in 2024.
These actions “cause the industry to face huge instability and farmers to bear great risks,” the Ministry stated in the release. Taiwan’s indigenous industry is at risk due to China’s growing cultivation of atemoyas.” Further, the Ministry emphasized that the government will concentrate on “sustainable agricultural development and stable income for farmers” and “continue to guide the atemoya industry toward diversified processing” by making wines, purees, and frozen fruit products.
The Taiwanese opposition, which has been warming up to Beijing, has decried these warnings as a hysterical attempt by the pro-democracy Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to politicize a crucial crop. Meanwhile, officials in Taiwan pushed back against the narrative and defied the Ministry’s warning, sparking a heated debate.
For example, Taitung County Commissioner Yao Ching-ling promoted the local fruit in a pre-recorded video, and five Taiwanese organizations inked agricultural product procurement agreements with Chinese officials.
Meanwhile, Wu Hsiu-hua, the speaker of the Taitung County Council, countered the Agriculture Ministry’s warnings by asserting that China remains the main market for Taiwanese atemoya because stringent quarantine restrictions in other nations have not yet been lifted.”The government’s responsibility is to help farmers find distribution channels, not to force them to bear political consequences,” Wu said.
Despite the local resistance, the Taiwanese government has significant past evidence in its kitty to be suspicious and wary at this stage.
In March 2021, China, which accounted for about 90% of Taiwan’s pineapple export, banned the import of the pineapples amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait under President Tsai Ing-wen, severely disrupting the livelihoods of local farmers.
Similarly, it banned imports of Taiwan’s antemoya, sugar apples, and wax apples in September 2021, citing multiple instances of harmful pests found in imported produce. These were major tropical fruit exports heavily dependent on the Chinese market, and the timing, around mid-Autumn Festival, amplified the economic and symbolic impact on affected farmers, many in southern Taiwan, a stronghold of the ruling DPP.
In June 2022, Beijing imposed a sudden ban on Taiwanese grouper, a high-value fish, citing the detection of banned substances and irregularities. Later that year, it suspended imports of citrus fruits, chilled white scallops, frozen mackerel, and other seafood, amid tensions over former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island state in August. Additionally, it halted imports from over 2,000 individual Taiwanese food products, including biscuits, pastries, confectionery, and more.
Taiwan has been protesting Chinese import restrictions on a variety of aquatic and agricultural products for many years, claiming they are part of a Chinese pressure campaign. In most cases, Taiwan did not hear of any pests or irregularities in produce from other customers of the goods, except from China.
It is pertinent to note that, although Taiwan’s semiconductor-focused economy relies little on agriculture, the island’s agricultural and fishing communities are concentrated in areas that have historically supported the ruling DPP, particularly in southern Taiwan.
Taiwanese experts and academics state that China has repeatedly imposed, or selectively imposed, import bans targeting these DPP-leaning areas, aiming to create economic discontent among farmers and fishermen, drive a wedge between these communities and the DPP government, and boost support for the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) opposition.
Taiwan has responded with subsidies, market diversification into Japan and Southeast Asia, and domestic promotion campaigns, all of which have worked to a limited degree.
China’s approach is precise enough to cause localized hardship and political friction, but not enough to damage Taiwan’s overall economy or provoke a strong, unified backlash. This aligns with its broader grey-zone playbook, which aims to vanquish Taipei without waging a full-scale war and risking military escalation with countries like the United States.
China’s Indirect Warfare Against Taiwan
China has taken a host of different indirect non-military routes to wage a war against Taiwan. For example, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau alleged in a report earlier this year that China was trying to poach the island’s semiconductor and high-tech talent.
The agency stated that China is trying to “lure” Taiwan’s high-tech businesses, such as semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) companies, to establish or maintain operations in China amid sustained rivalry with the US. Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a significant supplier to companies such as Apple and Nvidia.
“It also continues to use indirect channels to poach Taiwanese talent, steal technology, and procure controlled goods, with the aim of obtaining key core technologies and products such as Taiwan’s advanced-process chips, thereby breaking through international technological containment,” the agency stated at the time.
Taiwan has also repeatedly flagged China’s attempts to shape perceptions, sow division, undermine trust in government, and weaken resolve to resist. It states that China allegedly launched aggressive campaigns during Taiwanese elections, using social media, bots, AI-generated deepfakes, and opinion polls to peddle fake narratives against the DPP and pro-democracy forces in the country. This was evident during the 2024 elections.
Additionally, China also frequently employs its own state media to spread rumors of vote fraud, portray DPP leaders as warmongers, or amplify pro-unification narratives.
Taiwan has also accused China of using cyberfraud to disrupt the island state’s government. The National Security Bureau claimed in its report that over 170 million infiltration attempts were made against Taiwan’s Government Service Network in the first quarter of this year. “It cannot be ruled out that the Chinese Communist Party is laying the groundwork to interfere in Taiwan’s year-end elections, with the intent of expanding intelligence collection, surveillance, and data theft,” the report said.
Taiwan has also alleged that China has had a role in sabotaging its cables, describing it as a “grey zone” tactic to pressure the self-ruled island. A Chinese national was sentenced to three years last year for damaging an undersea cable connecting Taiwan’s main island and the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait.
Besides these age-old tactics, China has also started exploiting its influence to pressure countries into switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (ROC) to the PRC, reducing Taiwan’s international space.
If that was not enough, Taiwan and China’s coast guards are experiencing repeated maritime standoffs as Beijing aggressively ramps up grey-zone tactics to assert jurisdiction. The Chinese Ministry of Transport announced earlier this month that it had launched a “special maritime law enforcement operation” in the waters east of Taiwan, dispatching coast guard vessels to engage in illegal enforcement activities.
Therefore, it is safe to say that while none of these methods involves a military offensive against Taiwan, all of them seek to bleed Taiwan to assert dominance. It is nearly amusing that a fruit is now at the center of this fresh row.
- Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
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