China to target Taiwan, Hong Kong youth to boost loyalty

PanARMENIAN.Net - China wants to boost the loyalty of young people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau by organising "study trips" and exchanges for them to visit the mainland, a top Chinese official said on Friday, March 3, according to Reuters.

Yu Zhengsheng, the ruling Communist Party's fourth ranked leader, announced the plan to boost the loyalty to China among young people in all three places at the opening session of a largely ceremonial advisory body to parliament in Beijing.

He said the government would this year organise trips for young people "to visit the mainland on study trips and experience it for themselves", adding that the trips would "strengthen the love of both region and country among the people of Hong Kong and Macau."

The government would also increase exchanges with young people in Taiwan in order to "build up public support for the peaceful development of cross-straits relations", he said.

China is deeply suspicious of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, whose ruling Democratic Progressive Party espouses the island's formal independence, a red line for Beijing, which has cut off a formal dialogue mechanism with the island.

Tsai says she wants peace with China.

In 2014, hundreds of students occupied Taiwan's parliament for weeks in protests nicknamed the Sunflower Movement, demanding more transparency and fearful of China's growing economic and political influence on the democratic island.

Yu did not say how many young people would be brought to China or give any other details about the plan, or how it may differ from existing schemes.