China’s continued experimentation for peaceful reunification
China’s new strategy for ‘peaceful reunification’ with Taiwan promotes cross-strait integration through bottom-up innovation and regional experimentation. Since it was first announced a year ago, this strategy has expanded to include China Coast Guard incursions around Kinmen.
In September 2023 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced plans to make Fujian province ‘a demonstration zone for integrated development’ with Taiwan. Looking back at this announcement a year later, this policy seems to have marked the beginning of a new Taiwan strategy that seeks to achieve ‘peaceful reunification’ through bottom-up innovation and regional experimentation, while still preparing for reunification by force if necessary.
Under this new strategy, the CCP encourages officials to devise initiatives for deepening cross-strait integration. These are then tested in areas such as Fujian, with the aim of replicating successful initiatives across China and the Taiwan Strait. This has led numerous national and local actors to implement integration policies focusing on economic and legal cooperation, as well as the building of shared infrastructure. In the last six months, this strategy has expanded; state media have framed the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) incursions into Taiwan’s protected waters around Kinmen – a Taiwanese island group just ten kilometres from Fujian’s coast – as a local experiment in legal integration. Such developments highlight the increasing resources that China is dedicating to achieving ‘peaceful reunification’ through experimentation and innovation. The CCP will likely re-evaluate this strategy in 2025 – the date for achieving significant progress in Fujian, and the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
The implementation of these initiatives demonstrates how cross-strait integration is pursued through regional experimentation and involves numerous local and national actors. Since September 2023 an administrative office, an organisation under the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), eight of the State Council’s ministerial departments, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Court have announced measures to support the construction of Fujian’s demonstration zone. At the local level, nine of Fujian’s provincial ministerial bodies, as well as its People’s Procuratorate, have announced such measures. According to official planning documents, their implementation has been coordinated by the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The various actors tasked with generating new ideas for cross-strait integration are connected by institutional relationships created to foster ‘innovative’ integration policies and a shared culture of experimentation. For example, the Fujian Provincial Market Regulatory Bureau collaborated with the State Administration for Market Regulation to standardise cross-strait industrial certification and regulatory standards. The provincial bureau conducted 38 pilot projects and established 119 new cross-strait common standards. This involved Xiamen’s Municipal Market Supervision Bureau and the Taiwan Standardisation Research Centre. Various PRC ministries, including the Ministry of Commerce, the TAO, the NDRC and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, have also cooperated to deepen trade between Fujian and Taiwan. Officials form these relationships to devise new and innovative ways for furthering integration, portraying measures as ‘demonstration’ models. In just one year, the Fujian plan has fostered myriad vertical and horizontal relationships within the party-state that encourage innovative solutions to ‘peaceful reunification’.
The Kinmen Model portrays CCG activities as an experiment in furthering cross-strait legal integration by removing Taiwan’s law-enforcement authority in the Taiwan Strait. The term was first employed by Chinese state media on 12 May 2024 to describe exercises conducted by 12 CCG vessels near Kinmen. A Weibo account (affiliated with the state media organisation CCTV) named yuyuan tantian (玉渊谭天) described CCG actions as following the Kinmen Model in establishing 'a regular law-enforcement patrol presence'. The vessels sailed in waters between Kinmen and the Dadan and Erdan Islands, as well as south from Kinmen into the Taiwan Strait. According to yuyuan tantian, this route reflected China’s ‘sovereignty, jurisdiction, and law-enforcement rights’ in the area. State media claimed that the Kinmen Model was a legal precedent China could refer to when ‘illegal forces infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese fishermen’. The article also quoted a ‘professional source’ who stated that in the future the model could ‘be applied to Matsu, Penghu, and even the entire Taiwan Strait’. The Kinmen Model portrays CCG activities as replicable, provided they are deemed to be successful – mirroring the Fujian and Dongguan plans.
State media have argued that CCG activities are required for Fujian’s cross-strait integration plans to succeed. CCTV’s article on 12 May claimed that the success of road and bridge connections between Fujian and Kinmen is ‘inseparable from the protection of relevant waters by the CCG’. It also explained that the activities of the CCG, maritime-affairs, maritime-surveillance, and fishery departments in the Taiwan Strait help to promote the ‘Mini Four Links’ (小四通). This refers to an initiative first outlined by Xi in 2019 to develop water, electricity, natural-gas, and bridge links between Fujian and the islands of Kinmen and Matsu. In this way, state media have linked CCG activities around Kinmen with the wider ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy – following the same principles of innovation and regional experimentation but also directly determining the success of other integration plans.
Unlike the Fujian and Dongguan plans, the Kinmen Model has not been discussed by the CCP’s leading politicians or appeared in official policy documents. Nevertheless, military bloggers, state-media Weibo accounts, the Global Times, CCTV news programmes and the People’s Daily have all employed it to describe CCG activities around Taiwan’s outlying islands. Several of these suggested that CCG activities conducted during the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military exercise on 23–24 May 2024 (Joint Sword 2024A) were an indication of the Kinmen Model’s replication across the Taiwan Strait. CCTV wrote that CCG incursions around the Wuqiu and Dongyin islands reflected the ‘replication’ of the Kinmen Model in ‘new waters’, while the Global Times believed they were a ‘warning’ that the model may be replicated across the Taiwan Strait. Both articles gained this understanding from an ‘insider familiar with the matter’ (一位相关人士), who is likely a senior CCP official. This suggests that the Kinmen Model has been approved by the CCP's leadership. Its usage by state media suggests that the CCP wants to assess early reactions to the concept and, before providing an official definition of the term, work out its meaning in response to these reactions and the changing situation in the Taiwan Strait. In June 2024, for instance, the CCTV-affiliated Weibo account updated its original definition of the Kinmen Model – provided in in May 2024 – as CCG actions had been ‘adjusted’. The model thus demonstrates that some CCP officials understand coastguard incursions to be part of China’s new ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy.
Importantly, the new strategy does not exclude military action, and its integration measures could support the quarantine, blockade or invasion of Taiwan. The Kinmen Model establishes legal norms that help normalise the CCG’s presence in Taiwan's prohibited waters. The strategy’s development and implementation, however, reflects the CCP’s continuing interest in ‘peaceful reunification’ while it modernises the PLA. This challenges arguments that the CCP no longer believes in ‘peaceful reunification’ and that an invasion is imminent. These integration proposals are medium- to long-term projects. The development of Fujian’s demonstration zone is in service of the CCP’s long-term goal of ‘basically achieving socialist modernisation’ by 2035. This suggests that unless China perceives a significant change in US policy, Taiwan’s position on independence or in the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, it will continue implementing its new ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy while modernising the PLA.
Under this new strategy, the CCP encourages officials to devise initiatives for deepening cross-strait integration. These are then tested in areas such as Fujian, with the aim of replicating successful initiatives across China and the Taiwan Strait. This has led numerous national and local actors to implement integration policies focusing on economic and legal cooperation, as well as the building of shared infrastructure. In the last six months, this strategy has expanded; state media have framed the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) incursions into Taiwan’s protected waters around Kinmen – a Taiwanese island group just ten kilometres from Fujian’s coast – as a local experiment in legal integration. Such developments highlight the increasing resources that China is dedicating to achieving ‘peaceful reunification’ through experimentation and innovation. The CCP will likely re-evaluate this strategy in 2025 – the date for achieving significant progress in Fujian, and the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
National signals
China’s leaders first signalled to local officials their desire for cross-strait integration through bottom-up policy experimentation in 2019, when President Xi Jinping made a speech encouraging ‘new and creative’ policies. The 2022 Taiwan White Paper instructed party officials to make ‘innovative efforts towards peaceful reunification’. These instructions culminated in the publication in September 2023 of a detailed plan to make Fujian a ‘demonstration zone for integrated development’. A previous plan – a programme to establish a cross-strait economic zone in Fujian – was announced in 2009; this was focused primarily on economic integration and ultimately failed. Issued by the CCP Central Committee, the latest plan directed officials to pilot and test reunification initiatives in Fujian and encouraged ‘policy and institutional innovation’. It also supported regional experimentation ‘in light of the time and local conditions’, as a ‘demonstration’ of future policies that if successful could be extended across China. Significantly, it permitted officials to be creative and propose new ideas for furthering integration. This was the first plan to fully embody the CCP’s strategy for advancing cross-strait integration through policy experimentation and innovation.Fujian
Four months after the central government outlined its strategic objectives for Fujian, the area’s Provincial Committee announced ‘new paths for cross-strait integration’. These aimed to further economic and legal integration as well as the construction of shared infrastructure. The committee promised a development fund to support industry cooperation and will permit Taiwanese civil and commercial arbitration institutions to establish agencies in Xiamen, a city in southeastern Fujian, to resolve issues ‘related to Taiwan or foreign affairs’. The initiative also echoed the central government’s plan to grant Taiwanese migrants ‘equal’ and ‘universal’ access to social security and housing, expediating their assimilation into Chinese society. Additionally, the committee proposed improving cross-strait transportation by constructing ‘shared airports’ and the Xiamen–Kinmen bridge, which China has unilaterally started building. Xiamen’s new airport, scheduled to open in 2026, is being constructed next to the bridge. The CCP likely wishes for this airport and bridge to replace Kinmen’s own Shangyi Airport as the principal connection between Taiwan to Kinmen, which would allow China to control all air travel to Kinmen.The implementation of these initiatives demonstrates how cross-strait integration is pursued through regional experimentation and involves numerous local and national actors. Since September 2023 an administrative office, an organisation under the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), eight of the State Council’s ministerial departments, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Court have announced measures to support the construction of Fujian’s demonstration zone. At the local level, nine of Fujian’s provincial ministerial bodies, as well as its People’s Procuratorate, have announced such measures. According to official planning documents, their implementation has been coordinated by the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The various actors tasked with generating new ideas for cross-strait integration are connected by institutional relationships created to foster ‘innovative’ integration policies and a shared culture of experimentation. For example, the Fujian Provincial Market Regulatory Bureau collaborated with the State Administration for Market Regulation to standardise cross-strait industrial certification and regulatory standards. The provincial bureau conducted 38 pilot projects and established 119 new cross-strait common standards. This involved Xiamen’s Municipal Market Supervision Bureau and the Taiwan Standardisation Research Centre. Various PRC ministries, including the Ministry of Commerce, the TAO, the NDRC and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, have also cooperated to deepen trade between Fujian and Taiwan. Officials form these relationships to devise new and innovative ways for furthering integration, portraying measures as ‘demonstration’ models. In just one year, the Fujian plan has fostered myriad vertical and horizontal relationships within the party-state that encourage innovative solutions to ‘peaceful reunification’.
Dongguan
The CCP’s strategy for ‘peaceful reunification’ has recently expanded outside of Fujian. In June 2024, the municipal government in Dongguan, Guangdong province, announced ‘new models’ of cross-strait integration to encourage high-tech Taiwanese enterprises to relocate to the area. The plan’s implementation mirrors the institutional relationships and culture of experimentation that underpin the ‘Fujian demonstration zone for integrated development’. Coordinated by the NDRC and the TAO, its implementation is led locally by the ‘Dongguan Leading Group for Deepening Cross-Strait Innovation and Development Cooperation’, which in July held a meeting with national and provincial ministries presided over by the NDRC’s secretary-general. Recently this group outlined 12 municipal-level departments responsible for implementing integration measures. It instructed departments to ‘summarise’ and ‘promote successful practices’ to ensure they can be ‘replicated’ by other regions. The CCP’s new strategy for ‘peaceful reunification’ has expanded to the extent that municipal officials elsewhere have established leading groups to further cross-strait integration.The Kinmen Model
The new strategy has also expanded to include the activities of the CCG in the Taiwan Strait. In 2024, the CCG has stepped up incursions into Taiwan’s restricted waters around Kinmen. From May, state media have explained these activities as following ‘the Kinmen Model (金门模式) of law-enforcement patrols’ and suggested that the CCG’s presence is a requirement for the success of the Fujian demonstration zone. Such media have therefore portrayed the coastguard’s activities as akin to other cross-strait integration plans – despite CCG activities being notably more aggressive.The Kinmen Model portrays CCG activities as an experiment in furthering cross-strait legal integration by removing Taiwan’s law-enforcement authority in the Taiwan Strait. The term was first employed by Chinese state media on 12 May 2024 to describe exercises conducted by 12 CCG vessels near Kinmen. A Weibo account (affiliated with the state media organisation CCTV) named yuyuan tantian (玉渊谭天) described CCG actions as following the Kinmen Model in establishing 'a regular law-enforcement patrol presence'. The vessels sailed in waters between Kinmen and the Dadan and Erdan Islands, as well as south from Kinmen into the Taiwan Strait. According to yuyuan tantian, this route reflected China’s ‘sovereignty, jurisdiction, and law-enforcement rights’ in the area. State media claimed that the Kinmen Model was a legal precedent China could refer to when ‘illegal forces infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese fishermen’. The article also quoted a ‘professional source’ who stated that in the future the model could ‘be applied to Matsu, Penghu, and even the entire Taiwan Strait’. The Kinmen Model portrays CCG activities as replicable, provided they are deemed to be successful – mirroring the Fujian and Dongguan plans.
State media have argued that CCG activities are required for Fujian’s cross-strait integration plans to succeed. CCTV’s article on 12 May claimed that the success of road and bridge connections between Fujian and Kinmen is ‘inseparable from the protection of relevant waters by the CCG’. It also explained that the activities of the CCG, maritime-affairs, maritime-surveillance, and fishery departments in the Taiwan Strait help to promote the ‘Mini Four Links’ (小四通). This refers to an initiative first outlined by Xi in 2019 to develop water, electricity, natural-gas, and bridge links between Fujian and the islands of Kinmen and Matsu. In this way, state media have linked CCG activities around Kinmen with the wider ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy – following the same principles of innovation and regional experimentation but also directly determining the success of other integration plans.
Unlike the Fujian and Dongguan plans, the Kinmen Model has not been discussed by the CCP’s leading politicians or appeared in official policy documents. Nevertheless, military bloggers, state-media Weibo accounts, the Global Times, CCTV news programmes and the People’s Daily have all employed it to describe CCG activities around Taiwan’s outlying islands. Several of these suggested that CCG activities conducted during the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military exercise on 23–24 May 2024 (Joint Sword 2024A) were an indication of the Kinmen Model’s replication across the Taiwan Strait. CCTV wrote that CCG incursions around the Wuqiu and Dongyin islands reflected the ‘replication’ of the Kinmen Model in ‘new waters’, while the Global Times believed they were a ‘warning’ that the model may be replicated across the Taiwan Strait. Both articles gained this understanding from an ‘insider familiar with the matter’ (一位相关人士), who is likely a senior CCP official. This suggests that the Kinmen Model has been approved by the CCP's leadership. Its usage by state media suggests that the CCP wants to assess early reactions to the concept and, before providing an official definition of the term, work out its meaning in response to these reactions and the changing situation in the Taiwan Strait. In June 2024, for instance, the CCTV-affiliated Weibo account updated its original definition of the Kinmen Model – provided in in May 2024 – as CCG actions had been ‘adjusted’. The model thus demonstrates that some CCP officials understand coastguard incursions to be part of China’s new ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy.
Strategic implications
The scope of the CCP’s new Taiwan strategy is likely to continue to expand as officials see opportunities to advance their department’s or province’s interests in the name of ‘peaceful reunification’.Importantly, the new strategy does not exclude military action, and its integration measures could support the quarantine, blockade or invasion of Taiwan. The Kinmen Model establishes legal norms that help normalise the CCG’s presence in Taiwan's prohibited waters. The strategy’s development and implementation, however, reflects the CCP’s continuing interest in ‘peaceful reunification’ while it modernises the PLA. This challenges arguments that the CCP no longer believes in ‘peaceful reunification’ and that an invasion is imminent. These integration proposals are medium- to long-term projects. The development of Fujian’s demonstration zone is in service of the CCP’s long-term goal of ‘basically achieving socialist modernisation’ by 2035. This suggests that unless China perceives a significant change in US policy, Taiwan’s position on independence or in the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, it will continue implementing its new ‘peaceful reunification’ strategy while modernising the PLA.