By Jia Feimao | 2025-11-28

China now is using baseball in an effort to woo Taiwan.

The Chinese Professional Baseball (CPB) City League, scheduled to debut in January 2026, aims to professionalize baseball in China within three years. According to the league's publicity, each team will have a 30-player roster, with a minimum of 10 local players and 10 from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau.

Baseball enjoys little popularity in mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, but in Taiwan it is widely regarded as the "national pastime." The Japanese colonization of Taiwan (1895-1945) introduced baseball to the island.

As a result, analysts generally see the requirement that at least 10 players come from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau as a way of deliberately opening the door to Taiwanese players for United Front purposes. The United Front is a term for pro-Beijing propaganda operations in Taiwan.

Such operations seek to undermine Taiwanese identity. In a 2023 Taiwanese poll, only 3% of respondents identified themselves as "primarily Chinese."

Strictly Beijing's idea

The CPB league could have been created only with Beijing's blessing, Arthur Wang, secretary general of the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association, said in an interview with CTS News.

Backing a league built around a sport that few Chinese follow, he argued, shows that the authorities' calculations are "definitely not about business but rather aimed at Taiwan." The real purpose, he said, is to drive China's United Front campaign against the island by using the emotional power of sport.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council will closely watch whether the league is driven by market forces or political motives, Liang Wen-chieh, deputy minister of the council, said.

A sports marketing company is indeed trying to replicate Taiwan's baseball experience on the other side of the Taiwan Strait and is even planning to introduce a large number of Taiwanese players, he told Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA).

If Taiwanese companies or marketing firms are quietly promoting the CPB league behind the scenes, this is no longer a simple sports exchange but "political collaboration," Hung Pu-chao, deputy executive director of the Center for Mainland China and Regional Development Research at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, told Focus.

China's United Front efforts are targeting not only individual players but Taiwan's entire baseball industry, he said.

'One family across the strait'

On November 11, the CPB league announced its first team, the Changsha Want Want Happy Team, sponsored by the Taiwanese company Want Want Group. That firm's revenues primarily come from operations in China.

On the team's official WeChat account, a post reads: "Baseball is a sport that starts from 'home' and runs back to 'home'…. As a patriotic Taiwan company, Want Want hopes to use the Changsha Want Want Happy Team as a bridge, and baseball as a medium, to build a bridge for exchanges between baseball players and youths on both sides of the strait." The statement urges cross-strait exchanges under the slogan of being "One Family across the Strait."

Taiwanese authorities have greater cause for concern when entire Taiwanese teams join a league headquartered across the strait, rather than individual players transferring to teams in China.

During a visit to Shanghai CoolBang, the company organizing the CPB league, a reporter from CNA noticed the words "Taichung," "Chii Lih (Coral Baseball)" and "Topco" written on a whiteboard in the office. These are the names of Taiwanese amateur baseball teams, suggesting possible connections with amateur clubs in Taiwan.

The word "City" in the league's official name is likely intended to attract newly established Taiwanese teams in the future, said Hung. Once teams from Taiwan are competing under the CPB framework, he argues, Beijing can more easily shape the narrative that "Taiwan is part of China" by pointing to their participation.

Trying to erase Taiwan's baseball identity

Baseball, introduced to Taiwan under Japanese rule and later elevated by the government after the Hong-Ye Little League boom, has become a core symbol of both modernization and local identity, said Hung.

The Hong-Ye team excited the entire island in 1968 when it unexpectedly defeated an all-star team from Japan.

The stark contrast in baseball's popularity on opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait only underscores how far Taiwan and China have grown apart, said Hung.

The creation of this baseball league, combined with the requirement to include players from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, is designed to blur symbolic boundaries and to make people believe that Taiwanese baseball is merely a component of "Chinese baseball," said Hung.

"In the other side's narrative, they [Taiwanese baseball players] are merely examples of coming home to the motherland's sports endeavor," he said.