evidence: Sitting outside his office, Xu marveled at the twist of history that turned his war-scarred island into the most pro-Beijing constituency in Taiwan. In many ways, Kinmen is a geographic and political outlier in Taiwan, a vibrant democracy that has generally voted to shift away from China's orbit. In other ways, it's a microcosm of Taiwan's existential and generational debates over China — and all the insoluble questions of politics and commerce, of culture and shared blood. [...] Since 2018, China has provided Kinmen with fresh drinking water through an undersea pipeline. Talks are underway for Kinmen to import two more crucial resources: electricity and natural gas. The Kinmen proposals have been applauded by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has made absorbing Taiwan and reclaiming all of imperial China's lost territory, including Taiwan, a centerpiece of his national rejuvenation project. [...] It hasn't helped, Weng said, that Kinmen has been the site of intense political influence campaigns that urge unification with China and are believed to be connected to the Communist Party. In recent years, small political parties with known ties to mainland-linked mafia or even murkier provenance have pushed ideas like holding a local referendum on combining Kinmen and the Chinese city of Xiamen into a "Peace Experimental Zone."