The landslides that occurred on the Suhua Highway in Yilan on Oct. 21 resulted in the death or disappearance of more than 20 tourists from China. During an interview, an official from the Ministry of Justice said that following the intent of Article 2 of the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), “people in the mainland area are also nationals of the Republic of China [ROC].”
The same official said that neither the act nor the State Compensation Act (國家賠償法) include any regulations stopping “people in the mainland area [China]” from applying for national compensation. Then on Oct. 25, Red Cross Society of the Republic of China president C.V. Chen (陳長文) published an article in the Chinese-language United Daily News expressing the same opinion. To a certain extent, the opinions of an official and a confidante of the president reveal the basic approach that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration will take on this matter, namely to treat citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as citizens of the ROC.
However, the legal basis for the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area comes from Article 11 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文). This article states that: “Rights and obligations between the people of the Chinese mainland area and those of the free area, and the disposition of other related affairs may be specified by law.”
If the ROC really does include China, and if citizens of the PRC are the same as citizens of the ROC, then Article 11 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution is an unconstitutional set of regulations violating the principle of equality as outlined in the Constitution, as is the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area itself.
The reason for this is that people of the same country must not receive different treatment just because they live in different areas. Article 11 of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution states that: “the disposition of other related affairs may be specified by law” and this allows for differential treatment. However, up until now, there has not been any substantial explanation to say that Article 11 of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution is unconstitutional, nor has anybody questioned the constitutionality of the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. Extrapolating from this, we can also say that according to Taiwan’s current Constitution and legal procedures, giving different treatment to the people of Taiwan and China is in fact the only way to meet the requirements of the Constitution, while treating people from China and Taiwan in the same way would be unconstitutional.
This is self-evident. PRC nationals cannot apply to Taiwan’s central or local governments for the social benefits that all ROC citizens have a right to, such as birth subsidies, old age pensions, subsidies for low-income families, compulsory national education and national health insurance. By the same token, Chinese citizens also do not have to fulfill obligations that Taiwanese citizens must fulfill, such as paying taxes or undertaking compulsory military service. These examples clearly show that according to Taiwan’s legal system, it is impossible for those who do not have ROC citizenship to suddenly gain that status when the State Compensation Act is made applicable to them. If the recent comments made by lawyers, the Ministry of Justice, officials from the Mainland Affairs Council and Chen were not the result of total ignorance of the law, they were a deliberate misinterpretation.
Li Ming-juinn is a member of the Northern Taiwan Society
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The stocks of rare earth companies soared on Monday following news that the Trump administration had taken a 10 percent stake in Oklahoma mining and magnet company USA Rare Earth Inc. Such is the visible benefit enjoyed by the growing number of firms that count Uncle Sam as a shareholder. Yet recent events surrounding perhaps what is the most well-known state-picked champion, Intel Corp, exposed a major unseen cost of the federal government’s unprecedented intervention in private business: the distortion of capital markets that have underpinned US growth and innovation since its founding. Prior to Intel’s Jan. 22 call with analysts
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
International debate on Taiwan is obsessed with “invasion countdowns,” framing the cross-strait crisis as a matter of military timetables and political opportunity. However, the seismic political tremors surrounding Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) suggested that Washington and Taipei are watching the wrong clock. Beijing is constrained not by a lack of capability, but by an acute fear of regime-threatening military failure. The reported sidelining of Zhang — a combat veteran in a largely unbloodied force and long-time loyalist of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — followed a year of purges within the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
RSS