The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday last week urged Taiwanese to exercise caution when traveling overseas, citing an intelligence report saying that China might attempt to arrest Taiwanese abroad.
China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan.
A senior Chinese official reportedly gave closed-door instructions to Chinese state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agencies suggested.
The official reportedly said that “overseas police stations” and Chinese embassies in countries friendly to China were also asked to execute the guidelines and arrest or harass Taiwanese tourists, students and residents in those countries.
Countries have already been extraditing Taiwanese to China under Beijing’s instructions for years. The BBC on Dec. 1, 2021, reported that more than 600 Taiwanese arrested overseas from 2016 to 2019 were deported to China, citing data from Spain-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders. Those deported to China were at risk of persecution and severe human rights abuses, the report said. Spain and Kenya had extradited the most Taiwanese to China, with authorities in those countries citing a lack of formal relations with Taiwan, it added.
On Sept. 26 last year, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said it had received a report that a Taiwanese woman who was arrested in South Korea for her alleged involvement in the kidnapping and murder of two people in the Philippines was reportedly facing extradition to China. The suspect, who was identified by the alias Lee Na (李娜), could be extradited to China under a treaty between the two countries, MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said.
The ministry’s warnings about travel to Cambodia, Laos and some countries in Africa are understandable given that they are developing nations that have close ties with China, but extraditions from Spain and South Korea are concerning given that those are democracies with rule of law.
The so-called Chinese overseas police stations are also a source of concern. Authorities in the US, the UK, Canada and elsewhere have confirmed the presence of the stations and said they are engaged in illegal activity, which China has denied, saying that they are providing services for Chinese citizens abroad rather than policing.
Despite the claims, US authorities have said that the stations “helped Beijing identify pro-democracy activists living in the US,” the BBC wrote on Dec. 19 last year. The report cited then-US Department of Justice assistant attorney general Matthew Olsen as calling the stations “a clear affront to American sovereignty and danger to our community that will not be tolerated.”
Taiwanese traveling or living overseas might be harassed by agents of the Chinese government. Some of them might be particularly vulnerable to such threats due to age, language barriers, lack of knowledge about local laws or other issues.
Taipei must ensure that people traveling abroad are familiar with their rights, informed about which countries present a risk of deportation and knowledgeable about where to go for help while overseas. The government could also communicate with immigration authorities in other countries to seek cooperation on assisting Taiwanese abroad. Meanwhile, it could communicate with countries such as Spain that have deported Taiwanese, seeking to make arrangements that better protect their rights.
Taiwan must do what it can to ensure that Taiwanese traveling and living abroad do not need to live in fear of illegal, extraterritorial actions by China.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
RSS