On a political figure’s first day in office, they are expected to lay out their governing direction, institutional responsibilities and public commitments. However, when the conversation immediately revolves around passports, the issue is less about the law and more about managing anxiety. By emphasizing that she “only has a Republic of China [ROC] passport” when she was sworn in on Tuesday, Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀) appeared to be proactively dispelling doubts — but in reality, her stunt transformed an issue that could have been handled through institutional means into a stage for emotional mobilization.
The crux of Li’s gesture lies not in whether she does or does not possess a particular passport. It lies in her deliberate attempt to make a passport possess functions it was never meant to carry — a symbol of loyalty, proof of political identity and a moral shield against scrutiny. A passport has never been any of those things.
A passport is an administrative tool, not a lie detector for one’s soul. Possessing — or not possessing — a given country’s passport cannot in itself determine an individual’s political allegiance, much less be reduced to the binary of whether or not someone is “one of us.” If passports were proof of loyalty, then most people in the world would already be living in a stateless gray zone. Many countries do not even have high passport-holding rates to begin with, which neither undermines citizenship nor weakens the existence of political communities.
The problem arises when political rhetoric ignores common sense. As a result, the passport is used as a substitute to compensate for society’s fear of betrayal.
Taiwan’s legal framework is far from ambiguous. The system has long drawn an important distinction between two stages — that of candidacy and that of assuming office. As long as an individual meets the residency requirements, they have the right to run for office. However, once they have been elected and choose to take office, the state then requires that individual to renounce their foreign citizenship and submit documentary proof within one year.
This is not targeted at any specific country, nor is it a sudden political reckoning. Rather, it is an institutional design prevalent in nearly all modern states — clear legal status must be achieved before power can formally take effect.
The logic of this system is both dispassionate and unforgiving. It is not concerned with your emotional identification, nor does it read your statements. It only cares about one thing — whether you are regarded as a political subject by two different countries simultaneously.
The real issue lies in the fact that dual nationality is not a question of emotions, but structure. It concerns conflicts of interest, the attribution of responsibility and political risk — not which country you feel more attached to in your heart. It is precisely because institutions have no way to predict future conflicts that they must establish such thresholds ahead of time, and these thresholds must be applied uniformly. Whether it is China or any other country that does not permit the renunciation of nationality, the outcome is always the same — if you cannot legally be considered a sole responsible party, then you are not suited to hold a public office that demands undivided allegiance. This is not cruel. It is one of the most fundamental self-protective mechanisms of democratic politics.
When a political figure chooses not to speak about institutions, but about passports — not about legal obligations, but declarations of identity — public discourse returns to a much more primitive state. Are we on the same side? Such language is familiar and dangerous. It reduces complex institutional issues into loyalty tests, and turns legal procedures that should be subject to scrutiny into nothing more than emotional blackmail, leading society to mistakenly believe that one can bypass institutional review simply by taking the stage and making a declaration.
In truth, what truly deserves scrutiny has never been the appearance of one’s passport, but whether one is willing to follow the system’s regulations through to the end when the time comes to do so.
Li, put the passport away. The country does not need to see the color of its cover, nor does it wish to participate in your identity performance. Democracy is concerned with one thing only — when power falls into your hands, can you serve as a public actor free of distractions, back doors or dual obligations? Everything else is nothing more than smoke.
Liu Che-ting is a writer.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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