Sun, Jul 19, 2026 page8

• China channels the Third Reich

  • By Chiang Huang-chih 姜皇池
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  Recently, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) passed the “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress.” Article 21 of this law says: “The State promotes economic and cultural exchange and cooperation across the Taiwan Strait, deepens cross-strait integration and development in all fields, enhances Taiwan compatriots’ sense of belonging to, identification with and pride in the Chinese nation, promotes the joint inheritance and advancement of Chinese culture by compatriots on both sides of the strait, and strengthens the understanding that we all belong to the Chinese nation and are all Chinese.”

  Under this provision, the relationship between Taiwan and China is defined as a domestic affair, seemingly affecting only the people of Taiwan.

  However, under this law, the PRC not only becomes the sole spokesperson for “Chinese people,” but effectively positions itself as the final and only authoritative interpreter of the “Chinese nation” or “Chinese culture.” Anyone who holds an understanding or interpretation of “Chinese people,” the “Chinese nation,” or “Chinese culture” that differs from the PRC’s can be labeled a criminal guilty of “undermining national unity.”

  The provision is a means of shackling and restricting people’s imagination, ideology and thought regarding nationhood.

  For the international community, the most noteworthy provision is Article 63, which states: “Organizations and individuals outside the territory of the [PRC] who carry out acts that undermine national unity and progress or create national division against the [PRC] shall be held legally accountable in accordance with the law.”

  Accordingly, regardless of nationality, regardless of borders, and regardless of the nature of the act, any person (including natural persons and legal entities), anywhere, engaging in any such conduct becomes subject to this law.

  China is attempting to use the “ethnic unity law” to provide an extraterritorial legal foundation for its strategy of transnational repression — using all manner of harassment, inconvenience, or verbal or physical violence and even threats to personal safety, thereby instilling fear in the hearts of people around the world and suppressing their inner thoughts about the Chinese state, nation and culture.

  International law permits a state, under the protective principle of jurisdiction, to extend its prescriptive jurisdiction beyond their territory to safeguard certain vital national interests, yet the scope of what may be claimed is strictly limited — covering only matters such as national security, the personal safety of government officials, violations of immigration or customs laws, counterfeiting of a state’s currency or seal, or specific acts of terrorism, among similar matters.

  Therefore, the protective principle can hardly serve as a jurisdictional basis for the PRC to regulate the political speech of foreign nationals, still less can it legitimize the PRC’s attempt to oppress and threaten foreign nationals abroad who hold thoughts and ideologies different from its national policy.

  In 1885, a US citizen, A.K. Cutting, was arrested in Mexico for libeling a Mexican citizen in a newspaper published in the US. In his message to the US Congress at the time, then-US president Grover Cleveland stated that the jurisdiction as claimed by Mexico was “novel in history,” since “whereby any offense committed anywhere by a foreigner, penal in the place of its commission, and of which a Mexican is the object, may, if the offender be found in Mexico, be there tried and punished in conformity with Mexican laws.”

  Cleveland therefore rejected this claim and protested the exercise of such a law, on the grounds that it was “unwarranted by the principles of law and international usages.”

  Among the cases of abuse of the protective principle discussed in international law literature, the practice of Nazi Germany is worth serious reflection. German courts, invoking the preservation of the racial purity of the German nation, convicted a Jewish alien for having had sexual intercourse with a German girl in Czechoslovakia. Viewed in this light, the PRC’s invocation of slogans about “national unity” and the “great Chinese nation” seems to cast the shadow of Nazi Germany’s defense of racial purity. Just as Nazi Germany elevated the purity of the great Germanic nation to an absolute, unbounded principle, one must ask whether criticizing the “great Chinese nation” might likewise be treated as an act obstructing national unity and impeding the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

  If so, then under Article 63, regardless of that person’s nationality or location, they would still be held legally accountable.

  China’s ethnic unity law takes political ideology as defined by the PRC — such as the “revival of Chinese culture” and “national unity” — and casts them in the form of legal text, imposing this ideology on all people worldwide. Anyone whose interpretation of the “great Chinese nation” or the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” diverges from China’s official view could potentially be deemed to have “undermined the unity and progress of the Chinese nation” or “created national division.”

  Such application has no basis in any principles concerning jurisdiction recognized under international law, possesses no legality or legitimacy whatsoever, and its application threatens to further infringe upon the sovereignty and jurisdiction of states around the world.

  Chiang Huang-chih is a professor of international law in National Taiwan University’s College of Law.
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