The government must step up its efforts to prevent individuals or groups from participating in China’s schemes to infiltrate the nation, as Beijing is using all its means to gain the personal data of Taiwanese, Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) said in Taichung on Saturday.
Chen’s call came after Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who have become nationalized Republic of China citizens said that they have been told by family members back home that they must provide information about themselves and their Taiwanese family members for China’s seventh national census, which is being conducted this year.
Some of the spouses said Chinese police last month visited their parents and demanded — or even threatened — saying that the parents had to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) effort to collect personal information on children in Taiwan, and some were told to send the census form directly to them, Chen said.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
The form asks for national identification numbers and passport numbers; addresses; party affiliation; time of party membership; religion; and the addresses and telephone numbers of their employers, he said.
The Chinese spouses fear that providing such information for the Chinese census could cause them legal problems in this country, while noncooperation could endanger their Chinese relatives, he said.
The government must boost its steps to prevent the CCP’s infiltration attempts, he added
Taiwan Think Tank consultant Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said the CCP could be seeking the information for a database to analyze interpersonal networks among Taiwanese, improving the success rate of controlling targets that “yield high value” — via threatening or incentivizing approaches, or both — and having them work toward its political agenda.
For example, if the CCP could obtain data on the social connections of a high-ranking government official and the information showed that a friend was in frequent contact with people in China, the friend could be used as a medium to influence the official, Lai said.
“Personal information is not just about individual privacy, as it pertains to higher-level issues, such as social and national security. Personal information is an asset that is valuable to a nation,” he said.
When democracies, such as Taiwan, conduct censuses, they never seek to include information on people who live in and have been naturalized in other countries, as such as a move would raise suspicions about the collection of such information, Lai said.
The government should warn its allies of China’s ill intentions, as it is likely seeking the same kind of data from Chinese who live in other nations, he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council urged Chinese spouses not to become political pawns for China.
Individuals or groups found guilty of helping the Chinese government in illegally obtaining the personal information of Taiwanese can be sentenced to a prison term of up to five years and fined a maximum of NT$1 million (US$33,220) under the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
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