The US is “deeply concerned” about China’s new legal guidelines that target advocates of Taiwanese independence, a senior US Department of State official said on Thursday.
“We’re deeply concerned and, if passed as prologue, we’re concerned that China could apply these regulations to others overseas as well,” Assistant US Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink told members of the US House of Representative’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Kritenbrink was referring to guidelines introduced by Beijing on Friday last week that allow courts in China to try “Taiwan independence separatists” in absentia.
Photo: Screen grab from the committee’s YouTube channel
Under the guidelines, “diehard” advocates of Taiwanese independence convicted of inciting secession and who are also deemed to have caused “grave harm to the state and the [Chinese] people,” could be sentenced to death.
The guidelines might be used for extraterritorial application of Chinese law in ways that are deeply disturbing, and could also have a chilling effect on cross-strait dialogue and interaction, Kritenbrink said.
China’s move was clearly designed to intimidate people and prevent them from candidly expressing their opinions about the situation across the Taiwan Strait, he said.
Kritenbrink said he would be happy to look again at the Taiwan Travel Act, which was signed into law in 2018 to allow high-level officials of the US to visit Taiwan and vice versa.
He was responding to questions from US Representative Young Kim on whether there were any department restrictions that would prevent President William Lai (賴清德) and other senior officials from traveling to the US for purposes other than a stopover.
There is frequent two-way travel and interaction between Taiwan and US, Kritenbrink said.
“We support travel and engagement,” he said, adding, however, that he had no immediate plans to visit Taiwan.
“Traditionally, based on our robust, important, but unofficial partnership with Taiwan, we don’t have those leader-to-leader meetings that would imply sovereignty,” he added.
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