As Beijing grows wary of pro-independence groups seeking to forge closer ties in Taiwan and Hong Kong, activists say they are coming under increased surveillance and harassment from pro-China media outlets and unofficial “operatives.”
Visits to Taiwan in January by several Hong Kong rights advocates, including Tony Chung (鍾翰林), generated heavy coverage by two pro-China newspapers, including detailed reports of their movements and meetings.
The coverage prompted Taiwan to investigate the activities of the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao on “national security” grounds.
Photo: AFP
The government found that the newspapers committed “unlawful” acts, including invasive surveillance, and spread “fake news.”
Officials said that journalists from the papers would be banned from traveling to Taiwan for up to three years if the media outlets did not provide a “reasonable explanation” for their activities there.
An examination of both papers’ articles show that at least 25 people linked to anti-China and independence causes have been the subject of intense coverage, including covert photography and the reporting of personal details, in Taiwan in the past three years.
The Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po did not respond to a request for comment.
Such papers, which typically take a pro-Beijing stance, would be expected to pay close attention to people pursuing causes that upset the Chinese government.
However, rights advocates say that their coverage stretches into the realm of harassment, including surveillance on overseas trips, and publishing details of their private lives, including homes, work and daily movements.
“It’s obvious that there’s intervention from outside forces with an aim to intimidate people,” Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said, referring to the coverage from the pro-China papers.
The coverage raised concerns about the activities of “Chinese and Hong Kong intelligence operatives” in Taiwan, including people working for pro-China media outlets, Chiu said.
Activists have also been physically attacked during trips to Taiwan.
In July last year, two Taiwanese were convicted of assaulting Hong Kongers meeting with independence advocates in Taiwan. Three Hong Kong men were later named in Taiwanese media coverage as helping facilitate the attack.
“I was followed until I almost left the airport,” Andy Chan (陳浩天), convener of the Hong Kong National Party, said of his time in Taiwan. “There are operatives for China everywhere.”
In an annual report to the US Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in November last year said that since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016, Beijing has feared “collusion between ‘separatist forces’ in Taiwan and Hong Kong.”
“Beijing is trying everything in its power to prevent this,” said a security source in the government, who declined to be named.
The source and a second security official involved in national security say that China has been quietly ramping up the number of intelligence operatives in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Wu Jieh-min (吳介民), a Taiwanese academic who has researched civil movements in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and was barred from entering Hong Kong for an academic conference in late 2016, said Beijing is “very worried about the exchange of ideas.”
“If the ideas of civil society are not hindered, their power will be greatly enhanced,” Wu said.
Wu said that mass, protracted protests in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2014 that railed against Chinese interference were a catalyst for deepening activist ties on both sides.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and its main representative body in Hong Kong, the Liaison Office, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Wen Wei Po has also paid close attention to foreigners in contact with Hong Kong rights advocates.
In December last year, Wen Wei Pao reporters and photographers covered the daily activities of Kevin Carrico, an Australia-based political scientist, during a visit to Hong Kong in which he met with independence advocates, and featured him on the front page.
“I was a little creeped out by the fact that the article discussed my presentation. There were only 15 people there,” Carrico said of a private meeting in the basement of a Hong Kong building.
He said that there had been “a real escalation of Beijing’s political operations in Hong Kong.”
Activists in Taiwan and Hong Kong describe an increase in unknown individuals shadowing their meetings and events, sometimes taking photographs or recording their conversations.
In some cases, activists have been attacked and the assailants identified.
Two Taiwanese, Chang Chih-min (張志民) and China-born Zhang Xiuye (張秀葉), in July last year were found guilty of a 2016 assault on two Hong Kong independence avocates, Andy Chan and Jason Chow (周祖菴), at a Taipei hotel.
Zhang and Chang were convicted of defamation and fined NT$6,000 and NT$8,000 respectively. Chang was also found guilty of “intimidating and endangering the safety” of Chan.
Zhang and Chang were among at least eight people who beat Chan and Chow and called them China “traitors” at the Caesar Park Hotel, Taipei court documents show.
Chan said he was at the hotel to meet with a journalist with a little-known Hong Kong publication called Pacific Magazine.
Zhang is a senior member of the Chinese Concentric Patriotism Party, which advocates unification of Taiwan and China.
“It was purely an accident” that they ran into Chan at the hotel, Zhang said.
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