Beijing’s is worsening cross-strait relations and creating fear by taking “political hostages,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators said yesterday, referring to Chinese media reports that three Taiwanese men had been detained and confessed to being spies against China.
“Under China’s authoritarian regime, you can be arrested and prosecuted on whatever charges it wants to pin on you,” DPP Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said. “Chinese government officials need no evidence to convict people, all they need is to extract a confession out of you.”
The three men are “political hostages” in China’s “coercive diplomacy” against the exterior world — in this case, Taiwan, Wang added.
Photo: Wu Chun-feng, Taipei Times
China’s policy of arresting Taiwanese and other foreigners “is part of its ‘grand external propaganda’ machine to generate the impression that foreign forces are conspiring to subvert the Chinese government,” Wang said, adding that it is also to make Chinese fearful of having contact with Taiwan’s pluralistic culture.
Wang warned Taiwanese to assess the risk of investing in China or of taking trips to China, Hong Kong or Macau, saying that they could be arrested regardless of their party affiliation.
“China is a very dangerous place now, so people go there at their own risk,” Wang added.
Deputy Legislative Speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) told a media briefing yesterday that the three men are unknown to him and other DPP officials, and that they do not work for the party.
“Chinese state media claim that Taiwanese spies were caught — these are fabricated reports, that we can tell from the details presented,” Tsai said. “It will only worsen cross-strait relations, pushing the two sides farther apart.”
The negative news would only make Taiwanese angry and hostile toward China, he said, adding that people would think that Beijing is presenting false evidence to pin everything on Taiwan and the DPP.
“It will also bring fear to Taiwan’s business community,” he said.
Recounting how afraid a Taiwanese with investments in China was during the reports about the detainees, Tsai said that his friend is pro-China and even cheers: “Long live the Chinese motherland,” at events, but is still scared of being arrested the next time that he travels to China.
One of the three, former Czech Republic-based academic Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽), had in 2004 enrolled in a doctoral program at Charles University in Prague before founding and directing a think tank called EU-China Economics and Politics.
Tamkang University professor Wang Kun-yi (王崑義) said that he followed Cheng’s career after having him as student in 1997, and participated in university conferences in China with him.
“Cheng told me his think tank was actually a company to help Chinese students gain admission to post-graduate programs in Czech Republic,” he added.
The professor could not believe that Cheng was a spy, saying that while Cheng was not known for his pro-China stance in the past, he had worked to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative during his stay in Europe.
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