The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is giving money to templegoers in Taiwan and subsidizing trips for them to visit China, a Taiwanese intelligence official said yesterday.
The CCP is partially or fully funding Taiwanese’s trips to China to attend religious pilgrimages and events as part of “united front” efforts, the source said, adding that it incentivizes the recruitment of more participants by paying borough wardens and temple heads based on the number of people who sign up for trips.
The CCP has been targeting Taiwan’s most popular temples and recently organized a trip to attend an event in China’s Fujian Province celebrating the sea goddess Matsu’s (媽祖) 1,065th birthday, the source said.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Templegoers have also been invited to visit cultural sites in China to “promote a language, ancestry and cultural roots shared between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” they said.
“The CCP pays NT$1,000 per person recruited by temple and borough heads to attend these events. If they manage to sign up 100 people or more, that rate doubles,” they said.
“Participants at most pay for their airfare. Everything else is covered after their arrival,” the source said, adding that officials from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office often show up to speak to the Taiwanese participants.
“Some borough wardens see this as a free trip to China, while others avoid traveling with the groups, seemingly concerned about being seen as group leaders. Instead, they meet up with the group later in China to create the impression that they are traveling separately,” they said.
Officials have found examples of such trips by temples large and small throughout Taiwan, including in Miaoli and rural parts of Tainan, they added.
“Accepting CCP-funded hospitality does not align with the norms of legitimate exchanges,” they said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS