Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) is to testify via video link to a US Congressional committee regarding reports that China planned to involve Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in a car crash while she was in Prague last year, a US government Web page on the hearing’s schedule showed.
The hearing of the US Congress Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) is scheduled for Wednesday next week.
Czech Military Intelligence Director Petr Bartovsky said that his agency received intelligence that Beijing had made plans to deter Hsiao via physical actions, including possibly by causing a collision with her vehicle, Czech Radio reported last month.
Photo courtesy of Fan Yun’s office via CNA
The alleged plan did not go beyond the preparatory stage, it reported.
Separately during Hsiao’s time in Prague, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese delegation, reports said.
The CECC hearing, titled “Stand with Taiwan: Countering the People’s Republic of China’s Political Warfare and Transnational Repression” is to be held at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington to “spotlight the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding campaign of political warfare and repression targeting Taiwan and the Taiwanese diaspora globally,” the commission’s Web site says.
The hearing would highlight Beijing’s use of transnational repression and political manipulation to interfere in Taiwan’s democracy and explore feasible countermeasures by international partners, it says.
Fan was invited as a witness to the incident and the reports from Hsiao’s time in Prague, and would testify over a video link, it says.
She would explain how the international community can help Taiwan enhance resilience, as well as share Taiwan’s strategies against Chinese political, cognitive and information warfare, it says.
US Senator Dan Sullivan and US Representative Chris Smith are the chair and cochair of the hearing respectively.
It has two panels, with Fan to testify at the first.
The second panel would be attended by former US Office of Naval Intelligence commander Mike Studeman, Jamestown Foundation president Peter Mattis and Audrye Wong, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California.
DPP Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋), who has long been researching Chinese “united front” and infiltration tactics, was also invited to testify, but was not available, as his mother passed away this week, a source familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The hearing would be broadcast live on the CECC’s official YouTube channel.
Additional reporting by CNA
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