A total of 415 Taiwanese who traveled to China have gone missing, been detained or been imprisoned since January 2024, including several followers of the I-Kuan Tao (一貫道), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
I-Kuan Tao is a religious movement that combines elements of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and folk religion, and has a significant following in Taiwan.
China banned it after 1949 and classifies it as an “evil cult,” largely because it operates independently of state-controlled religious institutions and engages in missionary activities that Beijing considers illegal.
Photo: Screen grab from the Mainland Affairs Council’s Facebook page
From January 2024 to Friday last week, 158 Taiwanese who traveled to China have gone missing, 33 have been detained and 224 have been imprisoned, MAC data showed.
An official familiar with cross-strait affairs yesterday said the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly arrested Taiwanese followers of I-Kuan Tao.
Of the cases included in the government’s statistics, 23 people were detained because of religious activities — 20 I-Kuan Tao members and three members of other religious groups, they said.
Only three of those people have so far returned to Taiwan, while 17 I-Kuan Tao members remain imprisoned in China, the official added.
The MAC has met with leaders of the I-Kuan Tao Association and the chairpersons of its local branches, who are aware of the persecution faced by their believers in China, the official said.
The association has used its networks to notify followers that “at this stage, it is not advisable to travel to China to engage in missionary activities,” the official added.
However, some followers have a spirit of taking risks and sacrificing themselves for missionary work, and continue to travel to China, putting themselves at considerable personal risk, the official said.
I-Kuan Tao is an important religious organization in Taiwan, ranking behind Buddhism and Taoism in terms of size, they said.
‘A POSITIVE FORCE’
It has also carried out extensive charitable and public welfare activities in Taiwan and overseas, and is a positive force for Taiwanese society, but is not tolerated by the Chinese government, the official said.
The official criticized Beijing for treating I-Kuan Tao as an “evil cult,” despite the group’s teachings being based on the Four Books and Five Classics, some of the most important works of Chinese culture.
“If the Chinese authorities believe that these people should not engage in missionary activities, they could simply deport them,” they said. “They should not use criminal proceedings to convict and imprison them.”
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