An anti-infiltration bill proposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers has met with strong opposition from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
During a public hearing the KMT caucus held on Dec. 10, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) criticized the bill, calling it a bad, anti-constitutional law.
Although Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, opposes the bill less fervently than Ma, his visit to China’s liaison office in Hong Kong shows why he evades issues related to Chinese infiltration.
At a news conference on Dec. 11, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) spoke of the bill as part of the DPP administration’s “continuous political manipulation by revising laws to incite hostility, and restrict and suppress normal exchanges across the Taiwan Strait.”
It is clear that the KMT is unabashedly chiming in with China in opposing anti-infiltration efforts.
The bill is a magic mirror that reveals the true colors of Taiwanese politicians. One after another, people who have received benefits from China, or are close to Chinese money and power, are opposing it.
The most conspicuous instance is retired army lieutenant general and former KMT Central Standing Committee member Lo Wen-shan (羅文山), who was sentenced to 30 months in prison by the Taipei District Court on Dec. 3 for accepting illegal political donations from then-Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) member Xu Zhiming (許智明). The CPPCC’s illegal donations were used to campaign for pro-China candidates in elections and buy gifts for pro-China individuals.
According to the district court’s verdict, Lo admitted that Xu said the money was to be used to run newspaper campaign ads for Ma, who was seeking re-election as the KMT’s presidential candidate, in the name of the Chinese Huangpu Four Seas Alliance Association (中華黃埔四海同心會), and to pay for accommodation, meals, gifts and other expenses when a delegation led by Xu met with Ma at the Presidential Office, visited former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and threw banquets.
With Ma opposing the bill so strongly, one cannot help but wonder if he has received gifts from the CPPCC. Other questions are why the CPPCC spent so much money campaigning for him, and why Ma insists on agreeing with China when the US, Australia and other nations are working hard to prevent Chinese infiltration.
The court ruling made it clear that Lo had received illegal political donations from Xu to buy gifts for Lien and Ma. Are they so strongly against the proposed foreign influence transparency and infiltration bills because they have enjoyed benefits from the Chinese Communist Party for so long?
The anti-infiltration bill is not reinventing the wheel as Ma claimed, as the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法) is not enough to investigate infiltration.
For example, in Lo’s case, if the Huangpu association he chaired had not been registered as a political association, it would have been almost impossible to uncover that they had accepted Chinese funds to campaign for pro-China candidates, and it would be even harder for a court to recognize the funds as political donations.
How many Taiwanese groups, individuals and companies receive Chinese funds to infiltrate Taiwanese politics and media outlets? The Political Donations Act and other laws are not enough to bring them to justice.
There clearly is an urgent need for the anti-infiltration bill as an important mechanism for defending our democracy.
Huang Di-ying is a lawyer and the vice chairman of the Northern Taiwan Society.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017