On June 28 last year, the Australian parliament passed the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2018, receiving broad bipartisan support. Although the Australian government did not specify Chinese espionage and interference at the time, it was generally accepted that concerns over Chinese Communist Party-directed espionage and the buying of political influence were major drivers behind the amendment.
Australia, at least, is taking the issue of Chinese political interference and espionage seriously.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus are attempting to push through an anti-infiltration bill targeting individuals or groups acting under the direction of “infiltration sources” to aid and abet foreign actors. The bill’s content and the DPP’s insistence on pushing it through its third reading on Tuesday next week are proving contentious.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party, has said that he agrees with the bill in principle, but would need to see details ironed out.
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong, who is also the PFP’s presidential candidate, has said that the definition of terms and the scope of the draft are too loosely defined, and might place Taiwanese businesspeople and students in China in legal jeopardy. He also wants the bill’s contents to be subject to stricter legislative review and not to be rushed through before the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections just because the DPP has a legislative majority based on an “old mandate.”
Hon Hai Precision Industry founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), politically aligned with Ko and Soong, yesterday backtracked from staging an occupation of the Legislative Yuan akin to the “Sunflower movement” if the DPP continued with its plan to rush the third reading, but still demanded more transparency in the process.
The DPP caucus has said that the passage of the bill is crucial for national security, adding that other nations, such as Australia, have enacted similar legislation. It also said that the bill does not target businesspeople or students, only people that carry out the bidding of foreign powers to interfere in Taiwan’s political process.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), campaigning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) and the KMT’s presidential candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), on Wednesday also questioned the scope and clarity of definitions in the bill.
These positions are all reasonable.
However, Ma added that this kind of law does not exist anywhere else in the entire universe, and that it amounted to a return to the political suppression of the Martial Law era and the White Terror overseen by the KMT.
In this he went too far. His comments were an insult to the intelligence of the electorate and to the victims of the White Terror and their families. He was not contributing to the debate over the necessity of the law, nor the appropriateness of the process. Instead, he was once again rolling out the tired trope of a fictitious “green terror” that the pan-blue camp has long been trying to push.
Ma wants to portray the government as a corrupt regime; the DPP understands that if it loses the presidential election, or even its legislative majority, the bill stands little chance of being passed in the form it wants; and Soong is positioning himself as the more rational choice between two extremes. All players understand how their stance on this bill will hone the electorate’s view on each party’s relationship with China.
Taiwan needs this legislation. Politicians and political parties need to get their act together and work for the good of the nation. There is no reason why, through rational debate, there cannot be broad support for it.
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