National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) flew to Beijing yesterday, making him the highest-ranking Taiwanese police officer ever to visit China, officials said.
Wang and his 16-member delegation were to meet Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱).
The delegation’s visit follows Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Chen Zhimin’s (陳智敏) secret — at the time — visit to Taiwan from Sept. 13 to Sept. 18.
PHOTO: CNA
Wang will also visit Shanghai as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces before returning home on Tuesday.
“The purpose of the visit is to ramp up cooperation on ways to battle crime on both sides,” the National Police Agency (NPA) said in a statement.
In April last year, Taiwan and China forged an agreement on judicial cooperation and joint efforts to beat crime.
The NPA said that since the signing of the agreement, police on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have arrested 1,254 people from the other side on fraud charges, although the Ministry of Justice’s -statistics show China has only repatriated one fugitive, while Taiwan has submitted 165 requests for such repatriation
A ministry official was quoted by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) as saying that although Taiwanese authorities have provided their Chinese counterparts with Taiwan’s most-wanted list, China does not seek out the individuals on the list, but only informs Taipei when Chinese police apprehend suspects who happen to be on the list, in which case these people may then be repatriated.
As of June, only one fugitive had been repatriated from China, although he was not a white-collar criminal on the most-wanted list, the official told the newspaper.
The official said that both sides also disagree on jurisdiction.
Since Taiwan does not recognize China’s criminal jurisdiction, a Taiwanese fugitive who was sentenced by China’s courts would face a new trial after being repatriated.
Beijing hopes that Taiwan would recognize Chinese court rulings and allow Taiwanese convicted in China to serve their prison terms in Taiwan on the basis of the Chinese court sentences, the official said.
Because this has yet to happen, Beijing has been reluctant to repatriate Taiwanese fugitives convicted in Chinese courts, the official said.
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