Speaking at the Legislative Yuan on April 26, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) confirmed that Chinese secret police exist in Taiwan, but in a different form than in European and American countries.
US law enforcement authorities identified offenses committed by Chinese secret police that should be quite familiar to people in Taiwan, given their close resemblance to the thuggish behavior of pro-unification groups such as the Concentric Patriotism Association and the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP).
Fukien American Association cochairman Lu Jianwang (盧建旺), who was arrested in New York, and former Concentric Patriotism Association secretary-general Zhang Xiuye (張秀葉), who was sentenced by a Taiwanese court in July last year, followed a similar pattern of emigrating from China and being naturalized as citizens of other countries, after which they acted as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the guise of serving their fellow expatriates.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited the US in September 2015, Lu mobilized his associates to disrupt the peaceful petitioning activities of Falun Gong practitioners by using a sea of flags to block the view of Falun Gong posters and banners. During President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) stopover in New York in March, Lu got up to his old tricks, mobilizing Chinese expatriates to heckle and protest against her.
Zhang is most notorious for loitering near the Taipei 101 skyscraper and other places frequented by Chinese tourists, waving China’s five-star national flag to welcome “our compatriots from the motherland.”
Zhang and her associates also heckled and provoked nearby Falun Gong practitioners, which has resulted in physical confrontations.
Zhang was previously dismissed as a political radical with sympathies for Beijing, but she confessed in court to having received long-term financial support from sources connected to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
She even stood for election as a Taipei City councilor and used funding from China to bribe voters by wining and dining them. When she was about to be sentenced for these offenses, she snuck out of Taiwan and is now a fugitive.
The indictment filed by US prosecutors accuses Lu and his associates of stalking, intimidating and assaulting Chinese dissidents in the US. Taiwan has had similar incidents in which pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong have been targeted.
In January 2017, when then-Hong Kong lawmakers Edward Yiu (姚松炎), Nathan Law (羅冠聰) and Eddie Chu (朱凱迪), and democracy advocate Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) flew to Taiwan to exchange ideas with Taiwanese democrats, they were surrounded and heckled at the airport by CUPP members.
In late September 2019, Hong Kong singer Denise Ho (何韻詩) arrived in Taiwan to participate in a pro-Hong Kong demonstration, where she was attacked from behind and doused with red paint by a CUPP branch chairman.
In April 2020, Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), the former manager of Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Books, was attacked with red paint by someone claiming to be a CUPP member.
The verdicts in these cases only dealt with the superficial criminal offense, while there was no investigation into what links the behind-the-scenes organizers might have with the CCP. Repeated lenient treatment of the culprits has emboldened their overseas puppet-masters.
In October 2000, the Aegis restaurant in Taipei’s Gongguan (公館) area, which employed young exiles from Hong Kong, had its facilities spattered with chicken manure. The suspects, who had gang connections, confessed to having been paid by someone in China. At midnight in August 2021, there was a fire at the restaurant that destroyed all of the decor, machinery and goods, forcing it to close down completely.
CCP collaborators in Taiwan are few in number, but are keen to impress their patrons. They oppose democracy under the banner of democracy. In the name of religious freedom or resistance to political oppression, they have repeatedly abused freedom of expression and association to harm Taiwanese society.
Their behavior is highly reminiscent of China’s secret overseas police and needs to be more thoroughly investigated by the authorities.
Chen Yung-chang is a company manager.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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