In 2021, a 24-year-old Chinese student in Taiwan, surnamed Zhang (張), started sending e-mails under the name “Takahiro Karasawa,” in which he claimed that he had planted bombs in public places across the nation, such as airports, railway stations and the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
Zhang’s warnings all turned out to be hoaxes, but they made a lot of trouble for police officers and detectives, and disrupted the operations of transport companies.
There has recently been another spate of hoax bomb threats. As Zhang has left Taiwan some time ago, local authorities had no choice but to ask China to apprehend the suspect, in accordance with the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議). However, Beijing has so far not responded to this request. This raises suspicions about whether the bomb warnings are a “gray-zone operation” orchestrated by China.
Everyone knows how strictly China controls the Internet. Anyone who is found to have circumvented the “Great Firewall of China” to access foreign Web sites may be fined 1,000 yuan (US$142), which is twice as high as the fine for using illegal drugs. That Zhang could continue sending e-mails threatening Taiwan for three years — especially during periods when Taiwan is receiving international support against China’s military and non-military threats — makes one suspect that even if the Chinese government does not authorize his activities, it at least tacitly approves of them.
If that is so, it is unrealistic for the government to ask for China’s assistance through the aforementioned agreement. After all, the Chinese government itself is making military threats against Taiwan and constantly waging cognitive warfare by spreading disinformation.
China would like there to be more threats like this to spark turmoil in Taiwan, and allow the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and other pro-unification forces in Taiwan to push their “China superiority theory” and play the “cross-strait peace card.”
If so, how can anyone expect China to cooperate with Taiwan’s request to arrest the suspect?
John Yu is a civil servant in Taipei.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”