Taiwanese who have recently traveled to China for tourism, to visit friends or relatives or for business reasons have been interrogated, detained and faced other forms of unreasonable treatment from Chinese officials, a source said on Sunday.
Among them was a Taiwanese who was detained for eight hours at an airport in China due to their research, which is related to religion, while others have had their travel documents for China canceled for a number of reasons, the source said.
In July, China expanded the scope of its counterespionage law, and recently announced a draft amendment to the law on the protection of state secrets.
Photo: Reuters
Beijing says that the law aims to further protect China’s state secrets, and counter the intelligence work of “hostile Western forces.”
State secrets were previously dispersed among units in China and managed independently, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to amend the law to manage sensitive information centrally, the source said, adding that Beijing sees the centralization of information and resources as a way to prevent the party from weakening.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rule, China has given top priority to national security, the source said.
“Chinese who attended Halloween activities this year and wore costumes were later visited at home by national security officials who wanted to know who organized the events,” the source said.
Chinese customs officials have also increasingly been interrogating people arriving from the US, Japan and other countries, they said.
“Taiwanese academics who were invited to China to participate in exchange activities were recently detained at the airport for questioning, and their laptops and mobile phones were all searched,” the source said.
“The CCP is particularly afraid of organized religions... If you bring a Bible or religious publications into China, you might face criminal prosecution,” they said.
Over the past year, China has increasingly interrogated foreigners entering the country, and many foreign experts and academics have been arrested arbitrarily, they said.
In related news, Taiwanese officials have been unable to secure information about Taiwanese National Party vice chairman Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵), who was arrested on charges of “endangering national security” and “secession” in Wenzhou, China, in August last year.
Since his arrest, Beijing has refused to grant Yang’s family or Taiwanese officials access to him, the source said.
The Mainland Affairs Council called for Yang’s release in April after the Chinese Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced that it would indict him.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty