A Taiwanese fugitive in China, who allegedly has become a member of a political organization there, has lost his citizenship, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Wednesday.
Lien Shang-ming’s (連上銘) Taiwanese citizenship was revoked after it was found that he had obtained a household registration in China, the council said in statement.
Taiwanese are prohibited from registering households in China, holding a Chinese passport or serving in China’s political, military or administrative organizations, the MAC said, citing the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Lien has been a fugitive since he was charged with offenses related to vote-buying in Taiwan and is being investigated by authorities for allegedly becoming a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the MAC said.
A Jan. 25 report published on a media Web site in Beijing said that Lien is a member of the CPPCC’s Hunan Province chapter and director of a service center for Taiwanese investors in Yueyang City.
The council said that Lien has been on a wanted list in Taiwan since 2020, when the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office charged him for illegally trying to sway voters in the presidential election that year.
He was accused of using Chinese funds to woo support for then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) by hosting fundraisers among Taiwanese expatriates in China and subsidizing airfares for them to return to Taiwan, in collaboration with six other Taiwanese there.
One of the six, Lin Huai (林懷), who was head of a Taiwan investors’ association in Changsha at the time, is now serving a 38-month prison sentence in Taiwan after he was convicted of election interference crimes.
Lien has been living in Yueyang since 1999 and is married to a Chinese woman, Chinese media said.
In 2007, he became head of the Taiwanese investors service center there and has since organized a series of annual activities for young people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
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