Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 維基小霸王/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
OVER THE WEEKEND, Chinese courts announced new legal guidelines that include the death penalty for supporters of Taiwanese independence. These individuals are termed “diehard Taiwanese independence separatists,” with the death penalty specified for “ringleaders” of Taiwanese independence.
Some have interpreted the measures, then, as threatening the death penalty for Taiwanese political leaders. If so, this proves an escalation from previous measures rolled out by Beijing that previously sanctioned Taiwanese.
This includes a September 2021 ban on Su Tseng-chang, Joseph Wu, and Yu Shyi-kun, who were then serving as Premier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Legislative Yuan president, that prevented them or their relatives from entering China or conducting business with Chinese entities.
This was followed up in May 2024 with sanctions on five Taiwanese citizens and their family members. These individuals were Huang Shih-tsung, Lee Zheng-hao, Liu Bao-jie, Wang Yi-chuan, and Yu Pei-chen, and they were either politicians or political commentators, something interpreted at the time as indicating that China’s had come to include media commentators within the purview of political sanctions. Though some of these five individuals, too, were labeled “diehard” supporters of Taiwanese independence, what was unusual was some of these were, in fact, individuals who had pan-Blue political backgrounds.
China likely aims to intimidate with its new legal guidelines, then. In particular, Chinese authorities may have their aim at establishing a chilling effect. Namely, the new guidelines also state that individuals who “extensively distort and falsify the fact that Taiwan is a part of China in the fields of education, culture, history, and news media” also fall under the purview of the guidelines. This may be intended to silence media, academia, and commentary, in line with how previous sanctions expanded to target media personalities and not just politicians.
Photo credit: Charlie Qi/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
To this extent, questions have been raised as to whether the Chinese government aims to establish similar precedents to the national security law in Hong Kong. This occurs despite the fact that, of course, the Chinese government does not have jurisdiction over or administer Taiwan currently. The aim may be to establish a legal precedent for Taiwan in the future, if China does take over Taiwan–or to create the perception that this could happen in the near future and so China is already preparing.
As security legislation in Hong Kong goes to show, the Chinese government aims to intimidate through the use of national security legislation on the basis of vague legal definitions. At the same time, one notes that the timing of the new guidelines perhaps were not coincidental. Namely, the new guidelines were announced in the same timeframe as the legislature was set to vote on controversial measures to expand legislative powers pushed for by the KMT. This expansion of legislative powers has been compared to national security laws in Hong Kong or in Southeast Asia.
Taiwanese influencers who reported having received offers from Chinese media entities to become part of a cross-strait political party, too, stated that they had been requested to make statements about supporting cross-strait peace before the 21st. China may be attentive to the current Bluebird Protests in Taiwan and tailoring its United Front activity, as well as threats directed at Taiwan, accordingly.
Still, the Chinese government may not actually be helping itself here, if through this deliberate timing it furthers the perception that the KMT’s current actions in Taiwan are at its behest. While the DPP has alleged this, as a way to rally its base in reaction to what is framed as Chinese threat, the Chinese government may be unwittingly giving this narrative more backing.
Furthermore, one notes that the Chinese government has floated the notion of a ban targeting all Taiwanese independence advocates for years. Such a ban would be difficult to enact, given the difficulty of determining a list of all Taiwanese supportive of Taiwanese independence, drawing up such a list, and checking that list at the border. Rather outlandishly, there has even been the suggestion that China would draw up a kill list of supporters of Taiwanese independence for use in the event of an invasion, but this would be difficult to carry out in practice for the same reasons, and the idea has mostly been floated as a form of intimidation. China likely aims to build on such precedents with its more recent efforts at intimidation