Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Charlie Qi/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
YANG CHIH-YUAN, a co-founder of the Taiwanese National Party (TNP), was sentenced to nine years in jail earlier this month.
News of Yang’s arrest first broke in 2023. On April 25th, 2023, The Beijing Daily reported that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate had approved Yang’s arrest following an investigation by the National Security Bureau of Wenzhou, Zhejiang. Yang was held under Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, a form of detention used in China by which the state holds prisoners in special facilities often referred to as “training centers”, though these may be former hotels converted into prisons, and is not required to notify families of arrests.
The TNP is a pro-Taiwanese independence organization. Nevertheless, the organization is not very well known, even among pro-independence groups.
Yang previously had a history of pan-Green activism, including having previously been a member of Chen Shui-bian’s abortive pro-independence Taiwan Action Party Alliance, which dissolved in 2020, and the DPP. Yang, likewise, was a participant in the 2008 Wild Strawberry Movement and 2013 protests against Ma Ying-jeou.
Yang originally disappeared in January 2022 after traveling to China for a Go tournament. It is not clear why Yang thought it safe to travel to China, though the obscurity of the TNP may have contributed to his view that it would be safe for him to travel to China.
Yang’s political background was otherwise unusual. Yang was also friendly with members of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), which has been accused of ties to pro-unification organized crime groups such as the Bamboo Union triad. Yang was even solicited by the CUPP as a political candidate.
Yang Chih-yuan in 2019. Photo credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Although his whereabouts were unknown after his disappearance, it became known that he had been imprisoned by the Chinese government in August 2022 when he appeared on Chinese state-run media while in detention. This was in the same timeframe as then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s historic visit to Taiwan and China’s live-fire drills in response to the visit. According to the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) at the time, Yang’s family had not reported his disappearance to them. The MAC issued a travel advisory for China after Yang’s imprisonment became known.
Yang’s sentencing was criticized by the MAC as an instance of the Chinese government targeting individuals who otherwise had political views that the majority of Taiwanese may hold. In particular, the MAC pointed out that many Taiwanese hold views that the Chinese government might construe as pro-independence. This is the first case of an independence advocate being sentenced by the Chinese government.
Indeed, in spite of the Chinese government issuing guidelines for legal action against advocates of Taiwanese independence, and releasing a list of Taiwanese independence advocates sanctioned by China, these were mostly high-profile, national figures such as former Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu and Sunflower Movement student leader Lin Fei-fan. Actions actually targeting Taiwanese independence advocates have been relatively rare, though domestic repression in China has likely discouraged individuals with such views from traveling to China, or they might otherwise be stopped at the border.
Ironically–and perhaps driving home the point that many Taiwanese have views that the Chinese government might consider pro-independence, even if they do not view themselves as pro-independence in a Taiwanese political context–a number of Taiwanese known to be detained by the Chinese government are actually pro-unification advocates. Examples include pro-unification academic Tsai Chin-shu, whose disappearance only came to light in 2019 after more than 420 days in detention because his family, too, sought to keep quiet about the matter. Similarly, pan-Blue academic Shih Cheng-ping was sentenced in 2020 to espionage charges, thought to be over an article he wrote for the China Times, and this was not reported on initially because his family had also kept quiet on the matter.
Notably, Yang had already been held for some years before his sentence was announced. Apart from illustrating China’s opaque legal system, in which an individual may have been held for two-and-a-half years before any sentence was announced, it is still to be seen whether China intends to make more examples of purported pro-independence advocates going forward. If so, its reach will likely be limited to Taiwanese in China, perhaps making it all the more dangerous for Taiwanese to travel to China–even if not pro-independence advocates, there is always the risk of China misunderstanding Taiwanese political views and framing individuals as pro-unification.