Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 玄史生/CC0
THE TAIWANESE GOVERNMENT has sought to call attention to the detention of three Yiguandao followers in China.
The three individuals, surnamed Chiang, Chou, and Hsieh, were detained on charges of “organizing and practicing as members of a cult that undermines law enforcement.” The Mainland Affairs Council, however, has sought to emphasize that Yiguandao is a religion that has millions of followers in Taiwan and that the three were not engaged in political activities, but legitimate religious activity.
This is not the first time that Taiwanese Yiguandao members have faced detention from the Chinese government. In December 2023, a Taiwanese member of the religion was also detained in China.
But a number of Chinese Yiguandao members have faced arrest since 2018, seeing as the religion also has many Chinese adherents. Two waves of sentences took place in 2018 and 2019, with most sentenced to around one year in prison. The most severe sentences were reserved for individuals framed as ringleaders, however, which were up to three years. But, as may not be surprising, there has generally been relatively sparse awareness of the fate of Chinese members of Yiguandao, who mostly converted after coming into contact with Taiwanese members of the faith.
The Taiwanese government has particularly sought to hit out over the fact that the Chinese government used organized religion as part of its United Front activities directed at Taiwan. After all, the gods and goddesses worshiped as part of Taiwanese folk religion generally originate in China. Daoism, too, originates in China, and the form of Buddhism practiced in Taiwan can also be traced back to China.
Such United Front activity has often framed Taiwanese temples as subordinate to Chinese temples, seeing as many temples in Taiwan began as offshoots of temples in China. Sometimes this is accomplished by having the deity of a specific temple in Taiwan travel to China, with this framed as a means of returning to the motherland.
To this extent, United Front activity often dovetails with organized crime and electoral politics in Taiwan, with gangs that have strong links to China or neighborhood politicians serving as vectors of Chinese political influence. Temples in Taiwan sometimes are at the nexus of organized crime, organized religion, and electoral politics. Namely, gangster groups recruit from neighborhood youth who pass their time at temples, while temples are a key site for local politicians in soliciting votes, as a result of which borough chiefs and neighborhood-level politicians sometimes base their offices near temples.
The most prominent case in point may be with regard to the Yen family in Taichung. Family patriarch Yen Ching-piao previously served as a KMT legislator and was known for being a gangster. He is currently head of the Dajia Jenn Lann Temple, which runs the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage, the largest religious pilgrimage in Taiwan. His son, Yen Kuan-heng, later inherited the elder Yen’s legislative seat, even if the Yen family has seen pushback in past years from local residents and the increased willingness of the Taiwanese media to report on cases of corruption that they are implicated in.
It proves ironic, then, that religious exchanges hardly prove a two-way street if Taiwanese religious practitioners are targeted by Chinese persecution, on the basis of claims that such religious activity seeks to undermine the Chinese government. While this arguably takes place the other way around, efforts to restrict Chinese influence operations in Taiwan conducted under the guise of organized religion have faced challenges, particularly as this could potentially infringe on fundamental freedoms of religion.
Still, it is probable that the Chinese government’s targeting of religious organizations in China occurs because of broader concerns about any organized religion potentially becoming a threat to the CCP if it were to become any catalyst for political organizing, with China all too aware of how this proved the case in the former Soviet Union, and in other contexts.