Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Mk2010/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
IN PUBLIC COMMENTS earlier this month, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang stated that the government has invalidated the household registration of one individual while stating that 12 others are under investigation as to whether they have acquired Chinese nationality.
Taiwanese who obtain Chinese national IDs have their household registration canceled by law. There has been increased attention to Taiwanese obtaining Chinese national IDs after a viral video by YouTuber Pa Chiung and rapper Chen Po-yuan in which Chen, formerly a pro-CCP influencer, travels to China to pretend to participate in Chinese United Front activity. The video showed Taiwanese easily obtaining Chinese national IDs while also retaining their Taiwanese passport, national ID, and Mainland Travel Permit for Taiwan Residents
According to the Mainland Affairs Council, in the past decade, 679 Taiwanese nationals have lost their household registration due to holding Chinese national IDs. While the Chinese government rarely discloses such data, in 2018, its statistics showed 22,000 Taiwanese had applied for household registration in China.
Yet in the video, Lin Jincheng, the director of the Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Park in Fujian, states that 200,000 Taiwanese have obtained Chinese national IDs. As such, the video has prompted alarm about the number of Taiwanese who may have obtained Chinese national IDs. For its part, the Ministry of the Interior has stated that this claim is exaggerated and that it has not found so many cases–even if it is true that hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese may currently reside in China.
Promotional image for Pa Chiung and Chen Po-yuan’s video. Photo credit: 攝徒日記八炯/Facebook
Local politicians, particularly at the lizhang or borough level, have come under scrutiny for having obtained Chinese national IDs. Five such cases have been reported to date. Though politicians have a grace period to give up Chinese nationality, elected officials are not allowed to hold other nationalities. If they do not give up their Chinese nationality, such individuals will lose their elected position.
That elected officials cannot hold Chinese nationality may be an issue for the TPP in the future. If the TPP alternates its party list legislators every two years, as the TPP claims it will do, one of the potential future legislators of the TPP will be a former Chinese national. Questions have been raised about whether Li Zhenxiu of the TPP has, in fact, given up her Chinese nationality.
Past incidents in which elected officials were found not to have given up other citizenships led to their losing their elected offices. After it emerged that KMT legislator Lee Ching-an was a US citizen in 2008, though initially denying such reports, Lee resigned from the legislator and then was invalidated from office. Former Nantou County Councilor Shi Xueyan, who was elected in 2021, too, was removed from office after it was found that Shi did not give up her Chinese nationality within the one-year window in which she was required to.
Members of the KMT have sought to distract from the controversy. For example, KMT legislator Chen Yu-chen has in comments disputed the claims in the online video that led to this wave of concern about the issue, suggesting that Chiung and Chen confused other forms of ID for a Chinese national ID and that what they were referring to was a form of ID more analogous to a Green Card than anything.
Likewise, some KMT politicians have sought to redirect attention to the issue of Chinese spouses of Taiwanese, claiming that the Lai administration is blocking hundreds of thousands of Chinese spouses from voting. The KMT has historically positioned itself as a defender of the interests of Chinese spouses in Taiwan, counting on them as a demographic that will vote for it during elections.
Other members of the KMT, such as legislator Weng Hsiao-ling, have defended Taiwanese holding Chinese national IDs. Weng has frequently expressed her view that Taiwanese are Chinese in public comments. Weng responded to the controversy by asserting that all Chinese nationals, too, are citizens of the ROC.
The DPP has raised the alarm about the issue, suggesting that to obtain Chinese national IDs, Taiwanese are required to turn over biometric information in a manner that is dangerous. The DPP has also suggested that the Chinese government could claim it is defending the interests of Chinese nationals in Taiwan as a justification for war in the future, similar to how Russia justified war on Ukraine by claiming to be defending the interests of Russian nationals in Ukraine.