Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Kuruman/WikiCommons/CC BY 2.0
THE LAI ADMINISTRATION plans to roll out a new system requiring public servants to notify the government before travel to China. This will affect public servants at all levels, whether they are elected officials or not. Legislators, public servants, members of the military, borough chiefs, and others will all be required to notify the government of planned travel to China, as well as comply with regulations when there.
Legislators will face special scrutiny, in that they may be required to publicly disclose details of their itinerary, and may require approval for trips. Legislators, as well as others who have access to classified information, will face stricter regulations.
Borough chiefs and lower-ranking politicians, on the other hand, do not have access to classified information but have still proved susceptible to Chinese United Front tactics in past years. The 2024 election cycle led to scrutiny on the practice of borough chiefs taking their constituents on subsidized trips to China, in which participants were taken on tour activities designed to emphasize the economic benefits that Taiwan could see through union with China, as well as a cultural narrative framing Taiwan as quintessentially Chinese.
The announcement of this new system occurs in the same timeframe as a controversy involving DPP party members working in high-profile positions. This includes the assistant of Joseph Wu, previously Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current head of the National Security Council having been found to be spying for China. The DPP has stated that it will enforce new security checks for party members who serve in government positions, while more broadly, the government has stated that it will be more stringent on security checks for civil servants. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the individual in question passed a security check prior to being hired as Wu’s assistant.
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This is the most high-profile of the cases for which the DPP has come under scrutiny. However, the DPP has framed the cases as related, in that a series of related cases were discovered by virtue of their connections. Since then, the government has stated that it will step up security checks for public servants.
It may not be surprising that the KMT has pushed back against the new notification system, claiming this to be a violation of political freedoms. KMT politicians who meet with Chinese government officials during trips to China are likely to be particularly affected by the notification system.
The most prominent case in point involves KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi. Fu previously tried to hide a trip to Hong Kong by posting an image of himself at home on social media, claiming to be absent from the legislature due to sickness. In reality, Fu had traveled to China as part of what he later claimed was a business delegation. Further controversy ensued from that a member of Fu’s delegation was arrested during the trip upon entry to Hong Kong, but Fu apparently did little to help, and did not report the arrest to authorities once he returned.
More generally, Fu’s trips to China have attracted public scrutiny with the view that Fu accepts directives from China that he then carries out after returning to Taiwan–hence the KMT’s actions in the past two years, by which they have sought to reshape the checks-and-balances of government in their favor. Fu has also been accused of receiving campaign goods paid for by China, for use in campaigning locally–he is not the only KMT legislator to be accused of such actions, either.
Nevertheless, the new regulations could impact other visits to China by KMT politicians, including former president Ma Ying-jeou and others.
The Lai administration has grown more combative on the issue of Chinese officials visiting Taiwan as part of cross-strait exchanges with KMT local governments. Though the Mainland Affairs Council did not act to block the city-based exchange between Taipei and Shanghai that took place in December last year as a high-profile one-day event held by the administration of Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an, it did reject some Chinese members of the delegation being allowed to visit Taiwan, framing their presence as redundant. The Lai administration has also called Ma and others in for questioning regarding student exchanges held by Ma, in which Chinese students who traveled to Taiwan made public comments stating that Taiwan was part of China.