Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Chi-Hung Lin/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
CHINA’S NEW LAW on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress has led to warnings from the DPP that it could be used to target Taiwan.
In particular, the law aims to “forge a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.” In this sense, it is possible that promoting Taiwanese independence, or even the maintenance of Taiwan’s de facto independence from China, as well as current democratic freedoms, could be constructed as against ethnic unity.
The law has extraterritorial implications, as was also true of the national security legislation passed in Hong Kong some years ago. In this sense, it is also to be seen if the law is used to target Taiwanese when they travel abroad. Taiwanese could have already fallen afoul of the national security law so one notes that Beijing may have passed various versions of laws that have a similar intended effect.
It is less clear if the law is specifically directed at Taiwan. Namely, the framework of ethnic unity is historically more directed at Uyghurs, Tibetans, and others that the Chinese government considers to be “ethnic minorities.” Certainly, Taiwanese Indigenous would also fall under this framework.
Nevertheless, Taiwan is a majority Han polity, and so it is a question as to whether it is the main target of the law. Advocating for independence is already considered a crime by China and so, while the new law may give China another legal weapon against Taiwan, this is not exactly new. But it is also possible that the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress is aimed at being a sequel of sorts to the Hong Kong national security law of 2020, so as to keep the threat of legal punishment up in the air when it comes to Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, or other groups that China considers “separatists” or a threat to what it frames as “ethnic unity.”
The law’s passage already takes place in the context of the mass imprisonment of Uyghurs in camps that are termed “vocational schools”, extensive surveillance of Uyghurs through technological means, as well as attempts to stamp out Tibetan culture and language through the use of boarding schools. If there has been more international attention on the situation faced by Tibetans and Uyghurs, the situation faced by the more than fifty ethnic minorities that there is a relative lack of focus on is also important.
Indeed, there is no question that the object of the law is to target dissidence, it is just unclear who the specific target of the law is. Details will be clearer when China actively begins to use the law. If the target is primarily “ethnic minorities,” the attempt may be to shore up and consolidate existing laws. If the law is used to target Taiwanese, it would represent the growing use by China of an ethnic or civilizational frame when targeting Taiwan.
To this extent, it may not be surprising that the Lai administration and DPP have framed the law as dangerous to Taiwan, so as to remind of the continual threats that Taiwan faces from China–and with electoral ends in mind. A motion to condemn the new law in the legislature was blocked by 60 KMT and TPP legislators, however.
This continues the pattern of the KMT and TPP blocking any motions from the DPP legislators that involve critiquing China. When news broke in 2025 that a Chinese military attaché had plotted to ram a vehicle into Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s motorcade during a trip by her to Prague, the KMT and TPP, too, voted down a proposal to condemn the act. Comments by KMT and TPP legislators, in the meantime, cast doubt on whether there had been such a plot. Still, the optics of voting down criticisms of China may not reflect well on the KMT, particularly ahead of elections, if a sense of fear about Chinese threats from the electorate and the perception that the KMT is too close to China lead to backlash against it.