China has made frequent moves to suppress Taiwan. In late November, in addition to confirming that Shi Zhengping, a blue-leaning scholar and former associate professor at National Taiwan Normal University, has been sentenced to four years in prison for espionage, the Taiwan Affairs Office admitted for the first time that it was drafting a list of “Taiwan independence stubborn elements” to be “punished in accordance with the law for organizing, planning, and carrying out secessionist actions inside and outside Taiwan. Does this mean that China is already preparing to launch a legal war against Taiwan in accordance with the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law, such as the “anti-secession” law?
In response to the Taiwan Independence List, Li Zhenguang, Vice President of the Taiwan Institute at Peking Union University, pointed out that it has a shocking effect of “internal explanation and warning to Taiwan,” and indeed further concretizes the “anti-secession law” that China has enacted for over 15 years.
However, some Taiwan analysts believe that Taiwan is not Hong Kong, unless the CCP has the ability to exercise “long-arm jurisdiction” to offer “painful” supporting sanctions such as asset freezes, travel bans or judicial arrests. Otherwise, the mere publication of this list may once again highlight the fact that “the Chinese Communist Party is not as powerful as Taiwan,” and it will become a laughingstock.
The purpose of the Taiwan independence list is to deter
China’s official Taiwan independence list has not yet been released, but hawkish official media such as the People’s Daily and the Global Times have already named Taiwan’s Executive Yuan Su as the number one Taiwan independence activist, and have threatened to pursue criminal responsibility against all Taiwanese who push for so-called “legal Taiwan independence” such as constitutional revision, constitution-making, and referendum. They will no longer be able to set foot on Hong Kong, Macao and mainland China, and their travels to other countries will become dangerous.”
The Global Times editorial in mid-November also threatened: “This list will become a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads for a long time, and it may come down at any time.”
China has drafted the list of Taiwan independence, Li Zhenguang said, because the “epidemic and independence” activities of people like Su Tseng-chang since the beginning of this year have aroused the anger of the Chinese people, so it is necessary to point out the names, internal explanation, but also to warn the Taiwan independence advocates.
He said that if the list is released, if the listed Taiwan independence activists cannot exercise “long arm jurisdiction”, they may have to “wait until unification is completed to settle the score”. However, it will have an immediate deterrent effect on financial investors who support Taiwan independence, especially those with a presence in China. Moreover, he believes that this list will further concretize China’s “anti-secession law”.
Li Zhenguang told VOA: “China’s legal battle against Taiwan has always been ongoing, because of our Anti-Secession Law. Because our anti-secession law has always been there, this list of Taiwan independence activists has begun to materialize. In the past, it used to say that if you do not violate the three conditions of Article 8 of the Anti-Secession Law, then we will not be able to resolve the issue by non-peaceful means. But now it’s saying that for certain Taiwan independence activists, these people should be singled out and warned. I think that is also a kind of political and legal shock. It should have its effect.”
China’s Anti-Secession Offering?
In 2005, the CCP implemented the “Anti-Secession Law,” in which, for the first time, Article 8 explicitly states that under three circumstances, China must take “non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to safeguard state sovereignty and territorial integrity. These three circumstances are: (1) The fact that Taiwan secedes from China. The occurrence of a major event that would lead to Taiwan’s secession from China. The possibility of peaceful reunification is completely lost.
In addition to the “anti-secession law,” China’s constitution, criminal law, and national security law also include the crime of secession, all of which may be applied to the unilateral definition of Taiwan’s independence by China. Analysts point out that, among other things, the “anti-secession law” unilaterally enacted against Taiwan has remained on the shelf for 15 years due to a lack of implementation details. In addition, China is not as powerful as Taiwan, and even if there were a one-sided source of law, it would be difficult to specifically punish the so-called Taiwan independence offenders.
In an interview with the Voice of America, former deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT), Zhang Rongongkong, said that the list of Taiwan independence cases does not yet constitute an element of China’s legal war against Taiwan, but it does imply that the Anti-Secession Law is a supplement to the implementation details.
He said, “The Anti-Secession Law has no implementing rules. The so-called Taiwan independence list is, I think, part of the implementation rules. Even if it is being drafted internally, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility, but will it be published? I’m just skeptical (of the attitude).”
Taiwan Independence List to help the DPP in the election?
Zhang Rong-Kong says that it is not surprising that China has an internal list of Taiwan’s independence proposals, but he fears that a formal announcement would only boost the DPP government’s election campaign in Taiwan. Given the counterproductive nature of such a list, he does not believe that China will formally announce it.
Zhang Jing, a researcher at the China Institute for Strategic Studies, also said that although there are instances of major powers releasing sanctions lists to each other, if they are not paired with “painful” substantive sanctions, such as freezing assets or judicially pursuing wanted persons, they will become a joke.
He told the Voice of America: “When it comes to sanctions lists, you can’t just have a list, you have to have supporting sanctions, or else you’ll be perceived as a bluff, and it’ll backfire if you’re perceived as an empty threat. Whether it is economic boycotts, asset freezes, travel bans, or even assassinations, it is important to be able to do what is said immediately, and to hit the target where it hurts, so that the target has something to fear. Otherwise, the release of such lists will become mere words on paper, and the adversary (Taiwan) will be accosted as a laughing stock.”
However, if the CCP were to make such a list available, would it have any real sanctioning effect?
In the case of Hong Kong booksellers, for example, Professor Emeritus Ding Shufan of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the National Chengchi University argues that China does have the possibility of exercising long-arm jurisdiction over its own territory, Hong Kong and Macau, or Thailand.
Ding told the Voice of America: “If one day these people, for example, pass by a Thai airport, and then, if their whereabouts happen to be known by Beijing, Beijing will ask Thailand to arrest them, and they may be arrested. Then Thailand basically probably won’t resist Beijing’s pressure very much, so that means it’s possible.”
Ding Shufan believes that the purpose of the Taiwan independence list is to divide Taiwanese society and reduce support for the DPP, but it has had little effect. As for sanctions against individual individuals, he said that as long as Taiwan independence activists avoid visiting these pro-China countries, their lethality is also limited.
On the whole, he said, China’s focus on Taiwan is getting smaller. In the past, China waged diplomatic wars against Taiwan because Taiwan had few diplomatic ties, and the marginal effect became smaller and smaller. Even though Taiwan’s economy is highly dependent on China, because of Taiwan’s superiority in the high-tech industry.
In the past, China has imposed economic sanctions such as the withdrawal of mainlanders from the “poor Taiwan”, which rarely hurt Taiwan’s economy. In particular, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry leads the world, and after the U.S.-China trade war, it has become even more popular as it has moved closer to the United States.
According to Mr. Ding, even for traditional industries with low technology standards, such as machinery and molds, as far as he knows, the local government in China, which has been hit by the Xinguan epidemic, is using economic incentives to discourage Taiwanese businesses from moving their production lines out of China for fear of losing jobs.
Therefore, even if China launches a legal battle against Taiwan in the future, the effect should be limited, according to Ding Shufan.
Taiwan’s Independence List is a drag on the KMT
On the contrary, Ding Shufan said, the announcement of the Taiwan independence list will not only boost the DPP’s future elections, but also further drag down the KMT’s elections. That is why, he said, there are rumors among his friends in the Blue camp that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been strongly advised not to do this “piggy-backing” to hurt the Blue camp’s election.
Taiwan, having gone through a period of one-party dominance and dictatorship, has long since ceased to punish unification and independence after its democratization. In particular, the younger generation of Taiwanese, with less ties to China’s umbilical cord, are more inclined to the “natural independence” ideology of freedom.
According to a recent poll released on Monday (Nov. 30) by Vision Magazine, not only do less than 10% of the Taiwanese support One China and reunification, but a whopping 66% of the Taiwanese believe that neither side of the Taiwan Strait will be reunified in the next decade.
Under these circumstances, the Communist Party’s use of the Taiwan independence list to promote unification is feared to be counterproductive and will only highlight the Communist Party’s anti-democratic practices of suppressing dissent and labeling ideological criminals, as well as the nature of its totalitarian system.
The Taiwan spy case reflects the puritanical atmosphere in China
In addition, in the Taiwan spy case, Shi Zhengping, who was sentenced to four years in prison, was imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party because of his blue-leaning party affiliation, his position as chief writer of the pro-communist Taiwanese media Want Want China Times, and his frequent writings criticizing the Tsai Ing-wen government.
He said that the participation of scholars in seminars and the compilation of public reports and speeches by Chinese scholars should not be classified as espionage to gather enemy information, unless Shi Zhengping was caught with any excessive prying facts.
He said that the handling of espionage cases is supposed to transcend the blue and green partisanship, and the key is whether there are facts of intelligence gathering. When cross-strait relations are easing, Zhang Ronggong said, it is true that “private communication” can be used to accommodate the situation. However, now that the confrontation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is becoming more and more acute, even to the point of “tearing each other apart,” he said, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have gradually lost their room to maneuver.
According to Shi Zhengping’s earlier admission of guilt on CCTV, he said that since 2005, he has been receiving funds and instructions from Taiwan’s Military Intelligence Service (MI6) to “collect intelligence information when attending cross-strait exchange seminars and even write reports for the National Security Agency (NSA),” because he was “strapped for cash.
Ding Shufan says that the fact that scholars who interview and write reports are convicted of espionage reflects the puritanical atmosphere under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule and the tightening of the red line of ideological control, which not only shapes the monolithic political regime in China but also makes think tank scholars in Taiwan and Washington, D.C., who study cross-strait affairs, reluctant to visit China.
The biggest problem,” he said, “is that because of Xi Jinping’s internal control, he is becoming more and more solemn. The biggest problem is that Xi Jinping’s internal controls are becoming more and more strict. “So, if you don’t dare to speak, if you go to the mainland to do an interview, you must find someone to interview you, and then after the interview, will you (the interviewee) leak state secrets? That is, if our friends in the mainland don’t dare to talk about it, then those of us who are academic teachers doing China studies don’t dare to go (to China).”
Zhang Jing, on the other hand, worries about the prospects for cross-strait exchanges after the Taiwan spy case. He posted via Facebook in mid-October: “If we leave decent scholars in the lurch, who will be the one to interpret Beijing’s policies in the future, I’m afraid the answer will be a bitter laugh.”
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