Calls to denounce “die hard” Taiwanese secessionists, a tipline to report them and punishments that include the death penalty for “ringleaders” – Beijing’s familiar rhetoric against Taiwan is turning dangerously real.
The democratically-governed island has grown used to China’s claims. Even the planes and ships that test its defences have become a routine provocation. But the recent moves to criminalise support for it are unnerving Taiwanese who live and work in China, and those back home.
“I am currently planning to speed up my departure,” a Taiwanese businesswoman based in China said – this was soon after the Supreme Court ushered in changes allowing life imprisonment and even the death penalty for those guilty of advocating for Taiwanese independence.
“I don’t think that is making a mountain out of a molehill. The line is now very unclear,” says Prof Chen Yu-Jie, a legal scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.
But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.
“Any statement you make now could be misinterpreted and you could be reported. Even before this new law China was already encouraging people to report on others,” the businesswoman said.
That was made official last week when Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.
By making pro-Taiwanese sentiments a matter of national security, Beijing hopes to “cut off the movement’s ties with the outside world and to divide society in Taiwan between those who support Taiwan independence and those who do not”, Prof Chen says.
She believes the guidance from the Supreme Court will almost certainly result in prosecutions of some Taiwanese living in China.
“This opinion has been sent to all levels of law enforcement nationwide. So this is a way of saying to them – we want to see more cases like this being prosecuted, so go and find one.”
“In recent years, patriotic education has become prevalent in Macau, with more assertive statements on Taiwan creating a more tense atmosphere compared to pre-pandemic times,” he added.
Taiwan, which has powerful allies in the US, the EU and Japan, rejects Beijing’s plans for “reunification” – but fears have been growing that China’s Xi Jinping has sped up the timeline to take the island, an avowed goal of the Chinese Communist Party.
For more than 30 years Taiwanese companies – iPhone-maker Foxconn, advanced chips giant TSMC and electronics behemoth Acer – have played a key role in China’s growth. The prosperity also brought Taiwanese from across the strait who were in search of jobs and brighter prospects.
“I absolutely loved Shanghai when I first moved there. It felt so much bigger, more exciting, more cosmopolitan than Taipei,” says Zoe Chu*. She spent more than a decade in Shanghai managing foreign musicians who were in high demand from clubs and venues in cities across China.
This was the mid-2000s when China was booming, drawing money and people from across the globe. Shanghai was at the heart of it – bigger, shinier and trendier than any other Chinese city.
“My Shanghainese friends were dismissive of Beijing. They called it the big northern village,” Ms Chu recalls. “Shanghai was the place to be. It had the best restaurants, the best nightclubs, the coolest people. I felt like such a country bumpkin, but I learned fast.”
