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BEIJING: China is considering drawing up a blacklist of “staunch” supporters of Taiwanese independence, the government said on Wednesday, which could cause Beijing to try to take legal action against democratically elected President Tsai Ing-wen.
Taiwan condemned the plan after the Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao first reported on it this month. The widely read Chinese tabloid Global Times has said the list could include senior Taiwanese government officials.
China claims that autonomous Taiwan is its own territory. The Taiwanese government says the island is already an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name, although China rejects this position.
Zhu Fenglian, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the “list of staunch Taiwan secessionists” now under consideration was only aimed at a very small number of independence supporters and those who fund them.
“It is not aimed at the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots at all,” he told a regular news conference in Beijing.
Zhu did not give details or a time frame, saying only that Beijing would take “specific measures to severely punish in accordance with the law” those it considered staunch supporters of independence.
Chinese media have said that the 2005 Anti-Secession Law, which mandates the use of force if China judges that Taiwan has declared independence, as well as national security legislation, could be used to prosecute those on the list.
It is unclear how it would unfold, as Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan, and Taiwanese government leaders do not visit China.
The measures follow Beijing’s July presentation of new national security laws for Hong Kong, led by Chinese, that prescribe sentences ranging up to life in prison for crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
Separately, Zhu said that this week a Chinese court sentenced a Taiwanese national to four years in prison for espionage.
Last month, Chinese state television aired a series of programs with “confessions” by Taiwanese spies, which Taiwan described as a trap and another reason why people are afraid to visit China.
