Nathan Attrill and Shelly Shih
China has built not only a military to coerce Taiwan, but an army of lawyers to intimidate and constrain it. In 2025, Beijing’s lawfare campaign shifted decisively from largely declaratory threats to active enforcement. The objective is not legal resolution but deterrence: raising the personal cost of engagement with Taiwan’s democracy and normalising coercion under the fig leaf of law.
One clear indicator is the sharp rise in the detention and restriction of Taiwanese nationals in mainland China just in 2025. While Beijing frames these detentions as routine law enforcement, the pattern points to a deliberate strategy: using vague or politicised national-security charges to intimidate Taiwanese citizens, deter travel and engagement with the mainland, and signal that legal risk now attaches to Taiwanese identity itself.
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