Eyck Freymann
In October 2025, Chinese police opened a criminal investigation into Puma Shen, a sitting Taiwanese legislator, on charges of “separatism”—the first application of Beijing’s 2024 judicial guidelines targeting “Taiwan independence diehards.” Within weeks, People’s Republic of China (PRC) state media broadcast calls for his arrest via Interpol. Chinese social media accounts circulated satellite imagery marking his home and office in Taipei. Two months later, the PLA conducted its largest blockade exercise around Taiwan in years, with state media listing “leadership decapitation” among the drill’s stated objectives.
A year earlier, these developments would have seemed like escalatory fantasies. But they follow a pattern. In 2024, a PRC court sentenced a Taiwanese activist to nine years in prison on a charge of “separatism.” It was the first time Beijing had jailed a Taiwanese citizen under this charge. Later, a Taiwanese publisher received three years for “inciting secession” for books he published in Taiwan. The legal infrastructure Beijing has been assembling for two decades is being activated, in sequence, against progressively higher-profile targets. If the U.S. policy community wants to understand where a Taiwan crisis is most likely to begin, it should spend less time studying amphibious ship counts and more time reading PRC statutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment