Liberty Square: Risk of Traveling to China Increases, No Longer Time to Take Chances
2026/07/13 05:30
◎ Yang Zhiqiang
A district court judge traveled to China this April and was directly interrogated by three public security officers who entered his hotel room. The officers not only knew his identity as a judge in advance but also questioned him about his work, the cross-strait judicial systems, and his views on China. For judicial personnel on a purely non-official trip, being targeted due to their professional background shows that the Chinese Communist Party's focus on Taiwanese individuals is no longer limited to military, police, or intelligence personnel, but is gradually expanding to ordinary civil servants. This incident gives a more concrete outline of the risks of traveling to China in recent years.
According to statistics from the Mainland Affairs Council over the past two and a half years, there have been 30 reported cases of Taiwanese citizens being detained and interrogated in China, of which 14 involved civil servants, accounting for nearly half. This indicates that the risk has infiltrated Taiwan's public sector and is showing a trend of continuous expansion.
During interrogations, Chinese national security personnel often ask about the purpose of the visit, work content, and personal relationships, and may demand to check mobile phones or add WeChat for future contact. These practices go far beyond normal entry inspections and imply intentions of information collection and security review, highlighting that the Chinese Communist Party has integrated its work toward Taiwan into daily exchanges and personnel interactions.
Religious exchanges are also not immune. Recently, three members of the Yiguandao faith from Taiwan were restricted in their personal freedom in China, drawing public attention. This reveals that even religious, cultural, or public welfare exchanges may face legal risks under a dictatorial regime with different legal systems.
From the judge's interrogation, the high proportion of civil servants being detained and interrogated, to the restriction of religious figures' freedom, it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party has fully incorporated cross-strait exchanges into its national security framework. Anyone entering China—whether for tourism, visiting relatives, business, religious exchanges, or even ordinary civil servants—may become targets of political scrutiny or even restriction of freedom. The more frequent cross-strait exchanges become, the higher the risks people face in the absence of rule of law and human rights protection.
Under the guise of national security, the Chinese Communist Party continuously expands the boundaries of state power, incorporating normal exchanges into the framework of political control, eroding people's fundamental personal freedoms, and undermining the basic trust foundation for cross-strait exchanges.
"Just don't go if you don't have to" is now a necessary self-protection measure in the face of real risks. If we continue to judge today's Chinese Communist Party by yesterday's experience, we will only underestimate the systemic risks. The next person to appear in the Mainland Affairs Council's statistics could be a friend or relative of yours or mine.
(The author is a member of the Ministry of Education's Central Teacher Grievance Review Committee)
