Clearer alerts needed for Taiwanese after Chinese guidelines: Academic

Taipei, July 5 (CNA) Taiwan has issued a new travel alert for China after Beijing issued new guidelines targeting "diehard" Taiwan independence advocates, but a better and broader warning system is needed given China's reach around the world, an academic argued Friday.

The guidelines, issued on June 21, allow courts in China to try "Taiwan independence separatists" in absentia, with "diehard" advocates of Taiwan independence potentially sentenced to death, according to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The new rules could leave Taiwanese supporters of Taiwan independence who travel abroad vulnerable to being extradited to China, said Yu Tsung-chi (余宗基), former head of National Defense University's Fu Hsing Kang College, at a local forum on the topic.

To combat this vulnerability, made worse by China having some 270 consular posts worldwide compared to just over 100 for Taiwan, the government should come up with a better travel warning system that extends to countries under greater Chinese influence, Yu said.

Among them were countries sharing borders with China, such as Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, Yu said, but even democratic countries, such as the Philippines, Australia, and the United States see cases of forced disappearances almost every year.

As most forced disappearance cases linked to China were carried out by Chinese secret police or national security agencies stationed in foreign countries, Yu suggested that people take special notice of countries embedded with China's secret police stations.

Japanese journalist/political commentator Akio Yaita, a panelist at the forum, warned that "China has the audacity and the ability to continue" abducting people overseas to have them stand trial in China, just as it abducted Swedish national Gui Minhai (桂民海), shareholder of Causeway Bay Bookstore, in Thailand in 2015.

China has threatened democracies such as Japan and Canada by handing their citizens death sentences as a means to achieve its political goals because the death penalty is a powerful deterrence for democratic countries, Yaita said.

Though the "guidelines" are more likely at present to stifle pro-Taiwan stances among businesses and regular Taiwanese, they could have a "grave impact" on Taiwan's independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) if China were to start arresting people for supporting independence, Yaita later told CNA.

In a prepared speech, Presidential Office spokesperson Wen Lii (李問) also cautioned that Taiwanese will have to evaluate how the guidelines could affect their personal safety.

They should pay special attention when traveling to China, Hong Kong, countries that have an extradition treaty with China, and countries where China has an overseas police presence, Lii said.