Fighting transnational repression

When President William Lai (賴清德) opened the 10th Ketagalan Forum in Taipei on Tuesday last week, the instrument he singled out was not a missile system or a naval fleet. It was a statute.

China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law infringes upon Taiwan’s sovereignty, persecutes religions and minority groups, and uses transnational repression to impose political censorship “in all parts of the world,” Lai said.

His call for the international community to oppose it as one points to a larger opportunity Taiwan should not waste.

The law turns identity into jurisdiction.

Organizations and people outside the People’s Republic of China who undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division are legally responsible, Article 63 of the law says.

Beijing’s Ministry of Justice has rejected accusations of “long-arm jurisdiction” as unobjective and legally groundless, but few outside China appear reassured.

For Taiwan, the problem is especially close to home. China’s laws seek to strengthen the identification of “Taiwan compatriots” with the Chinese nation — a category Taiwanese have been assigned to without their consent and now comes with the threat of legal exposure.

China is projecting its “ethnic unity” policy outward, so it could headline an Indo-Pacific security forum. Transnational repression — when states reach across borders to silence, intimidate or coerce people connected to them — was for years treated mainly as a human rights problem. It is now an element of political warfare.

Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China cochair and former Japanese minister of defense Gen Nakatani characterized this shift clearly. When a country’s airspace is violated, a radar detects it and fighters scramble. Yet, when a person standing on democratic soil can no longer speak for fear of a foreign power, no alarm sounds.

His warning came weeks after Japanese journalist Akio Yaita, a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was attacked in Taichung on July 6, less than a week after the law took effect. The atmosphere Nakatani described is precisely what extraterritorial political intimidation seeks to create: fear without formal occupation; censorship without visible borders.

Former Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland offered a useful comparison.

The law’s extraterritorial provisions bear a “dark kinship with Russia’s malign use of linguistic, cultural and ethnic ties to justify illegal encroachment on the sovereignty of its neighbors,” she said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2021 published an essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, then invaded Ukraine seven months later, she added.

Democracies should state plainly that a foreign law assigning political loyalty on the basis of ethnicity cannot be enforced on their territories nor applied to their citizens, whatever their ancestry or passport, she said.

Europe has already reached much of the same conclusion on China without relying on Russia as an example.

On April 30, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law. The text was tabled jointly by the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Renew Europe and the Greens-European Free Alliance.

It condemned Beijing’s assimilation policies, urged China to repeal the law, called on the Council to activate the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime against those responsible for conceiving and implementing it, and urged member states to suspend extradition treaties with China.

ECR member Mariusz Kaminski compared the law to the worst practices of the Cultural Revolution, including pressure on children to report improper attitudes within families.

Greens-European Free Alliance member Catarina Vieira warned that the law’s impact could extend into the EU and deepen transnational repression against people living there.

A Polish conservative and a Dutch Green agree on little, but they condemned the same law in the same week, from opposite ends of the chamber. That is the coalition Taiwan should notice.

Its strength lies in the fact that it does not depend on a single analogy or one political family. The European consensus rests on minority rights, memories of totalitarian regimes, the safety of residents in Europe and concern over extraterritorial coercion. Taiwan should treat this convergence as a basis for practical cooperation, not only as a welcome diplomatic statement.

However, candor is needed about the limits.

A study commissioned by the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and published in January found that China was the leading perpetrator of transnational repression, responsible for 22 percent of documented physical attacks between 2014 and 2024. Yet, European responses to China’s transnational repression appear weaker than those for Russia or Iran, partly because member states seek workable relations with Beijing, including trade ties.

As a Pole, I recognize the institutional pattern. Poland is the EU’s top host state in that dataset, with 30 recorded incidents. Almost all incidents recorded in Poland originate in the former Soviet Union. Only two were from China.

Europe has the tools: asylum vetting, extradition scrutiny, skepticism toward Interpol notices and experience with cross-border intimidation. Those tools were built mainly to counter Moscow and Minsk, but now they need to be adapted to Beijing.

Last month, Taiwanese prosecutors granted deferred prosecution to two executives who had admitted helping Chinese cyber operators target the journalist network behind the China Targets investigation. Taiwan has lived with Chinese lawfare since China’s 2005 “Anti-Secession” Law and holds a caseload Europe often lacks.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the European Parliament’s June 16 resolution on countering transnational repression, and pledged to cooperate in information sharing and democratic resilience. That pledge needs institutional form.

Four steps would accomplish that.

First, Taiwan’s exclusion from Interpol should be treated as transnational repression, not only a diplomatic grievance. Taipei cannot see, contest or help expose abuse in the organization.

Second, EU member states should act on Parliament’s call and suspend extradition arrangements with China.

Third, the Council should test the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime against those responsible for designing and implementing extraterritorial repression.

Fourth, Taiwan and the EU should create a standing channel for transnational repression casework, allowing evidence collected in Taipei to inform European risk assessments, asylum decisions, sanctions files, extradition reviews and law-enforcement cooperation.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in June warned that Interpol has already partially lifted corrective measures against Russia. That is a reminder of how quickly ground is lost when nobody is watching.

“Like-mindedness” is one of the most exhausted words in Taiwan’s diplomatic vocabulary. Here, it should mean something concrete.

A Polish conservative, a Dutch Green, a former Japanese defense minister and a former Canadian deputy prime minister converged within a single month on one Chinese statute. Taiwan should treat that convergence as the beginning of a working architecture before Beijing’s lawfare becomes normalized.

Author:

• Marcin Jerzewski is head of the Taiwan office of the European Values Center for Security Policy and a fellow at Visegrad Insight.