China Sentences Taiwanese Activist to 9 Years in Prison for ‘Separatism’

Police stand outside a school in Yanshanpu, in Chinas central Henan province, on Jan. 21, 2024. Greg Baker / AFP

A court in China has sentenced a Taiwanese activist to nine years in prison on charges of “separatism,” authorities in Taiwan and Beijing have confirmed, drawing condemnation from the democratically governed island.

Yang Chih-yuan, a Taiwanese pro-democracy politician, has been detained in China since Aug. 3, 2022, hours after U.S House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrapped up her visit to Taiwan.

In April 2023, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced in a statement that Yang was formally arrested on charges of separatism.

On Sept. 5, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), responsible for handling policies toward China, said that Yang had received a nine-year jail term at a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to utilize this case to intimidate all Taiwanese people and exercise its long-arm jurisdiction over Taiwan,” Liang Wen-chieh, deputy minister of MAC, told reporters at a regular briefing in Taipei.

The Taiwanese government and Yang’s family rejected the “fabrication and false accusation,” the MAC said in a separate online statement on Sept. 5.

Taiwan condemns, “in the strongest possible terms,” the CCP’s decision, and demands Beijing disclose the verdict and provide an explanation of the evidence used to support the ruling, it said.

Human rights groups have highlighted the significance of Yang’s case, saying it represents the first time the Chinese regime has charged a Taiwanese citizen with separatism. Beijing has previously targeted some in Muslim Uyghur communities for “inciting separatism,” a crime that carries harsh punishment including the death penalty, but it rarely brought such charges against foreign nationals.

The CCP confirmed Yang’s sentence on Sept. 6. The jail term was handed down on Aug. 26, according to Xinhua, China’s state media.

Chen Binhua, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, stated that Yang is also subjected to three years of deprivation of political rights, which means that he might be unable to leave China until 2036.

Beijing accused Yang of seeking to promote Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations as a sovereign country and advocating “Taiwan’s independence” through the Taiwan National Party and other groups.

The CCP claims the self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary. While Taiwan has repudiated the CCP’s claim, the democratically governed island has been shut out of multiple international organizations under diplomatic pressure from Beijing.

As the CCP stepped up legal threats and military pressure on Taipei in recent years, Beijing has arrested and detained several people linked to Taiwan.

Taiwanese democracy activist Lee Ming-che poses in Taipei on Oct. 5, 2022. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

Lee Ming-che, a human rights activist from Taiwan, was jailed in China for five years over accusations of subverting state power. Lee was released and returned to Taiwan in 2022.

In April 2023, Chinese authorities announced that they arrested a Taiwan-based publisher on suspicion of violating security laws. The arrest was made a month after publisher Li Yanhe went missing while visiting relatives in Shanghai. Li is a Chinese citizen, but he has lived in Taiwan for more than a decade and married a Taiwanese woman. Li’s whereabouts are still unknown.

In April, China’s state media revealed that Taiwanese scholar Cheng Yu-chin was sentenced to seven years in prison for spying. Cheng was arrested while visiting China in April 2019.

The Taiwanese government has repeatedly told its 23 million people to reconsider traveling to China due to the heightened risk of wrongful detention after the CCP revised a host of laws and regulations in the name of security.

In June, Taiwan further raised its warning level and urged its citizens to avoid “unnecessary travel” to China, including Hong Kong and Macao.

Officials said a new legal guideline issued by China, which threatened the death penalty on what they called “diehard” supporters of Taiwan’s self-rule, poses “a serious threat to the personal safety of Taiwanese citizens.”