Republic of China legislator Cheng Cheng-chien, a member of the Nationalist Party (KMT), is being investigated for allegedly leaking government secrets to the Beijing government (“KMT lawmaker faces leaking to China probe,” Taipei Times, June 21, 2025).
A former assistant in Cheng’s office alleged that during his time as an elected representative, Cheng accepted funding from the Chinese Communist Party, the criminal complaint filed by [Lin Chih-chieh] said.
Lin also accused the 56-year-old Cheng of instructing the assistant to use his mobile phone to reply to messages from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and transmit official government documents to it via the social media app WeChat, the complaint said.
[The High Prosecutors’ Office] said that it has accepted Lin’s complaint and its team responsible for “major national security and social order threats” is investigating.
Cheng on Tuesday said in a statement that he has never accepted funding from China in his political career and never handed any confidential materials related to national security to the TAO….
Cheng (shown above) also contends that the accusations are merely a tactic in the campaign to recall him from office.
Total recall
The effort to remove Cheng is not isolated. Another Taipei Times story notes that Taiwan is “in the midst of an unprecedented wave of mass recall campaigns” going after KMT legislators. So far, the Republic of China’s Central Election Commission has approved recall motions against 24 KMT lawmakers, as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao.
KMT-led retaliatory recall petitions targeting DPP lawmakers have not been as effective, and 31 persons involved in these recall campaigns have been indicted for “forging thousands of signatures.”
A recall vote will take place on July 26.
KMT lawmakers are being targeted for siding with the People’s Republic of China against the ROC and trying to paralyze the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, hampering the country’s ability to defend itself from the aggressive mainland.
According to Michael Lin, a retired diplomat, “for more than a year, opposition lawmakers have frozen the Constitutional Court, expanded the legislature’s power, infringed on the powers of the executive, control and judicial branches, and have amended the Constitutional Court Procedure Act and the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures. They have also removed or frozen the budgets for national defense, foreign affairs, science and technology, which are seriously affecting Taiwan’s defense and the government’s national policies….”
Also see:
Taipei Times: “Four main reasons for the recall of lawmakers”
Taipei Times: “31 charged over KMT-led recall campaign forged petitions”
