“I’m never going to China for business again,” says a Taiwanese woman referred to as “Jannie.”
Jannie also says that the way she was treated during a recent trip to the mainland has given her a new understanding “of the fear people who live in unfree countries must feel” (Taipei Times, July 5, 2026).
Jannie—whose name has been withheld for her safety—in an interview told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’s sister paper) that she had been on a 10-day business trip to China for her employer, the Taiwan branch of a foreign-based corporation….
On the second-to-the-last day of her journey, Jannie checked in at a hotel in Shanghai and heard the concierge loudly saying her name, but she thought little of it at the time, she said, adding that she thought she might have been chosen for some visitor reward.
When she attempted to open the door to her room, she found that her key was not working and asked hotel personnel to badge her in instead, Jannie said.
As soon as she settled in her room, her phone rang.
The concierge called to say that two men wished to speak with her.
When Jannie went to see the men, they told her that they worked for Chinese counterintelligence and that their focus was Taiwan. After a “threatening display” of how much they knew about her and her husband—an officer with the ROC’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau—they demanded more information about him, like his phone number at work and what cases he had handled. She got the feeling that they were assessing whether they could use her as an informant.
The wrong word
“They coldly stated that China is ‘unifying Taiwan next year anyway,’ that they just want to be friends with my husband, then asked for his Instagram account. I told them that my husband and I have been married for decades, and we have always kept work separate, so I have no knowledge of what cases he had investigated at work.
“I was terrified that saying the wrong word would mean I could never go back to Taiwan again. I was suddenly gaining an understanding of the fear people who live in unfree countries must feel.”
Two years ago, the Chinese government announced that it would be justified in killing “diehard” Taiwanese “independence separatists.” A rather unambiguous manifestation of hostility and intentions. And just one reason that Taiwanese in the habit of hopping over to the mainland should reconsider…before being braced by CCP thugs.
Suppose the People’s Liberation Army invades Taiwan. Would any Taiwanese want to be present in China, available to serve as hostages, at the time? Perhaps an invasion could not be a surprise given the necessary preparations. But perhaps imposing an exit ban on Taiwanese visitors would be one of the very first of those preparations.
