For citizens of the Republic of China, the risk of traveling to mainland China should by now be hard to dismiss. But whether obliviously or advisedly, Taiwanese keep making the trip.
Personal or business reasons for doing so may seem less important to Taiwanese visitors who survive a scary brush with the Chinese Communist Party and manage to make it back home. But not everybody manages.
Taipei’s Mainland Affairs Council announced on July 9 that so far in the month, ten more people traveling from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China have been reported missing by friends and family (Vision Times, July 16, 2026).
The missing include four persons who had gone as a group.
The MAC also says that since January 1, 2024, 157 Taiwanese citizens have been reported missing. Another couple of hundred are suspected of having been detained, and 30 are known to have been temporarily detained for questioning.
A deputy minister with the Council, Liang Wen-chieh (shown above), “urged Taiwanese civil servants not to assume that they face no risk simply because they are rank-and-file employees with no access to state secrets. He warned that Chinese state security personnel have expanded the scope of their questioning beyond military personnel, police officers, and individuals with security clearances to include grassroots public employees who do not handle classified information.”
Fabricated reports?
The Chinese Communist Party asserts that the reports that ten people from Taiwan have gone missing in China are fabricated.
A peculiar claim no matter how you look at it. Suppose CCP officials know nothing about the missing persons and had nothing to do with anyone going missing. Would the considered official response of an innocent government be “they can’t possibly be missing, it’s lies, all lies”? Instead of, say, an offer to help find them?
Yet Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs office, says that Taipei “fabricated and deliberately spread false information in an attempt to mislead the people of Taiwan…. As long as Taiwan compatriots [sic] do not engage in illegal or criminal activities, they can come to the mainland happily and return home safely.”
The CCP’s understanding of what constitutes “illegal” or “criminal” activity is almost infinitely broad and includes something called “separatism.” A couple of years ago, the Chinese party-state declared that it would be justified in executing “diehard separatists.” These are ROC citizens who know that they are not “compatriots” of PRC citizens, i.e., are not fellow citizens of the People’s Republic of China. All “separatists” are diehard in the sense that advocates of the doctrine that two plus two is four are diehard. Once you know, you can’t unknow.
“Separatism” is a “crime” of which every citizen of the Republic of China who is conscious, honest, and verbal is guilty (“Yes, we are separate from mainland China”). Or of which no one in this category is guilty (“No, we are not ‘moving toward’ independence; we’re already there”).
