Demand for Mainland Spouses to Prove Identity Suggests DPP Preparing for Political Purge

China Times Opinion By Tsai Hsuan, April 11, 2025

The immigration directive of President Lai Ching-te's administration has sparked widespread panic among the 140,000 mainland Chinese spouses and their Taiwan-born children, threatening their very status in Taiwan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration's new policy requiring "supplementary proof of loss of original household registration" explicitly targets this group, driving many into bureaucratic dead-ends. This move exposes the hypocrisy and selective justice of Taiwan's democracy, turning the so-called "witch hunt" against mainland spouses into a full-blown political purge.

Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang has already launched a sweeping investigation into whether Taiwanese citizens hold Chinese identity documents. Extending the scrutiny to naturalized mainland spouses now cloaks a political struggle in the guise of administrative updates and legal procedures. It is, in reality, an expansion of state power under the cold calculations of the DPP administration. Through this scapegoating strategy—from disenrollment to disenfranchisement—the Lai administration is using the pretense of the rule of law to carry out a political cleansing, fostering exclusion, severing historical ties, and attempting to reshape its own legitimacy. Clearly, this purge has become an elegy for democracy.

According to Article 9-1 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, applicants for naturalization must provide proof of renouncing their Mainland household registration—a rule established in 2004 and enforced for over twenty years. Why, then, has the DPP suddenly launched this mass "supplementary documentation campaign"? The timing, methods, and scope all raise suspicions that the real aim is not mere administrative housekeeping, but a premeditated purge through punitive disenrollment.

Those targeted are individuals who have long settled in Taiwan, raised families, paid taxes, and participated in elections. These naturalized citizens had their status thoroughly vetted and approved by the government at the time of naturalization. Forcing them now to re-prove their legitimacy—or face immediate deregistration—is a form of administrative violence, a precise institutional assault. Behind the so-called "lawful governance" lies explicit political calculation: purging certain voters to reshape electoral demographics.

The most alarming aspect of this "supplementary proof" storm is how openly it betrays Taiwan's professed democratic values. Taiwan has long prided itself on its commitment to human rights, but this policy reveals a "selective amnesia." When legally naturalized citizens with ID cards can be stripped of their citizenship rights—including voting, recall participation, and social benefits—by an administrative decree, this is no longer a democracy but exclusionary citizenship severance.

This type of "disenfranchisement governance" is characteristic of authoritarian regimes targeting dissent. If a government can so easily strip basic rights from its citizens, democracy degenerates into a mechanism of state coercion. If your past identity is reclassified as a "foreign hostile force," you may be deemed incompatible with the ruling party's ideology—and thus no longer qualified for citizenship. Forced to manage naturalized mainland spouses as "systemic risks," this approach worsens societal divisions, treating those born across the strait—who have fully integrated into Taiwan—as "unfinished enemies."

This political mentality is not democracy; it is persecution. It is not governance; it is intimidation. Some of those targeted have been Taiwanese citizens for over 30 years, fulfilling all legal obligations. Due to a "missing document from two decades ago," they face deregistration. What kind of country does this? According to the National Immigration Agency (NIA), the Ministry of the Interior, and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), affected individuals must obtain a "proof of loss of original registration" from their former residence in mainland China, notarized to validate the supplementary filing.

Most of these early naturalized spouses have long severed ties with China; many original household locations no longer exist, making it virtually impossible to provide such proof. Yet the government demands that they produce these documents within three months—effectively trapping them in an unsolvable historical quagmire. This is no longer about national security; it is pure political malice. Imposing near-impossible conditions and then disenrolling people en masse for "failure to comply" is not governance—it is entrapment, systemic abuse of naturalized citizens.

Tragically, these individuals are not illegal immigrants or hidden populations; they are law-abiding Taiwanese, naturalized through official procedures, paying taxes, and contributing to society. Their children are already second or third-generation Taiwanese. Now, they must face the humiliation of questioning whether their parents are even considered Taiwanese. This is not the enforcement of the rule of law—it is the destruction of trust. It is not improving the system—it is democratic backsliding.

By pushing this political purge, the DPP administration has crossed from administrative failure into moral collapse. Suppose Taiwan truly aspires to be a free and democratic country. In that case, it must learn to respect history, embrace diversity, and honor its commitments—not weaponize bureaucracy to purge those deemed "others." As members of a democratic society, we cannot remain silent. Today, the target is mainland spouses. Tomorrow, it could be any of us. In the face of governmental systemic violence, Taiwan must uphold its conscience, even if politics is ruthless.

When a government begins selectively purging citizens it deems undesirable, its democracy loses any claim to universality, leaving only exclusion and manipulation. The DPP must immediately rescind this administrative order, explain its true motives, and propose a remedy that respects human rights, acknowledges historical reality, and considers practical constraints.

Otherwise, this disenrollment campaign affecting 140,000 people will be remembered as a disgraceful stain in the history of DPP governance—and a devastating blow to Taiwan's international human rights image.

(The author is an associate researcher at the Taiwan International Strategic Society.)

From: https://www.chinatimes.com/opinion/20250410005282-262110?chdtv
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