Lai Administration Restricts Political Participation for Children of Mainland Chinese Spouses
By Shang-guan Luan, The Storm Media Opinion, October 23, 2026
In 2025, the National Immigration Agency (NIA), Ministry of the Interior, required approximately 12,000 spouses from mainland China to submit proof that they had relinquished their mainland household registration. More than a year has passed, and developments have gone beyond the original scope of the issue. Those affected are no longer limited to mainland spouses. Moreover, the administrative order has gradually evolved into a system that “punishes those who comply.” The latest cases are Lai Wen-you, the son of Deng Wan-hua, a village chief whose spouse is from the mainland, and Yu Chih-pin, a descendant of Taiwanese nationals who served in the military.
Lai was born in mainland China and came to Taiwan at six months old. He has never registered a household in the mainland, yet he was disqualified from running for village chief because he failed to submit proof of cancellation of his mainland household registration.
Yu is a descendant of native Taiwanese. His grandfather was conscripted to fight in mainland China and was forced to remain in Fujian after the war. Although Yu, who was born in mainland China, returned to Taiwan in 1995 to join his family and completed his military service, he was also required to submit proof of cancellation of his mainland household registration last year. More recently, he was disqualified from running for a city council seat.
The controversy over supplementary documentation in 2025, even if considered unreasonable, still led many people to comply. The problem is that after submitting the required documents, they may face not the end of the process, but another new hurdle.
In April, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) issued an administrative order interpreting the requirement under Article 21 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area that a person must have been registered as a resident in Taiwan for ten years. Under this interpretation, the ten-year period begins on the date the person submits proof of relinquishing their original household registration. This means that someone who had already been registered in Taiwan since 1995 but submitted the required proof only in 2025 might have to wait until 2035 to qualify for election under this new interpretation.
The difference between the two approaches is not a mere play on words. It amounts to an entire ten years of political rights.
This creates a troubling institutional paradox. Those who fail to submit the proof may be deemed not to have completed the legally required procedures; those who do submit it may consequently lose political participation eligibility that they had already accumulated over many years.
Lai’s case introduces an even more significant question. He has never registered a household in mainland China, making it impossible for him to prove through the usual household deregistration procedure that he has relinquished a registration he never possessed. If the government believes that he must still provide some form of documentation, then it should clearly explain the legal basis, the nature of the required document, and precisely how someone who has never registered a household in the mainland can provide such proof. The government cannot demand that people prove something that may never have occurred in reality and then place the entire burden of failing to produce that proof on them.
Moreover, this type of problem may not be limited to mainland Chinese spouse families. Over the past several decades, cross-strait travel and exchanges, family reunification and settlement, birth registration, and household registration management have been governed by different laws and administrative procedures at different times. Some descendants of Taiwanese people born in the mainland may have grown up in Taiwan from an early age. Some children whose parents are both Taiwanese may also be required to submit supplementary documents because of their birthplace or the way their births were registered in earlier years.
The government today may require people to correct or supplement their records in accordance with the law. However, if the system itself had deficiencies at the time, or if the government had long accepted a particular registration status but has now changed its interpretation, it cannot simply assume that all responsibility should fall on the people concerned.
If being born in mainland China is an original sin, will this “group of sinners” continue to expand? Next time, will having studied in the mainland also be considered an original sin? What about having worked or done business there? If so, how many people within the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would need to undergo strict scrutiny all over again?