Less than a week after China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law took effect, Japanese political commentator and former Sankei Shimbun Taipei bureau chief Yaita Akio was attacked in Taichung by a Chinese national from Hong Kong later reported to have links to organized crime.
Such tactics are not entirely new. Hong Kong singer Denise Ho (何韻詩) was attacked in Taipei on Sept. 29, 2019, before attending the 929 March Against Totalitarianism. Two Chinese Unification Promotion Party members splashed red paint on Ho in an attempt to intimidate supporters attending the pro-democracy rally in solidarity with Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement.
The latest attack on Yaita is a reminder of Beijing’s authoritarian repression tactics. One of its favored methods is outsourcing dirty work to organized crime groups and proxy networks.
In Hong Kong, triads closely linked to China sent a mob of more than 100 men to attack pro-democracy supporters in and around Yuen Long MTR station in July 2019. The mob beat elected officials, journalists, protesters, and other commuters with metal and wooden weapons, leaving almost 50 injured.
Exiled Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee (林榮基), one of Beijing’s best-known transnational repression targets, died in Taiwan earlier this month. Lam fled to Taiwan in 2019 to “enjoy the air of freedom” after fearing another attempted abduction to China.
Chinese agents had placed Lam under solitary confinement for more than eight months in 2015 after what was supposed to be a weekend trip to Shenzhen. In 2020, days before reopening Causeway Bay Books in Taipei, Lam was attacked by pro-Beijing forces while sitting at a cafe. As with Ho’s 2019 attack, red paint was thrown at him.
Police later reported that the attack was carried out by three men from Kaohsiung who were angered by Lam’s stance toward the Chinese government. Rather than discourage Lam from reopening Causeway Bay Books, the attack prompted him to condemn Beijing’s intimidation tactics in the media.
Attacks on Beijing’s critics in Taiwan are not isolated incidents.
Apart from Lam, prominent Hong Kong democracy activists Henry Tong Wai-hung (湯偉雄) and Elaine To have been targeted. The couple fled to Taiwan after being placed on a wanted list under Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law. Tong’s boxing gym was targeted with the same red paint tactic, and it was later reported that the attackers were pro-China individuals from Hong Kong.
Like Lam, Tong used the incident to speak directly to reporters and raise awareness of China’s cross-border repression. He said he was unfazed by Chinese attempts to intimidate the overseas Hong Kong community.
Outside Taiwan, one of the latest attacks occurred in Flushing, New York, on July 15, when Jie Lijian, chair of the China Democracy Party International Alliance, was beaten unconscious with clubs by unidentified assailants suspected of being Chinese organized crime figures linked to the CCP.
The attack occurred less than a week after Jie filed a lawsuit against the Chinese government and the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles over alleged transnational repression. Before the attack on Jie, a female Chinese volunteer distributing leaflets on the Chinese government’s human rights violations was assaulted in the same heavily Chinese diasporic community.
Flushing is home to the Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party and is a major refuge point for Falun Gong practitioners.
The pattern is clear. Beijing’s transnational repression increasingly relies on deniable force, including organized crime links, proxy actors, legal intimidation, and harassment of dissidents far beyond China’s borders.
Yet these covert campaigns frequently backfire, generating public attention and international solidarity for Taiwan and other targeted democracies.
Taiwan has shown it can blunt such attacks by responding quickly. After the Yaita assault, the government put together a rapid interagency response through high-level Presidential Office condemnation and the immediate arrest of the suspect at Taichung Airport.
This was a sign of Taiwan’s strategic resilience. The country was able to neutralize psychological intimidation and turn the incident into another opportunity to expose Chinese malign operations.
In addition to tackling transnational repression, Taiwan has employed a multifaceted defense strategy to repel Chinese attacks. These efforts range from interministerial countermeasures against repression and legal warfare to international coalition building.
President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) has shifted Taiwan’s response from a passive stance to active defense of the country’s democratic sovereignty.
The Lai administration has mobilized ministries to coordinate protection for residents such as Yaita and Tong by enhancing domestic police and immigration enforcement, swiftly monitoring threats, identifying perpetrators, and bringing them to justice. This helps counter Beijing’s “long arm” narrative, under which dissidents fear Chinese retaliation no matter where they are in the world.
On countering united front warfare, Lai has introduced 17 national security strategies to prevent Beijing’s manipulation of Taiwan’s institutions and society. Through the Anti-Infiltration Act, the government can also prosecute individuals and Chinese proxy organizations that accept funding or other forms of material support from Beijing to carry out influence operations and repression.
Taiwan is also calling on international partners to help coordinate responses to Chinese disinformation and repression.
Building on the Global Cooperation and Training Framework initiated by Taiwan and the US in 2015, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a global workshop on responding to transnational repression in June. Representatives from the US, UK, Japan, Australia, and Canada joined Taiwan to strengthen cross-border law enforcement and track harassment networks.
Through social media and press conferences, Lai has also used his own platform to call out such offenses, as seen shortly after the Yaita and Tong attacks.
This increased global visibility has pushed Taiwan’s partners to rally behind it, including through Japanese political support after the attack on Yaita.
Although Taiwan and Hong Kong are often compared, Hong Kong’s predicament could not be more different. As part of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong’s government enforces Beijing’s National Security Law, issues global bounties, cancels passports, and jails dissidents under a system shaped directly by the Chinese Communist Party.
Despite China’s new faces of repression, including triad-linked violence and the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, Taiwan continues to demonstrate operational effectiveness in repelling such terror.
Beijing’s clumsy tactics through proxy networks will only further damage its reputation, undermine its claims to be a global champion of law and order, and draw diplomatic backlash. Above all, such malign operations give Taiwan more ammunition to strengthen international partnerships and educate its citizens on why much more must be done to protect the democratic freedoms they have worked so hard to secure.
Rath Wang is a political commentator based in Taipei focusing on Taiwan’s politics, media, civil society, and key issues influencing Taiwan’s future. He is a media producer and host of current affairs talk shows and podcasts, and has worked on political campaigns and lived in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and the US.
