Fears are growing over the status of a 22-year-old Taiwanese national held by China on suspicion of "fraud" shortly after arriving in Shanghai last month.
Kuo Yu-hsien from the southern Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung was reported missing shortly after arriving in Shanghai on Aug. 27, but China's Taiwan Affairs Office didn't make any announcement regarding his case for a whole week, despite requests from the Taiwanese authorities.
The island’s democratic government has hit out at China over a lack of information surrounding the detention of Kuo, who is currently "under investigation for fraud," the Office told Taiwan's TVBS news on Monday.
"It is understood that a Taiwan resident surnamed Kuo is under investigation by relevant departments for suspected fraud," the station quoted officials as saying.
"The case is under investigation and the relevant authorities will protect his legal rights and interests in accordance with the law," the statement said.
Rights groups say hundreds of Taiwanese nationals have disappeared in China over the past decade.
Kuo's apparent detention comes after China warned that supporters of Taiwanese independence could face criminal charges and even the death penalty on Chinese soil.
Call for more information
Chiu Chui-cheng, who heads Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which handles the relationship with Beijing, expressed "regret and serious dissatisfaction" in the island's Legislative Yuan on Tuesday over the lack of information on Kuo's whereabouts.
Chiu called on Beijing to provide more information, and said protecting Kuo's rights meant a presumption of innocence. He also called on Chinese officials to contact Kuo's family, and "not leave them so worried and anxious," Taiwan's Central News Agency reported.
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Kuo's family have reported him missing to the Taiwanese police, the report said, adding that Kuo's older sister said via social media that the family hadn't been able to make contact with him by phone or online messenger services since he disappeared.
Kuo's sister also told reporters that she "doesn't rule out the possibility" that her brother was the victim of an online scam, the agency reported.
According to the Mainland Affairs Council, Kuo went to China after booking a week's leave with his employer, but nobody seems to know what his plans were when he got there, other than onward travel to the eastern province of Anhui.
'Splitting the country'
China said in June that supporters of independence for Taiwan could be tried in absentia and sentenced to death for "splitting the country," in a move designed to step up pressure on the democratic island.
China's law enforcement agencies and courts should "severely punish Taiwan independence diehards for the crimes of splitting the country and inciting secession ... and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity," a directive issued Friday by the Supreme People's Court and four other law enforcement agencies said.
While those agencies have no jurisdiction in Taiwan, the directive targets anyone working to further formal statehood for a Taiwanese republic, including holding a referendum, promoting the island's membership in international organizations, or “colluding with foreign forces” to promote independence.
The Straits Exchange Foundation, a semi-official conduit between Taipei and Beijing, warned Taiwanese to carefully consider whether travel to China was worth the risk.
"The sociopolitical system in mainland China isn't as developed as that of Taiwan," the Foundation's Secretary-general Luo Wen-chia told reporters on Tuesday.
"Human rights protections aren't as clear and specific as they are in Taiwan, so the outcome of a lot of cases is highly unpredictable," Luo said.
"The risks are extremely high. The Straits Exchange Foundation would recommend minimizing and avoiding those risks as much as possible."
The Foundation's counterpart in China, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, hadn't responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.
'Not endorsing 'unification' is Taiwan independence'
Political activist Lee Ming-cheh, who served a five-year jail term for "subversion" after disappearing shortly after arriving in China, said China's definition of national security is vague and all-encompassing, and that anyone can run afoul of it at any time.
The recent directive on "independence" supporters has upped the stakes, he said.
"There is an even greater danger for Taiwanese, which is that China regards their actions as domestic crimes [under its jurisdiction]," Lee said, adding that anything on mobile phones could be used as evidence by Chinese law enforcement, and even innocent questions to local people could be interpreted as espionage.
The Taiwanese government has rejected the threats as vague, harsh, and arbitrary, and a potential danger to anyone Beijing doesn't like.
"From the viewpoint of the Beijing authorities, not endorsing 'unification' is 'Taiwan independence,'" the Mainland Affairs Council said in a Sept. 12 statement, in a reference to China's territorial claim on the island, which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the People's Republic of China.
"We call upon China to stop repeatedly intimidating and threatening the people of Taiwan, which harms the development of friendly cross-strait interactions," the Council said.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.