Among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese women who have settled in Taiwan after marrying men from the island, Hsu Chun-ying stood out for her political ambition. She organized other migrants from China, mingled with prominent Taiwanese politicians and came close to becoming a candidate for the legislature.
Now she is in jail, fighting charges that she was recruited by the Chinese Communist Party to secretly infiltrate and influence Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Prosecutors have accused her of taking instructions from Chinese officials to interfere with Taiwanese legislative and mayoral elections, and of helping one of those officials covertly enter Taiwan under the guise of a business trip.
Ms. Hsu is at the center of one of Taiwan’s most difficult security debates: how to counter what officials describe as growing Chinese infiltration of the island’s politics, media and internet, without casting suspicion on all Chinese migrants.
To government agencies in Taiwan, Chinese-born women, known as “mainland spouses,” are a concern because they often still have family members or property in China. Beijing could exploit those ties by threatening their relatives or promising financial rewards, to secure their cooperation.
“Of course, we don’t want to stigmatize the entire mainland spouse community,” said Shen Yu-chung, a deputy minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which manages relations with China. “But there is a small minority of mainland spouses who may come here with specific assignments, and that is extremely troublesome.”
The scrutiny has unnerved some of Taiwan’s community of 261,000 Chinese migrants, who are mostly women, according to the island’s immigration agency. In interviews, several women said that they were being unfairly cast as agents of Beijing.
