Union chairman jailed in China returns to Taiwan

• By Chung Li-hua / Staff reporter

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Taiwanese Tsai Chin-shu (蔡金樹), who had been imprisoned in China for engaging in activity that “endangers national security,” said on Facebook on Friday that he has returned to Taiwan.

Tsai, chairman of the Southern Taiwan Union of Cross-strait Relations Associations, had traveled frequently between Taiwan and China for years, and at one time ran a trading company in China’s Pingtan.

In July 2018, he traveled to Quanzhou, Fujian Province, to attend a cross-strait food trade fair and stayed at a hotel in Xiamen. He checked out the following day and then disappeared. His family had made repeated appeals to the authorities and sought help from Straits Exchange Foundation. It was not until September 2019 that China’s Taiwan Affairs Office confirmed at a press conference that Tsai was under investigation for allegedly “engaging in activities that endanger national security.”

Southern Taiwan Union of Cross-Strait Relations Associations chairman Tsai Chin-shu poses for an undated photograph.

Screen grab from Facebook

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired a report on a “Taiwan spy” case in October 2020, in which Tsai appeared on television confessing, saying that he regretted being used by Taiwan’s military intelligence agency to collect information from inside China.

Tsai was sentenced to four years in prison. After completing his sentence, he was barred from leaving China in May 2023 for four years as a deprivation of political rights. He was placed under house arrest on Gulangyu Island in Xiamen.

Regarding Tsai’s Facebook post on Friday saying that he has returned to Taiwan, people familiar with cross-strait affairs said that if his additional sentence was four years, the restriction on leaving China would normally have remained in effect from his release in May 2023.

However, if he has returned to Taiwan it would suggest that he might have been granted early parole.

The Mainland Affairs Council said it was aware of the circumstances surrounding the case, but declined to provide further details, citing the person’s privacy.