China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said on June 21 that Beijing will enforce a new set of legal guidelines for “severely punishing Taiwanese independence diehards.” These guidelines go so far as to specify the death penalty for leading advocates of Taiwanese independence.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council issued a press release on the same day stating that as China has no legal jurisdiction over Taiwan, such laws have no binding effect on their citizens. They pointed out that this action only further damages cross-strait relations and illustrates the stark differences in political values between Taiwan and China.

When asked by the media on Monday whether these guidelines would endanger Taiwanese businessmen in China or overseas, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said that China has no right to sanction Taiwanese people, nor do they have the right to prosecute. He called on the government to unite against this decision regardless of party affiliation. 

Scholars criticized the guidelines, comparing them to Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law, which criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion in terms that leave the legal threshold for prosecution unclear. Taiwan Democracy Watch Director Raymond Chen-En Sung (宋承恩) said the law violates both international law and human rights and stressed the importance of negotiating with other countries on this basis.