The indictment of mainland-born spouse Xu Chunying has reignited debate about Chinese infiltration of Taiwan's political parties. But the real casualty may not be the Taiwan People's Party — it may be the political future of cross-strait spouses.
Bad news rarely travels alone
Just as the first-instance verdict in the Ching Hua City (京華城) corruption case delivered a seventeen-year sentence to Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — former Taipei mayor and ex-chairman of the Taiwan People's Party — a separate case landed with equal force. Xu Chunying (徐春鶯), a mainland-born spouse and former TPP associate, was indicted under Taiwan's National Security Act and Anti-Infiltration Act and remanded in custody for three months.
Green-camp affiliates quickly exploited the indictment, circulating annotated excerpts and drawing comparisons to the Taiwan Unification Promotion Party (統促黨, TUPP) — a party the government has petitioned to dissolve on national security grounds. Ko fired back at a press conference: "The DPP are the real Communist agents."
The TUPP's man was once a founding DPP member
In November 2024, the Ministry of Interior petitioned the Constitutional Court to dissolve the TUPP under the Political Parties Act, alleging that the party had accepted foreign funding, systematically endangered national security, and interfered in Taiwan's elections. It was the first dissolution petition of its kind.
The case centered on TUPP central committee member Chang Meng-chung (張孟崇) and his wife, who had allegedly received NT$74 million from China since 2011 to support specific referendum campaigns, candidates, recall drives, and political parties. Chang was indicted on November 4 of that year; the Interior Ministry filed its dissolution petition two days later. The Constitutional Court has yet to rule. Chang died of kidney failure on September 18 last year, before the case reached a first-instance verdict.
What often goes unmentioned is that Chang was a founding member of the DPP and once ran for office under its banner. In 2004, during the DPP's first term in government, he switched to the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union. By 2016, he appeared on the TUPP's party-list nomination. His political journey — from DPP founder to pro-unification operative — does not vindicate Ko's angry outburst, but it does support what Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said more temperately: "Parties that are infiltrated are also victims. We should not simply point fingers at any one party."
After nearly four decades of cross-strait exchange, the reach of influence operations may be pervasive. Chang's trajectory is one example. But to draw an equivalence between the TUPP and the TPP is a political maneuver, not an analytical judgment.
To begin with, what the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office released was a press summary — not the full charging document. The Interior Ministry itself said it had not yet seen the indictment when asked whether dissolution proceedings might follow. Yet green-camp accounts and affiliated media had already produced polished, graphic-illustrated breakdowns of its contents. Former legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) put the question bluntly: "Was this indictment written by prosecutors, or by DPP operatives?"
What the indictment actually shows
Xu Chunying was considered for a TPP party-list legislative seat, but she withdrew voluntarily when her mainland spouse status became controversial — a fact the green camp conveniently omits. According to the indictment, her handlers were Yang Wentao (楊文濤), director of cross-strait marriage affairs at the CCP's Ministry of Civil Affairs, and Sun Xian (孫憲), deputy director of the Shanghai Unification Promotion Association.
The exchanges documented in the indictment focus on Taiwan's political climate and party dynamics — but what Xu passed along amounted largely to media reports and personal observations. There is no evidence she received payment from either handler. In short, she was not an agent working for money.
What the green camp finds most alarming is the candor with which Xu and her handlers discussed Taiwanese parties. The KMT comes off poorly: she described its support for mainland spouses as "fake," said she had "long seen through them — the KMT doesn't really want unification," and concluded that "the KMT is hopeless." The KMT might quietly thank Xu for the absolution.
More politically significant is the attention paid to former TPP legislator and ex-Taipei Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊), described as a deliberate cultivation target — from her time as deputy mayor through her bid for Legislative Vice Speaker, and into the 2024 presidential race, where the handlers' assessment was: "Ko won't agree to be the running mate — they'll push Huang Shan-shan."
Huang Shan-shan's text message
When Xu's party-list candidacy collapsed, the arrangement reportedly reached with the TPP was that Mac Yuzhen (麥玉珍) would serve the first two years of the term, after which Xu would designate the successor — which is how Li Zhen-siu (李貞秀) came to be nominated.
When the Xu controversy broke, Huang Shan-shan reportedly sent Ko a text message asking: "Should I reach out to the Taiwan Affairs Office for a conversation?" Huang had previously been a member of the People First Party and may have had existing channels to the TAO; as deputy mayor, her more familiar counterpart would have been the Shanghai Municipal Taiwan Affairs Office. It is also worth noting that Huang supported Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the 2016 election, and served as a friendly intermediary between the Ko city government and the DPP administration even after Ko's own relationship with the DPP soured.
Xu's activity within the TPP may partly reflect an effort to impress her handlers rather than evidence of successful penetration. Whether influence was actually achieved remains an open question. But if Huang did send that text message, it raises legitimate concerns. More importantly, there is no evidence of any response from Ko. Xu's claims of access and influence do not mean Beijing was able to dictate TPP party-list nominations. The case of Mac Yuzhen illustrates the point: Xu said only that she could communicate and coordinate — that is not sufficient grounds to conclude Mac was Beijing's instrument.
The real casualty: cross-strait spouses in politics
Mainland-born spouses and their second- and third-generation descendants now number in the hundreds of thousands in Taiwan, after four decades of cross-strait marriage. Like Southeast Asian new residents, they constitute a distinct community with legitimate interests. Allowing them to participate in politics is a way of giving that community its own voice. In Xu's case, the primary policy she advocated was reducing the residency requirement for mainland spouses to obtain household registration from six years to four — a cause directly relevant to her community's rights. Notably, the DPP itself once supported relaxing this requirement.
What is beyond dispute is that the Xu indictment damages the TPP and delivers a far deeper blow to the political participation of mainland-born spouses in Taiwan. Residency and citizenship requirements have long been used as barriers to their candidacy. If the DPP and Taiwanese society treat all contact with Beijing as a vector for united-front operations, and if advocating unification is itself treated as criminal, then the logical endpoint is to seal off this space entirely — rolling back not only mainland spouses' political rights but cross-strait marriage itself, returning to an era of prohibition.
If Taiwan actually reaches that point, it will not be a moment of security. It will mark the most dangerous moment the strait has seen.
