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Taiwan Readies Travel Warning as China Tightens Border Rules

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Taipei is drafting guidance for citizens visiting China as Beijing prepares device inspections at the border, NSC adviser Alex Huang says.

Taiwan's government is drawing up official guidance to help its citizens reduce the dangers of visiting China, as Beijing readies border rules that could see travellers' mobile phones and other electronic devices searched. Alex Huang (黃重諺), an adviser to the National Security Council, set out the plan in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times published on Thursday.

Beijing's rewritten entry and exit regulations are due to take effect next Tuesday, a change that has drawn concern abroad and led Washington to revise its own travel advisory for China. From next month, Chinese authorities will start carrying out random checks of personal communication devices. Huang said many Taiwanese fear that commercial secrets could be uncovered during such searches, or that remarks they posted on social media in the past might later be turned against them.

The Mainland Affairs Council, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and other departments are preparing the advisory together, Huang said. He singled out three categories of travellers who should take extra care.

Officials, clergy and tech workers at risk

The first group is public employees at every level of government, whether in local, central or security posts. Huang said they could be treated as sources of intelligence. He pointed to recent episodes in which police officers were quizzed about how critical infrastructure is protected and court staff were pressed on the inner workings of the judiciary. Village heads and local civil affairs officers, he added, could be approached for details about air-raid shelters, emergency stockpiles and how supplies are distributed.

Religious workers make up the second group. Huang argued that China lacks true freedom of worship, noting that missionary activity, ordinations and baptisms have to take place under the watch of religious affairs bodies answering to the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department. Meetings of worshippers and religious study sessions, he said, are handled as national security concerns. He cited reports that several members of the I-Kuan Tao faith who went to China as tourists were detained without clear cause and are still being held.

The third group covers people employed in sensitive fields such as semiconductors, quantum research, advanced materials and defence, along with staff at major foreign firms and companies tied to businesses that Beijing has sanctioned. Huang said such workers face an especially high chance of having their movements curtailed.

Beijing extending its reach

Huang linked the tighter border regime to a broader effort by Beijing to keep skilled workers and technology inside the country and to dissuade its own citizens from pursuing careers overseas. He said China's slowing economy has left a small circle of people prospering while many others struggle, and that supply chains around the world are moving faster to cut their dependence on the country.

He described the new measures as part of a pattern that began with the so-called "22 guidelines to penalise Taiwanese independence separatists." Together, he said, these steps show Beijing trying to project its legal authority beyond its own territory and reveal a deep suspicion of its population.

As an illustration, Huang pointed to China's Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. He said it places Han Chinese culture above other cultures, gives priority to standard spoken Chinese and simplified characters, and goes as far as instructing parents to raise their children to "love the CCP." Rules of that kind, he said, twist basic constitutional and governing norms.

He also flagged changes to China's National Defence Mobilisation Law. The amendments would widen what can be mobilised to take in supply chains and other assets bound up with the country's development. Under the revised text, Huang said, civilian resources would no longer be temporarily requisitioned but expropriated outright, with ownership transferred to the state.

Taiwan travel advisory China, China border rules, Alex Huang National Security Council, China phone inspections, Mainland Affairs Council, I-Kuan Tao detained, Taiwan semiconductor workers China, China entry exit regulations

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