Beijing’s coercion campaign against Taiwan is entering a more litigious phase. While military drills and cognitive warfare remain staples of its coercive playbook, China is now intensifying the systematic use of law to target Taiwan’s democracy. It has escalated efforts to criminalise Taiwan’s elected leaders, most notably with the establishment of a public informant hotline.
This shows the extent of Beijing’s evolving lawfare strategy—the use of legal tools and judicial theatre to achieve political ends. Lawfare is now a domain of coercion for Beijing against Taiwan—one where tactics are carried out through courtrooms and clauses. The aim is clear: to isolate, intimidate and delegitimise Taiwan’s leadership under the guise of legal process.
At the centre of this campaign is Beijing’s so-called ‘Taiwan independence diehards’ list. Unveiled in August 2024, the list initially named 10 Taiwanese politicians and public figures accused of supporting separatism. Two more were added in October. The original list included Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo, former foreign minister Joseph Wu, and senior lawmakers including former speaker of the Legislative Yuan, You Si-kun. They stand accused of promoting Taiwan’s international presence, deepening ties with like-minded democracies, and—most importantly, in Beijing’s eyes—rejecting the One China principle.
China has not stopped at naming names. To give its blacklist legal bite, Beijing announced that those on it would face lifetime criminal liability under Chinese law. New judicial guidelines also authorise Chinese courts to try these individuals in absentia. The penalties are potential life imprisonment or even the death sentence for alleged ‘splittist’ crimes. All are banned from entering China, Hong Kong and Macau. More troublingly, these designations could lay the groundwork to justify international arrest warrants or seizures of overseas assets.
To accompany this legal offensive, Beijing has launched something creepier still: a public tip-off hotline. Hosted on the websites of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and Ministry of Public Security, the hotline invites anyone—on either side of the strait—to submit information about the ‘criminal acts’ of these so-called separatists. This hotline is a sign that Beijing is attempting to weaponise legal intimidation at scale. By encouraging the public to participate in identifying or denouncing Taiwan’s democratic leaders, China hopes to transform its legal campaign from a state effort into a societal one.
Since its launch last year, Beijing claims its tip-off hotline has received nearly 6,000 reports, with a sharp rise in activity from March to May. Chinese officials have touted this as public support for punishing separatists, but critics warn it encourages mass surveillance and state-sanctioned condemnations. This is a standard authoritarian regime tactic: mobilise the public to isolate political enemies, all while dressing it up as civic duty.
It also reinforces the central fiction in China’s approach to Taiwan—that its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan is settled, and that Chinese law naturally extends to Taiwan’s elected leaders and citizens. This is not just a narrative problem. The more that Beijing enshrines its legal claims in state policy, and the more it builds such enforcement tools as hotlines and sentencing guidelines, the harder it becomes to walk them back. What is now lawfare could become law enforcement in the event of conflict.
The blacklist serves to stigmatise and isolate Taiwan’s most prominent voices on the world stage. The hotline seeks to spread paranoia, suggesting that anyone—from activists to journalists—could be denounced as a diehard and targeted accordingly. Together, they aim to create a climate where self-censorship flourishes, diplomacy is chilled, and Taiwan’s leaders face reputational damage abroad and personal risk at home.
Yet the effects so far may not be what Beijing intended. In Taiwan, the move has sparked rare cross-party unity. Even the opposition Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party—usually more circumspect in their China policy—have criticised the blacklist and denounced Beijing’s attempt to criminalise democratic discourse. Government officials on the list have largely dismissed it as an authoritarian badge of honour.
Still, Taiwan’s domestic resilience shouldn’t blind us to the longer-term risks. Lawfare is rarely about immediate arrests; it is about slow erosion. Will younger politicians think twice before criticising Beijing? Will international platforms hesitate to host blacklisted Taiwanese officials? Will Taiwanese civil society actors start asking what comments or partnerships might someday be construed as ‘separatist crimes’? These are the questions Beijing hopes will fester.
What’s more, the global response has so far been uneven. The United States rightly condemned the move as escalatory. Japan and other regional democracies have voiced concern about tensions in the strait. But the broader international community must do more to push back against this creeping normalisation of extraterritorial authoritarian law. Democracies must reaffirm that Chinese law has no jurisdiction over Taiwan’s leaders, and that those who defend freedom at home will be supported abroad.
