Commentary

Dying unnaturally, besides accidents, in Taiwan is rare. An article in Chinese Times, a pro-Kuomintang (KMT) newspaper, titled “National Taiwan University professor’s mother died mysteriously! Tape up the nose and spit out green juice was sent to the hospital and died,” caught my attention.

This article argues that her untimely death could have been politically motivated based on the multiple actions taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in retribution for Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s trip to the United States. This article also discusses the multiple CCP messaging, “sharp power” actions, and the corresponding Taiwanese and American responses.

The news reports do not provide her name. We do know that she was the 93-year-old elderly mother of Dr. Ming Chu-cheng (also spelled Juzheng Ming and in Mandarin 明居正教授).

Ming is a professor emeritus of political science at the National Taiwan University (NTU). Born in 1953 in Taipei, Ming was one of the top students in his high school class and was one of the first three students from his high school to be admitted to the prestigious NTU, considered the best school in Taiwan. After completing his bachelor’s degree in international relations in the Political Science Department at NTU, he traveled to the United States. He completed a master’s degree in international relations at the University of Rochester and his doctorate in political science from the University of Notre Dame. He taught at NTU until 2018, when he was honored with being selected as professor emeritus.

Most importantly, he is a Falun Gong adherent and one of the most senior experts in Taiwan concerning the CCP. He is a consultant to many Taiwanese government senior policy-making offices, including the Special Advisory Group on Cross-Strait Relations of the Presidential Palace, a member of the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a special researcher of the National Policy Foundation.

To see the breadth and depth of his impact, Ming has over 2,400 videos referring to him (in Mandarin) on YouTube and almost 28,000 hits on Facebook. He helps the Taiwanese and others understand the CCP threat based on facts, history, theory, and experience. In other words, his exposure of the CCP’s fallacies makes him a target of Beijing.

Ming’s mother passed away on April 5. During this time, three important events related to Taiwan occurred, which could be connected to her death: former President Ma Ying-jeou in China, Tsai in the United States, and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) in Taiwan.

First, Ma went on a 12-day propaganda trip to China, beginning on March 27. I discussed his trip in two articles (here and here).

Second, and more importantly, Tsai traveled through the United States and on April 6 met with a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation of 19 members at the Ronald Reagan Library in Southern California, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Peter Aguilar (D-Calif.). This should have made the CCP even more flustered than former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, when she brought a Democratic delegation of only five other U.S. representatives.

In parallel, less discussed, was the visit of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman McCaul who arrived on April 6, along with seven other U.S. representatives, including Young Kim (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific, and Ami Bera (D-Calif.).

Since Tsai and her government met with almost five times as many representatives as Pelosi’s visit and the corresponding muted response by Beijing, I suspect that the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were caught unprepared and were also constrained due to other visits. Besides Ma’s 12-day visit to China, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also visited the country.

Did CCP leader Xi Jinping have to “curb his enthusiasm” for making a large show of force, or was he overwhelmed?

I can imagine Xi asking the various offices under the CCP what they could do to “resolutely fight back.”

The Taiwan and U.S. responses to the CCP’s and the PLA’s actions are listed below.

The threat to use the CCP’s Coast Guard to conduct harassment inspections of ships traveling through the Taiwan Strait continues the false tradition of the CCP claiming this area as part of the territorial waters. These actions were concocted as part of the legal warfare (lawfare) campaign last June 2022—both Taiwan and the United States have declared that the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway.

The breadth and depth of the CCP’s responses to Tsai’s visit to the United States and McCaul’s visit to Taiwan are very diverse but were targeted to elicit a response at a level much less than Pelosi’s visit last summer.

In conjunction with these official statements and actions are the activities below the surface, such as the unusual death of Dr. Ming’s mother. Her death reminds me of the bizarre terror attack in California on May 16 last year at the Taiwanese Presbyterian Christian Church that supported Taiwanese independence. These kinds of grey zone actions or “leaderless resistance” terrorist attacks certainly send a chilling message to those who support Taiwan’s independence.

The other diplomatic, financial, and military actions mentioned in this article also send a similar sinister message to a broader pro-Taiwanese audience.

I hope the Taiwanese people continue to resist CCP attempts to break their will to be free and independent and continue to build up their cognitive resistance and national defense to deter the CCP in both realms. The United States, other allies, and friends of Taiwan should strongly increase their support for the island nation in all dimensions as the CCP continues to increase its aggressive intent and behavior.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.