NO BENEFITS: Other than facilitating online purchases, academics said China’s new card does not offer any material advantage and is a tool for promoting propaganda
Taipei Times
Date: Sep 08, 2018
By: Chung Li-hua and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
With the Chinese government’s new residency card system taking effect on Sunday,
National Tsing Hua University associate professor Lin Thung-hong, third right, speaks during a news conference held yesterday by the university’s Center for Contemporary China in Hsinchu. He is joined by the university’s Institute of Sociology director Shen Hsiu-hua, left, and Center for General Education associate professor Cheng Chih-peng, second left, as well as National Chung-Cheng University’s Department and Graduate Institute of Political Science associate professor Lin Ping, third left, National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of Political Science professor Fan Shih-ping, second right, and doctoral candidate at State University of New York at Binghamton’s Department of Sociology Hong Ren-jie.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Taiwanese students and teachers in China might be forced to apply for the cards if they wanted to access the so-called “31 incentives” offered to Taiwanese, National Tsing Hua University professor Lin Thung-hung (林宗弘) said at a seminar in Hsinchu yesterday.
The card would greatly reduce the “gray area” afforded Taiwanese by the “Taiwan compatriot travel documents” (台胞證) — permits issued to Taiwanese by Chinese authorities for travel to China — and Taiwanese would find it more difficult to avoid its political implications, said Lin, director of the university’s Center for Contemporary China.
The card does not offer anything that the compatriot pass does not, other than facilitating purchases of plane or railway tickets and other items online, he said.
The card could also become a requisite for chartering planes back to Taiwan, allowing the Chinese government to further push its “united front” rhetoric, Lin said.
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