Taipei, Jan 5 (IANS) Taiwanese government has accused China of transnational repression after Chinese state media and social media accounts shared personal information regarding Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Puma Shen, which included satellite pictures of his house and workplace in Taipei, local media reported.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that China’s state-controlled media were using “digital authoritarianism” and the “despicable” way of doxxing to threaten Taiwanese, trying to create fear and a chilling effect in democratic society of Taiwan, Taiwan’s daily Taipei Times reported.
In a post shared on Facebook on January 2, Strait Plus, a media channel operated by a Chinese state-controlled media organisation, wrote that a Chinese influencer had revealed the location of Shen’s house and workplace. According to the post, the influencer said that she had paid for commercial satellite imagery of Taipei and marked Shen’s house and workplace on it.
She said that China’s Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau in 2025 had declared Puma Shen as “wanted” amid a probe into alleged “secession-related” criminal activities in Taiwan.
The ministry said that the actions of Strait Plus violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks,” quoting Article 12 of the UN document, as per the report.
The ministry stated that organisation’s post was an “invasion of personal privacy that crossed the line of civility,” adding that the behaviour was “beneath contempt.”
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “China’s transnational repression, harassment and interventions targeting Taiwan and other countries have seriously contravened the principles of international law and international human rights norms, explicitly displaying how the Beijing authority ignores the fundamental values of human rights and privacy of a civilized society,” adding that China and Taiwan are not subordinate to each other, and that China has no jurisdiction over people of Taiwan.
The ministry announced that it would increase emergency response and rescue mechanisms at its missions abroad to ensure the safety of people of Taiwan, adding that it has urged other nations to condemn China’s human rights infringement, and to call for ending its abusive long-arm jurisdiction and transnational repression, Taipei Times reported.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs termed the incident a case of cyberbullying, which includes doxxing and digital coercion and urged people to resist entities that are involved in such behaviour and avoid spreading hate speech on social media platforms. It stated that marking the residence of a person on commercial satellite imagery and making the picture is a serious violation of personal privacy and against the law. The ministry announced that it has urged Meta to remove the content that involves threats to personal safety.
In a post shared on Facebook, Puma Shen stated that China carried out a “precision attack” against him, as its recent military exercises were ineffective in intimidating Taiwanese. He said that the stock market continued to rise while Taiwan continues to debunk rumours about issues with national defence, enraging China. He said that China is trying to create fear among people of Taiwan as if they have “informants everywhere”, however, he stressed that this type of psychological warfare is not working in Taiwan.
–IANS
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