Caught Between Two Nations: Taiwan's Chinese-Born Spouses Face a New Loyalty Test

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A Legislator's Brief, Contested Term

In February, Li Chen-hsiu made history as the first Chinese-born citizen to be sworn into Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan. Within a day, she was publicly questioned about her loyalty to the island she has called home for more than three decades.

Officials argued she had not properly proven she gave up her Chinese citizenship. Li insisted she met the legal requirements. The dispute dragged on for two months until her own party, the Taiwan People's Party, expelled her in April, ending her brief legislative career.

Lawmakers have since tightened the citizenship rules that Chinese-born officials must satisfy — a direct response to her case.

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Seven Decades of Division Behind the Suspicion

The roots of this mistrust go back to 1949, when the Chinese Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists. For decades, contact between the two sides was forbidden. Only in 1987 were Taiwanese citizens first allowed to visit relatives across the strait.

Relations have worsened sharply since 2016, when independence-leaning Tsai Ing-wen became Taiwan's president and Beijing cut off official communication. China now regularly sends fighter jets and warships near the island and works to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.

Against this backdrop, anyone with ties to China draws heightened scrutiny — including spouses who have lived in Taiwan for years or decades.

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From War Brides to a New Generation

The community of Chinese-born spouses is far from uniform. Early waves included women who married aging Nationalist veterans once they were permitted to return to their home villages in China. Later generations met their Taiwanese partners after both sides eased border controls, and tend to be younger, better educated and more affluent.

Mi Zhengrong, 72, represents the older generation. She married a Nationalist veteran she met through relatives in China's Hubei province and moved to Taiwan in 2002. After he died, she married a Taiwanese neighbor and cared for him through years of paralysis before his death.

Because their marriage fell 13 days short of the ten-year mark required for a survivor's pension, the military withdrew payments it had initially granted her. She now lives on roughly $330 a month. Despite the hardship, she says she has no wish to return to China.

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One Law, Two Standards

Chinese-born spouses face legal hurdles that other foreign-born spouses do not. They must wait six years for citizenship instead of four, and ten years — rather than immediate eligibility — before applying for most government jobs.

Legal scholars are divided on whether this amounts to discrimination. Bruce Liao, an immigration law expert at National Chengchi University, argues the government applies the rules inconsistently and uses the spouse community as a political target. Yen-Tu Su of Academia Sinica counters that governments generally have latitude to assess security risks posed by foreign residents.

Shangguanluan, a Chinese-born writer living in Taiwan since 2021, says she is constantly asked whether she is secretly working for Beijing — despite pointing out that spouses have little access to the kind of sensitive information intelligence services actually want.

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Espionage Case Deepens the Distrust

Those suspicions gained new weight this week. A court in New Taipei sentenced Hsu Chun-ying, herself a Chinese-born spouse and former head of an organization advocating for the community, to seven years in prison. Judges found she had conspired with Chinese officials to influence Taiwanese elections and had illegally moved roughly $760,000 from China outside normal banking channels.

Prosecutors presented communications between Hsu and a Chinese civil affairs official discussing which political parties to back in order to help Chinese-born spouses win seats in local and national elections. Her organization was dissolved by Taiwan's Interior Ministry earlier this year for failing to hold required internal elections.

The case follows other recent actions against the community: Taiwan deported three Chinese-born women last year for publicly advocating a forced reunification with China, and immigration authorities have demanded thousands of naturalized spouses prove they canceled their Chinese household registrations.

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A Community Caught in the Middle

For most of Taiwan's Chinese-born spouses, daily life has little to do with espionage or politics. Advocates say the community is being used as a proxy in a much larger geopolitical struggle, one in which ordinary people bear the consequences of Beijing's actions they had no part in.

As China continues to pressure Taiwan both militarily and diplomatically, the question of how a democracy treats citizens with ties to an authoritarian rival is unlikely to disappear. For people like Li, Mi and Shangguanluan, it remains a daily, deeply personal reality.

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Sources

1. AP News – "In Taiwan, Chinese-born spouses face questions of loyalty and, some say, discrimination" – https://apnews.com/article/mainland-spouses-taiwan-china-discrimination-b507abdeeab2e33ff727583b157e0f07
2. The Washington Post (AP wire) – "Taiwan court sentences a woman to 7 years in prison for conspiring with Chinese officials" – https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/08/11/taiwan-china-spying-case-hsu-chunying-mainland-spouse/47ea7af0-9566-11f1-9ef9-1be722184483_story.html
3. Taipei Times – "Council announces tightened rules for China-born spouses" – https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2026/05/04/2003856719
4. Taiwan News – "Taiwan minister calls for removal of China-born legislator" – https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/6328695

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