Taiwan’s move to dissolve the pro-Beijing Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) has triggered a political and constitutional controversy over whether security concerns are being used to suppress dissent.
The island’s interior ministry is seeking a Constitutional Court order to declare the CUPP unconstitutional and dissolve it, marking the first such action against a political party in Taiwan’s history. Interior Minister Liu Shyh-fang said the party had long been linked to organised crime and cross-border offences, while core members had repeatedly been implicated in alleged violations of the National Security Act, the Anti-Infiltration Act, election laws, the Organised Crime Prevention Act and other legislation.
The ministry said the CUPP’s objectives and activities endangered the existence of the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, and its free and democratic constitutional order. It identified three principal concerns: alleged cooperation with the Communist Party to establish espionage networks and interfere in elections using mainland Chinese funding; involvement in cross-border repression, including attacks on overseas political dissidents visiting Taiwan; and organised crime involving numerous party officials and members.
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau Commissioner Chiu Shao-chou said police had investigated 141 CUPP officials and members in 98 cases since 2010. The allegations ranged from attempted murder and extortion to fraud and drug offences.
The proposal has drawn a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of using the case to suppress political opponents because of its “Taiwan independence nature”. Chen Binhua, spokesman for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said supporting reunification and opposing Taiwan independence separatism and foreign interference were consistent with “the broader interests of the Chinese nation and the course of history”. He described advocacy of cross-strait reunification as “reasonable, lawful, just and legitimate”.
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of China and has not ruled out using force to achieve reunification. Most countries, including the United States, Taiwan’s main international backer, do not recognise the self-ruled island as an independent state, while Washington opposes any attempt to take Taiwan by force.
Founded in 2005 by Chang An-lo, a former Bamboo Union triad leader known as “White Wolf”, the CUPP advocates peaceful cross-strait reunification under Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula and the one-China principle.
The proposed dissolution has divided Taiwan’s political establishment. Fan Yun, secretary general of the DPP legislative caucus, said freedom to form political parties was a cornerstone of democracy but was not without limits. Citing Germany’s concept of “militant democracy” and South Korea’s dissolution of a party accused of working for North Korea, she argued that democratic systems must be able to defend themselves against organisations exploiting political freedoms to undermine democracy.
Constitutional law scholar Weng Hsiao-ling, a legislator from Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), took the opposite position. She accused the DPP government of violating freedom of association and the spirit of the constitution, arguing that individuals should be punished for breaking the law rather than an entire party being dissolved because of its political platform. She warned that the KMT could become a future target.
Chang An-lo rejected the allegations and said the CUPP was being singled out for political reasons. He argued that wrongdoing by individual members should not be attributed to the party and accused the DPP of abusing its governing power. He said the CUPP would contest the case and collect evidence to seek the DPP’s dissolution under the same legal standards, while defending its exchanges with mainland China as necessary to build trust and avoid conflict.
The debate has also raised questions about the proportionality of the proposed measure. Hung Pu-chao of Tunghai University said dissolving the CUPP could disrupt Beijing’s network of local collaborators, but warned that mainland China could cultivate replacement organisations. Chang Yuan-hsiang of Soochow University, however, argued that the DPP’s political need to dissolve the CUPP outweighed any genuine security imperative.
The CUPP won only 17,423 votes, or 0.1 per cent, in the 2024 legislative party-list election, while 1.3 per cent of respondents in long-running surveys by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Centre supported reunification as soon as possible. Chang Yuan-hsiang said the case risked creating a chilling effect on political speech and warned against dissolving a party because of the alleged conduct of individual members.
“The DPP once campaigned for complete freedom of expression and forced the KMT [then the government] to lift restrictions on political parties and newspapers and end martial law,” he said. “Decades later, the DPP has become what it once hated most.”
