In the tense standoff between China and Taiwan that has escalated steadily since 2016, a vulnerable community of more than 360,000 people finds itself squeezed between competing geopolitical forces and growing suspicion over their loyalty. These are the so-called ‘mainland spouses’ — people born in mainland China who gained Taiwanese residency and citizenship through marriage to Taiwanese citizens, and they have become a new flashpoint as cross-strait relations deteriorate.
The latest high-profile clash over the status of mainland spouses centers on Li Chen-hsiu, who made history as the first mainland-born lawmaker to earn a seat in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan through marriage-based immigration. Just one day after Li was sworn into office in February, she faced intense questioning from authorities over her nationality, personal identity and loyalty to Taiwan. After two months of gridlock and public controversy, she was forced out of office, leaving the community without legislative representation.
In an interview with the Associated Press in July, Li credited Taiwan’s open democratic system and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) for giving a first-time political candidate the opportunity to serve. But escalating fears of a potential Chinese military invasion of the self-governing island have reshaped Taiwan’s policy toward this community, reversing decades of incremental reforms aimed at integrating mainland spouses into Taiwanese society.
The split between China and Taiwan dates back to the end of China’s civil war in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist Party retreated to the island, establishing a separate government that Beijing still claims as part of its territory. For nearly four decades after the split, all cross-strait contact was completely banned. It was not until 1987 that Taiwan lifted restrictions, allowing residents to visit family members on the mainland for the first time, opening the door to cross-strait marriages.
Tensions have risen sharply since Tsai Ing-wen, an independence-leaning president, took office in 2016. Beijing cut off all official communication with Taipei, and has since ramped up military pressure, conducting daily naval and air exercises near Taiwan. It has also waged a global diplomatic campaign to isolate the island, poaching its few remaining international allies and blocking its participation in global intergovernmental organizations, alongside sustained misinformation campaigns targeting the Taiwanese public.
Against this backdrop, suspicion of mainland spouses’ allegiances has grown on the island. Most recently, a New Taipei court sentenced the head of a nonprofit supporting mainland spouses to seven years in prison on charges of spying on behalf of Beijing and interfering in Taiwanese domestic politics.
The community of mainland spouses spans multiple generations and diverse backgrounds. The earliest large wave of cross-strait marriages came in the decades after 1987, when aging Nationalist veterans who had never married in Taiwan returned to mainland China to meet and bring back spouses. Seventy-two-year-old Mi Zhengrong is one of these early arrivals. Mi, a native of China’s Hubei province, met her first husband — a veteran who fled to Taiwan in 1949 — through a family introduction. The couple married and lived in mainland China for years before moving to Taiwan in 2002, after her husband expressed a desire to spend his final years on the island. After her first husband passed away 12 years later, Mi married a Taiwanese neighbor, caring for him full-time for nearly a decade until he became paralyzed.
Mi now faces financial precarity: she is just 13 days short of the 10-year marriage threshold required to claim her late second husband’s government pension, after authorities initially approved the benefit before reversing their decision. She currently survives on roughly 10,000 New Taiwan Dollars ($330) per month, a third of which goes to rent. Even so, Mi says she has no desire to return to mainland China, echoing a sentiment shared by many in the community.
For years, the Taiwanese government gradually reformed its policies to integrate mainland spouses, cutting the waiting period for citizenship and opening up access to formal employment. But in the wake of rising cross-strait tensions, the government has reversed course and rolled back many of these integration measures. Last spring, Taipei deported three mainland spouses who had publicly advocated for forceful unification between China and Taiwan on social media. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Taiwan’s top body governing cross-strait policy, said the women posed repeated threats to national security and social stability. Immigration authorities have also ordered roughly 12,000 mainland spouses who already hold Taiwanese citizenship to provide formal proof that they have canceled their household registration in mainland China, threatening to revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they fail to comply.
In Li’s case, government officials argue she failed to meet two key requirements: she did not submit formal documentation proving she had renounced her Chinese citizenship, and missed the deadline to prove she had held only single nationality for 10 consecutive years, as required for legislative candidates. Li counters that she has held Taiwanese citizenship since 1999 and canceled her mainland household registration the same year, meaning she meets all legal requirements. When the political impasse dragged on in April, the TPP expelled Li from the party, and the government subsequently tightened eligibility standards for mainland-born legislative candidates. A MAC spokesperson defended the decision, insisting there were no political motivations behind the move.
However, many legal scholars argue the government is selectively enforcing laws to target mainland spouses amid rising anti-China sentiment. Bruce Liao, an immigration law professor at National Chengchi University, says that in recent years, Taiwanese authorities have misinterpreted and distorted existing immigration laws to target this vulnerable group. “You can’t move against the Mainland, but you can bully the ‘mainland spouses’ here, and use them to create hostility,” Liao explained.
Other analysts defend the government’s approach as a reasonable national security measure. Yen-Tu Su, a researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, notes that the government has a clear obligation to protect national security, and is granted reasonable leeway to assess potential threats to public safety and social order.
Even before the current wave of tension, mainland spouses faced formal legal discrimination compared to foreign spouses marrying Taiwanese citizens. By law, mainland spouses must wait six years to apply for Taiwanese citizenship, two years longer than the requirement for foreign spouses from other countries. They also must hold Taiwanese citizenship for 10 years before they can apply for government jobs, while foreign spouses can apply for most entry-level government positions immediately after gaining citizenship.
For many mainland spouses, the constant suspicion over their loyalty is a daily burden. Shangguanluan, a Chinese writer and activist who moved to Taiwan with her Taiwanese husband in 2021, says she is repeatedly questioned about whether she acts on orders from the Chinese Communist Party or works as a spy. While she acknowledges that Beijing actively seeks intelligence sources in Taiwan, she argues mainland spouses are far from ideal targets. “If they want some core secrets, the people who are most convenient targets for them, are people who are closest to the secrets, in Taiwan’s defense, or in tech — Taiwanese businessmen, or academics, or some institutional head,” she explained. “On the list of valuable targets for information, there’s no room for ‘mainland spouses.’”