When China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress entered into force on July 1, after being approved by the National People’s Congress in March, it quickly triggered widespread pushback from Taiwan’s government, overseas ethnic communities, and Western governments over its sweeping provisions and unprecedented cross-border legal authority.
The legislation includes a series of broad mandates that touch every sphere of public and private life, both within China and beyond its borders. Article 14 requires all levels of Chinese government to embed Chinese cultural symbols and narratives of a unified Chinese nation into public infrastructure, urban development, geographic naming, and all state-sponsored public events. Article 20 mandates that parents and guardians teach children to express loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Republic of China, and the concept of a unified Chinese nation, banning any instruction deemed harmful to ethnic unity. For online platforms, Article 31 requires that providers prioritize and distribute content promoting ethnic unity, while mandating the immediate removal and reporting of any material deemed to incite ethnic tension or division. Article 53 prohibits any individual or group from using ethnic identity, cultural traditions, or religious belief as a basis for challenging state authority or disrupting public order.
Most controversially, Article 63 extends Chinese legal jurisdiction to organizations and individuals located entirely outside of China’s territory, holding them legally liable for any acts deemed to undermine ethnic unity or promote ethnic division. Critics note that the law provides no clear, formal definition of what counts as “undermining ethnic unity,” leaving Chinese authorities with unconstrained power to interpret violations on an ad hoc basis.
Taipei’s top leadership was among the first to sound the alarm over the new law. On July 2, Cho Jung-tai, Premier of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, framed the legislation as another expansion of Beijing’s growing network of extraterritorial laws that already includes the Anti-Secession Law, Counter-Espionage Law, and Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. Cho emphasized that the ultimate goal of this expanding legal framework is to coerce all Taiwanese people into accepting Beijing’s political claims over the island. In response, he announced that Taiwan’s government will establish a new inter-agency task force to counter what officials describe as transnational authoritarian repression, while deepening coordination with like-minded democratic allies. “When law becomes a tool of authoritarian rule, democracy must become the front line of freedom,” Cho stated.
Academic analysts have outlined how the new law fits into Beijing’s layered strategy of political pressure on Taiwan. Hung Pu-chao, deputy director of Tunghai University’s Center for Mainland China Studies, explains that Beijing has now built three interconnected legal mechanisms targeting Taiwan, each operating at a distinct level of governance. The 2005 Anti-Secession Law sets the broad national strategic framework opposing Taiwanese formal independence. A 2024 regulatory opinion on punishing “Taiwan independence” separatist activity establishes targeted criminal accountability for individual political activists. The new Ethnic Unity Law, by contrast, codifies the ideological concept of a single unified Chinese nation into binding law, embedding this narrative into the core of China’s state governance.
Hung warned that the groups most immediately at risk are Taiwanese residents who travel frequently across the Taiwan Strait, operate businesses in mainland China, have cross-strait family ties, or work as academics, journalists, civil society leaders, or public commentators. “As long as people start adjusting their words and actions out of fear of being targeted, blacklisted, or barred from entering mainland China, Beijing’s political goal has already been achieved,” he noted, adding that the vague language of Article 63 leaves all final decisions on violations entirely in the hands of Chinese authorities.
Legal experts in Taiwan have also raised alarms about the law’s implications for cross-border rights. Chang Ching-ju, an attorney and executive committee member of Taiwan’s Judicial Reform Foundation, pointed out that the law enshrines strengthening Taiwanese people’s identification with the “Chinese nation” as an official state objective and requires all Taiwanese people to uphold Beijing’s vision of national unity. “Article 63 allows Chinese authorities to pursue legal action against any overseas organization or individual accused of undermining ethnic unity,” Chang told Taiwan’s Central News Agency. “We are currently conducting a review to assess whether Taiwan’s existing legal framework provides adequate protection for Taiwanese citizens against overreach by foreign cross-border jurisdiction and enforcement, and we aim to release our full findings by the end of this year.”
The ideological roots of the “Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu) concept stretch back to early 20th century Chinese political thought, but its modern application in the new law has amplified existing cross-strait tensions. Coined by exiled political theorist Liang Qichao in the early 1900s, the term originally referred exclusively to the Han ethnic majority, to distinguish them from the ruling Manchu Qing dynasty. Later, political thinker Yang Du expanded the concept into the “Five Races Under One Union” framework, grouping Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan peoples into a single national identity. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, adopted this framework, defining Zhonghua minzu as a unified nationality encompassing all five groups. After the Chinese Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949 and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, both sides retained “China” or “Zhonghua” in their official state names. Tensions rose sharply after the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took power in 2016; subsequent public opinion surveys show that a large majority of young Taiwanese now identify exclusively as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese, even as older generations with KMT ties maintain business and personal links to the mainland. Under the new law, KMT-linked business interests with operations on the mainland face implicit pressure to pressure their Taiwan-based relatives to adopt a Chinese national identity and avoid open support for the DPP administration.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has already drawn formal criticism from Beijing for his public framing of Taiwanese historical identity. In a speech last June, Lai argued that Taiwanese people have a distinct historical origins, noting that Austronesian indigenous peoples inhabited the island prior to Dutch colonization in 1624, followed by rule under the Southern Ming, Qing Dynasty, and Japanese colonial rule, and stressed that the People’s Republic of China has never held sovereignty over Taiwan. A commentary in the state-run Beijing Daily hit back, accusing the Lai administration of deliberately smearing the new Ethnic Unity Law and Beijing’s cross-strait united front outreach, claiming the law is intended to build positive ties with Taiwanese people and unify the island’s population. The piece argued that Lai is only hyping a false “China threat” narrative to disrupt peaceful cross-strait exchanges, ahead of Taiwan’s November 28 local elections – a vote widely viewed as a key bellwether for the 2028 presidential election.
Beyond Taiwan, the law has sparked global concern over its impact on ethnic minority communities and political dissidents living outside China’s borders. Western governments and international human rights bodies have warned that the law will expand Beijing’s transnational repression campaign targeting exiled Uyghurs, Tibetans, Inner Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents. In March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted on social media platform X that the law’s broad provisions “could overly restrict freedoms of expression, belief and assembly” and warned that it risks penalizing the peaceful exercise of minority rights. In an April 30 resolution, the European Parliament strongly condemned China’s repressive assimilation policies and related human rights violations across Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and expressed grave concern over the new law, which it said formalizes assimilation policies and restricts cultural, religious, and linguistic freedoms for communities both inside and outside China. A U.S. State Department spokesperson called the law “problematic” for imposing sweeping legal obligations on individuals and organizations, including those based outside of China.
The controversy escalated in early July when a Tibetan exile activist, Pawo Lobga Rangzen, died following a self-immolation protest outside United Nations Headquarters in New York, held to oppose the new legislation. On July 14, dozens of Hong Kong diaspora and civil society groups released a joint statement condemning the law’s extraterritorial provisions, drawing parallels to Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law and 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – laws that activists say have already been used to target, harass, and intimidate Hong Kongers and other exiles living outside China. The groups called on democratic governments around the world to strengthen legal protections for exiled communities and counter Beijing’s transnational repression.
