CHINA PRESSURES TAIWANESE VISITORS TO HAVE ABORTIONS

TAIPEI, Republic of China, July 18, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Some women from the Chinese mainland who are married to men from the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) have been pressured to have abortions when they visit mainland relatives—to comply with Beijing’s one-child policy, an official in Taipei said today.  The nominally Communist regime in Beijing maintains the fiction that the island state on Taiwan is a “renegade province,” when in fact it is, historically, the legitimate successor of Nationalist China founded in 1911 by Dr. Sun Yet-Sen. Since Communist armies took over the mainland in 1949, Taiwan has preserved its independence and gradually restored informal contacts. But the mainland Chinese feel entitled to bully visitors from the tiny Republic.  In recent weeks, at least six mainland-born women with husbands on Taiwan reported being harassed or coerced by Chinese officials to undergo abortions or sterilization, while those with children were urged to take frequent pregnancy tests, according to the Taiwan Straits Exchange Foundation, the semi-official body that handles ROC-China relations. About 150,000 mainland Chinese are married to Taiwan Chinese, but only a small number have gained Taiwan residency rights under a strict quota of 3,600 per year.  To prevent Beijing’s forced abortion of the next generation of free-born Chinese, the ROC has allowed spouses who are pregnant, but have yet to gain residency rights, to extend their six-month visits on Taiwan so that they can safely deliver their babies on the island. The ROC protects the babies’ lives by granting Taiwanese residency rights, said Liang Yu-chen, an official with the foundation.  For AP coverage see:  https://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020718/ap_wo_en_po/taiwan_china_abortion_1   To read about coercive policies in mainland China see:  https://www.pop.org/china/