(New York) – The Chinese government has announced it is investigating the Taiwanese legislator Puma Shen Pao-Yang (沈伯洋) for the crime of “separatism,” infringing upon his basic human rights, Human Rights Watch said today.
The government said Shen was being investigated under China’s judiciary guidelines on “punishing Taiwan independence separatists,” making Shen the first person from Taiwan known to be investigated under the guidelines since the Chinese government issued them in June 2024. The Chinese authorities should immediately drop the baseless investigation, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Chinese government’s investigation of Puma Shen reflects escalating efforts to intimidate Taiwanese people about exercising their rights through the cross-border application of abusive Chinese laws,” said Maya Wang, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing is reaching beyond its borders and seeking to declare certain lawful speech and activities as off-limits for Taiwan’s people.”
On October 28, 2025, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that the Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau had opened an investigation into Shen for co-founding Kuma Academy, which the authorities claim is a “pro-Taiwanese independence separatist organization.”
Shen, 43, a legislator from Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, is a prominent advocate against the Chinese government’s disinformation, coercion, and other tactics that aim to manipulate Taiwanese public opinion. Kuma Academy is a nongovernmental “civil defense” organization focused on providing civilians with basic knowledge and skills to prepare for a potential invasion by China. The organization offers classes including first aid, hostile environment simulations, evacuation procedures, disaster relief and rescue protocol, cybersecurity, open-source intelligence, and self-defense martial arts.
The People’s Republic of China, since its founding in 1949, has never ruled Taiwan and has no jurisdiction over the democratically governed island nation, but claims Taiwan is part of China.
The Chinese government escalated threats against Shen since October 2024, when it imposed sanctions on him for cultivating “violent pro-Taiwanese independent elements” and “maliciously peddling… ‘anti-China’ ideology” and banned him and his family members from entering China. In June 2025, the Chinese government barred an import-export company owned by Shen’s father from doing business with Chinese companies, a form of collective punishment.
The Chinese government also put Shen on a list of “die-hard pro-Taiwan independence elements” in October 2024, a list that has grown since it was first announced in August 2022, to include 12 Taiwanese political leaders and organizations.
If indicted, Shen faces a trial in absentia with no statute of limitations, as well as the death penalty if found to have committed an “especially serious or… vile” crime. While Shen lives in Taiwan, he faces the risks of extradition to China when he travels through third countries that have extradition agreements with China. Taiwanese officials have condemned the investigation against Shen. In recent years, the Chinese government has increasingly targeted Taiwanese nationals for exercising their basic rights in Taiwan.
In August 2024, Chinese authorities sentenced a Taiwanese political activist, Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵), who was living in China, to nine years in prison for his previous political activities in Taiwan. Yang’s was the first known case in which Chinese authorities have charged a Taiwanese national with “separatism,” under article 103 of China’s Criminal Law.
In February, a Chinese court secretly sentenced the Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe (李延賀), known by his pen name Fu Cha (富察), to three years in prison on charges of “inciting secession,” for publishing books in Taiwan. Li had gone to China for a visit.
These prosecutions appear to be part of a Chinese government strategy to extend its legal system beyond China’s borders to advance the foreign policy interests of the Chinese Communist Party, Human Rights Watch said. In 2019, the Party vowed to “accelerate the construction of legal systems on the extraterritorial application of Chinese law.”
“Rights-respecting governments should speak out on behalf of freedoms of expression and association in Taiwan that Beijing is increasingly threatening,” Wang said. “French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders planning to visit Beijing should use the opportunity to publicly express concerns about Chinese government harassment of Puma Shen and other people in Taiwan.”