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The sprawling metropolis of Chongqing is 1,000 miles from China’s east coast and even further from the self-governing island of Taiwan.

In Chinese law, however, that does not seem to matter — as Puma Shen, a Taiwanese MP, found out in 2025 when the Chongqing police force opened a criminal case against him.

He had not been to Chongqing, or had any involvement with the city. According to the police, however, his offence — “separatist activities” — knows no boundaries.

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It was, Shen said, a message. “They want it to have a chilling effect,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t matter to me, but it does matter to the Taiwanese people. They want to try to suppress our freedom of speech.”

Shen is a backbench member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), known generally as the “pro-independence” wing of Taiwanese politics, though it has never made declaring independence official policy.

The rival Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, was the Communist Party’s rival in the Chinese civil war, and still believes in the principle that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one China” temporarily ruled by separate systems.

That is enough for Beijing to now see its old foe as a friend, and the more strident DPP politicians — such as Shen — as its bitterest enemies. Even so, the rhetoric against Shen and his colleagues has become extreme in the past year as President Xi has accelerated a voluble and multifaceted campaign to achieve “reunification” by non-military means.

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Why it was the Chongqing police who followed this up with a formal criminal investigation is not clear. “Police departments in China are now competing with each other,” Shen said. “If Zhejiang province starts targeting me, then Chongqing wants to get in first. It’s like a KPI [key performance indicator].”

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People concerned about human rights, personal freedoms and the economic relationship with the West tend to favour the DPP. Those suspicious of the West and American-style capitalism have started to draw on pro-Beijing and even pro-Russian narratives, particularly those circulated on social media.

Beijing is actively promoting these narratives, including by sponsoring trips to China for social media influencers from the island.

That is the carrot. The stick is not only a huge military build-up, including regular naval exercises around the island, but aggressive treatment of those who, like Shen, stand against Beijing.

Frame grab of rockets being fired into water during China’s live-fire drills around Taiwan.

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“Taiwan is becoming more polarised,” Shen said. Rather than the KMT and the DPP representing two different anti-Communist parties, the KMT was becoming more actively “pro-Beijing”, he said. “The pro-China people in the KMT used to be marginalised, but now they are starting to become the mainstream. It’s very scary.”

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Those who study China’s information warfare tactics, like Shen, say a more dangerous possibility is that Taiwan will start making concessions to Beijing to keep the political and economic peace.

Taiwan’s tech-led economy is closely bound to mass manufacturing on the mainland.

Hong Kong began its move towards direct rule from Beijing on issues such as national security and free speech rights by agreeing an extradition law with the mainland. Shen envisages a future pro-Beijing government in Taiwan moving in this direction — in which case, police investigations on the mainland against outspoken politicians like him will take on a more sinister aspect.

In December Jimmy Lai, once one of Hong Kong’s leading businessmen and newspaper owners, was convicted of “sedition” for his anti-Beijing views.

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The [Chinese] Communist Party was targeting him because his promotion of civil defence and his focus on countering Beijing’s social media narratives were obstacles to its strategy. But its aggression was increasing, he said. “This happens because they want to distract attention,” he said. “It happened in 2020 with the pandemic, and now the economy is not going well.

“But it’s also that they want to expand their legal warfare against us, and use it to expand their influence.”