Lee Ming-che Charged

Irrigation canal

Lee Ming-che, detained for 70 days in China, was formally charged on Friday:

Beijing late on Friday announced that Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) is being held for suspected subversion of state power.
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Lee has been detained in Hunan Province since March 19, An said, adding that he and “his partners in crime have directly confessed that they carried out activities that threaten our national security.”

An said that an investigation found that Lee had since 2012 frequently traveled to China, and worked with Chinese to develop plans and establish an illegal ring to subvert Beijing.

The government demanded that Beijing adhere to the Cross-Strait agreement on crime fighting and prosecution. Good luck with that... Beijing is ignoring that.

Some previous reports had contended that Lee's arrest was an isolated case of the local authorities acting without Beijing's advance approval, even that it was a mistake and someone else was supposed to be arrested. This report says that Beijing has ratified that by inventing a case -- probably some harmless meetings between Lee and activists in China -- or else they knew all along and it was not a case of local police grabbing him on their own, but was done at the behest of Beijing.

I think lots of us are wondering whether we will see the taped confession routine with Lee.

We will once again see the inevitable comments about how this will shape Taiwanese views of China. It will have little effect. Taiwanese have already amply confirmed they do not want to be part of China, and they have already amply confirmed they detest China's government. This will just be another nugget on the pile.

MEDIA: Reuters in its article on the arrest continues to mindlessly parrot Xinhua:

Relations between China and Taiwan have cooled since Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took power last year, because she refuses to concede that the self-ruled island is part of China.

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