Taiwan is seeking information from China about a soldier who went missing from an island outpost and turned up on the mainland, in a case that Taipei acknowledged could be a possible defection.
(Bloomberg) — Taiwan is seeking information from China about a soldier who went missing from an island outpost and turned up on the mainland, in a case that Taipei acknowledged could be a possible defection.
The soldier who disappeared last week from Erdan Island, just a few kilometers from the Chinese border, was confirmed to be in China, said Chiu Tai-san, head of the Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei. A semi-official organization in Taiwan has contacted Chinese authorities about the incident, Chiu told lawmakers who asked about the matter Monday, adding that Taipei hoped Beijing would announce details as soon.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry will assess whether the case qualifies as a defection, Chiu said. The reasons the solider went to China last week were unclear, the Central News Agency reported, citing opposition lawmaker Chen Yu-jen.
Defection from Taiwan’s military, which maintains compulsory military service for men, has been rare in recent decades. Departures from both sides were more common in the decades following the Chinese Nationalists’ withdrawal to Taiwan in 1949.
A high-profile example occurred in 1979, when the Taiwanese military officer Justin Lin Yifu swam 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from Kinmen Island, which is near the Chinese city of Xiamen. He went on to become the first person from an emerging market to serve as chief economist at the World Bank and later headed a research center at Peking University in Beijing.
Lin said he went to China because he wanted to help shape the nation’s economic transformation.
–With assistance from Jing Li.
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