Abstract
If a political transition occurred in mainland China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), what could the Republic of China (Taiwan) do, whose consent would it first have to obtain, and what things could it simply not do under the existing constitutional order? This paper answers these three questions from the standpoint of current law. It divides possible measures into five categories — public statements, humanitarian assistance, authorized technical cooperation, agreements involving political issues, and constitutional or territorial change — and checks the procedural thresholds for each category against the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China and the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. The historical section compares the 1989 response to the democracy movement in Beijing with the assistance given to Hong Kong protesters after 2019; the latter shows that political commitments can be made quickly, but institutions and budgets take about a year to catch up, and legislation was never completed. The paper then sets out five conditional scenarios and three operational windows — 72 hours, 30 days, and six months — and finally designs a factorial survey experiment that uses four falsifiable hypotheses to test how finely public opinion in Taiwan distinguishes among different forms of cooperation. Existing Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) opinion polls measure attitudes toward “one country, two systems” and toward maintaining the status quo; they cannot be used to infer support for assisting a democratizing mainland.
1. Research Questions, Scope, and Method
This paper answers three questions. First, after a transition in the mainland, which measures may the executive branch initiate under current law, which require authorization, ratification, or a budget from the Legislative Yuan, and which require a special majority and a referendum? Second, where are the veto points and coordination points of the President, the Executive Yuan, the Legislative Yuan, political parties, and civil society at each stage? Third, to what extent does public opinion in Taiwan distinguish among “supporting democratic values,” “providing humanitarian assistance,” “bearing fiscal and personnel risks,” and “political integration”?
Three research methods are used: textual analysis of statutory provisions, based on the current texts in the Laws and Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and recording the dates on which provisions were added or amended; historical comparison, taking 1989, 2014, and 2019–2022 as reference points without directly extrapolating past scales or legal rationales; and conditional scenario analysis, in which scenarios explain mechanisms only and do not estimate probabilities of occurrence.
Every claim in this paper is labeled by nature: [Evidence] denotes a fact supported by a traceable source; [Inference] denotes a judgment derived from evidence but not directly confirmed; [Hypothesis] denotes a proposition awaiting testing; [Scenario] denotes a conditional supposition. Evidence is graded on four levels: PRIMARY VERIFIED, SECONDARY VERIFIED, BIBLIOGRAPHIC ONLY, and UNVERIFIED.
Scope boundaries: the party history and organizational expansion of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the “dual government” and state-continuity questions, and the powers of existing agencies together with the legal reform roadmap are each treated in other papers in this series. This paper cross-references them only where necessary and does not restate their arguments.
2. The Existing Constitutional and Legal Framework
(1) The constitutional level
[Evidence] The current version of the Additional Articles of the Constitution was amended on June 10, 2005 [1]. Five provisions are relevant to this paper. Article 2, Paragraph 3: to avert an imminent danger to the state or the people or to cope with a major economic or financial contingency, the President may, by resolution of the Executive Yuan Council, issue emergency decrees; a decree must be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for ratification within ten days of issuance, and lapses immediately if the Legislative Yuan withholds consent. Article 4, Paragraph 5: a change to the national territory must be proposed upon the proposal of one-fourth of all members of the Legislative Yuan, with three-fourths of the members in attendance and three-fourths of those present voting in favor; after public announcement for six months, it must be confirmed by the electors of the free area in a referendum, with valid votes in favor exceeding one-half of the total number of electors. Article 12 sets the same threshold for constitutional amendment. Article 1, Paragraph 1 provides that the referendum described above shall be held within three months after the six-month announcement period. Article 11: the rights and obligations between the people of the free area and those of the mainland area, and the handling of other affairs, may be specially prescribed by law.
[Inference] Emergency decrees can buy time, but they are time-limited powers subject to Legislative Yuan ratification; they cannot serve as the basis for long-term administration of mainland affairs. Article 11 is a legislative authorization clause: what it authorizes is “special prescription by law”; it does not directly grant the Executive Yuan any power to administer the mainland area. Any reading of the existing Constitution as “already authorizing Taiwan to govern the mainland” has no basis in the text.
(2) The Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area
[Evidence] The Act was last amended and promulgated on June 8, 2022; Article 5-3 was added by promulgation on June 21, 2019, and took effect on June 23, 2019 [2]. Article 1 of the Act takes “prior to national unification” as its legislative premise, and Article 2 defines the “mainland area” as “the territory of the Republic of China outside the Taiwan Area.” This is the law’s definition of a region, not an authorization of jurisdiction.
1. The definition of an agreement and the general procedure. Article 4-2, Paragraph 3 provides that an “agreement” under the Act means a written instrument signed between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait “on matters involving the exercise of public authority or political issues.” Article 5, Paragraph 1 requires the entrusted signing institution to submit the draft agreement through the entrusting agency to the Executive Yuan and to sign only after the Executive Yuan consents; Paragraph 2 provides that where the content of an agreement involves amendment of law or matters that must be prescribed by law, the agreement shall be submitted within thirty days of signing, through the Executive Yuan, to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation, and that all other agreements shall be submitted to the Executive Yuan for approval and sent to the Legislative Yuan for record.
2. The special procedure for agreements involving political issues (Article 5-3). Ninety days before negotiations begin, the Executive Yuan must submit to the Legislative Yuan a plan for concluding the agreement together with an assessment of its constitutional or major political impact; the plan may proceed to negotiations only with three-fourths of all members of the Legislative Yuan in attendance and three-fourths of those present consenting. Once a draft is completed, it is resolved upon by the Executive Yuan Council, submitted to the President for approval, and then published in full and sent to the Legislative Yuan; a committee of the whole house of the Legislative Yuan must first hold a hearing, and after the plenary session passes the draft by the same threshold of three-fourths attendance and three-fourths consent, the draft is referred to the Central Election Commission to conduct a nationwide referendum, and only if valid votes in favor exceed one-half of the total number of persons with voting rights is the draft agreement deemed passed. Paragraph 2 of the same article limits an “agreement involving political issues” to an “agreement of a constitutional nature or of major political impact”; Paragraph 9 provides that “the abandonment or alteration of the status of a sovereign state and of the free and democratic constitutional order” may not be an item of negotiation or agreement; Paragraph 10 provides that negotiations or undertakings conducted in violation of the article are void.
3. Other restrictions. Article 5-1 prohibits local governments, public servants, and representative bodies from negotiating or signing agreements with the mainland side without authorization from the Mainland Affairs Council; Article 33-1 requires that any form of cooperation between people, legal persons, or organizations of the Taiwan Area and party, military, administrative, or political organs (institutions) of the mainland requires permission; Article 9, Paragraph 9 provides that in the event of a major emergency, the Executive Yuan may, upon a resolution of the Legislative Yuan, publicly announce prohibitions or restrictions on the entry of the people of the Taiwan Area into the mainland area.
[Inference] The law distinguishes “agreements” from “agreements of a constitutional nature or of major political impact.” General technical-cooperation agreements involving public authority follow the Article 5 procedure and are subject to Executive Yuan consent and Legislative Yuan deliberation or record-filing; only agreements reaching the level of “constitutional nature or major political impact” fall under the exceptionally high threshold of Article 5-3. If humanitarian assistance does not involve signing an agreement and merely provides services under existing budgets and regulations, it does not necessarily trigger either kind of agreement procedure. Article 5-3, Paragraph 9 means that even if a democratic government emerged in the mainland, no arrangement whose content was to alter the free and democratic constitutional order of the Republic of China (Taiwan) could be achieved through the agreement route; it could only return to the constitutional-amendment procedure, and would still have to satisfy the threshold of Article 12.
(3) A comparable statutory source for individual cases: Article 18 of the Act Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macao
[Evidence] The entire text of the article is a single sentence: “Hong Kong or Macao residents whose safety and freedom are in imminent danger due to political factors may be provided with necessary assistance.” The current version dates from the amendment of January 12, 2022; Article 18 itself has never been amended to this day [3]. Article 25 of the Enforcement Rules of the Act provides that when a situation under Article 18 arises, the competent authority shall, unless otherwise provided by other laws or regulations, submit the matter to the Executive Yuan for case-by-case handling [3].
[Inference] This provision gives the executive branch a large measure of discretion, yet contains no provisions on procedure, eligibility, time limits, or remedies. As Section 6 will show, this structure of “broad authorization, empty procedure” directly affected the implementation of assistance after 2019. If a similar need arose in a mainland transition, the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area contains no corresponding humanitarian-assistance clause, and the available statutory sources would be even fewer than in the Hong Kong case.
(4) Legal thresholds for the five categories of measures
| Category of measure | Authority that may initiate | Principal legal checkpoints | Legislative Yuan involvement required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public statements and diplomatic expressions of position | Office of the President, Executive Yuan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mainland Affairs Council | National security and diplomatic assessment; no special authorization required | None |
| Humanitarian assistance (no agreement signed) | Executive Yuan and the relevant ministries; may be entrusted to civil organizations | Existing budget items, entry/exit and residence regulations, personal-data protection, auditing | Drawing on existing budgets requires no new authorization; new special appropriations require the budget procedure |
| Authorized technical cooperation (agreements involving public authority) | Coordinated by the Mainland Affairs Council, with the competent authorities acting jointly (Article 4-2) | Draft agreement submitted to the Executive Yuan for consent (Article 5, Paragraph 1) | Submitted for deliberation or for record within thirty days of signing (Article 5, Paragraph 2) |
| Agreements involving political issues | Executive Yuan | The entire procedure of Article 5-3 | The three-fourths threshold twice, for the conclusion plan and for the draft, plus a nationwide referendum |
| Constitutional or territorial change | Proposed by the Legislative Yuan | Article 4, Paragraph 5 and Article 12 of the Additional Articles | Proposal by one-fourth, three-fourths attendance, three-fourths resolution, announcement for six months, confirmation by a majority of the total number of electors |
3. Actors and Institutional Veto Points
[Evidence] The 11th Legislative Yuan was elected on January 13, 2024, with 113 seats in total: 52 for the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT), 51 for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 8 for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), and 2 independents; no party holds a majority on its own [4]. This draft has not verified the effect of any subsequent by-elections or recalls on the seat count; if there are changes, the current list of members published by the Legislative Yuan shall prevail.
[Inference] Under a divided Legislative Yuan, measures requiring only executive action (statements, humanitarian assistance drawing on existing budgets) move fastest; measures requiring a Legislative Yuan majority (new special appropriations, an organic law establishing a permanent agency, deliberation of agreements) require cross-party negotiation; and the thresholds of Article 5-3 and of constitutional amendment — three-fourths attendance and three-fourths consent — mean that in practice either the KMT or the DPP can block alone. In other words, arrangements of the political-integration kind cannot bypass the opposition parties even if they enjoy the support of the governing party. This conclusion follows from the arithmetic of the provisions and does not depend on any prediction about the future positions of the parties.
The President’s direct tools are limited: emergency decrees require a resolution of the Executive Yuan Council and are subject to Legislative Yuan ratification; the National Security Council can coordinate, but its organization and powers are prescribed by law [1]. The Executive Yuan is the actual executor of most measures. The Mainland Affairs Council is the coordinating agency for cross-strait agreements (Article 4-2) [2], and was also the competent authority for the 2020 Hong Kong assistance project [6].
4. Political Parties and Civil Society
(1) The research status of party positions
The KMT’s tradition of the Republic of China’s constitutional order, the DPP’s discourse on Taiwan’s subjectivity and democratic security, and the TPP’s discourse on governance and cross-strait policy provide different starting points for policy discussion. This paper does not infer from them that any party would support or oppose any specific bill. The reason is not merely methodological caution: the Hong Kong case provides a counterexample (see below), showing that there is no simple correspondence between a party’s overall discourse and the bills its legislators actually introduce.
(2) The cross-party record on the Hong Kong issue
[Evidence] At its first extraordinary session of the seventh session, the ninth Legislative Yuan on June 17, 2019 passed a joint statement by the governing and opposition party caucuses recommending that the government provide necessary assistance, under Article 18 of the Act Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macao, to Hong Kong residents whose safety and freedom were in imminent danger due to political factors (as cited in the bill-related documents of the tenth Legislative Yuan) [8]. On May 28, 2020, the Internal Administration Committee of the Legislative Yuan passed an ad hoc motion requiring the Mainland Affairs Council to submit quarterly reports on the implementation of the assistance project; on May 29, the party caucuses issued a joint statement requiring the Mainland Affairs Council to report quarterly on the review of Hong Kong’s special status (as stated in the MAC’s report to the Legislative Yuan) [7].
[Evidence] There were at least two amendment proposals: the New Power Party caucus (Chiu Hsien-chih, Chen Jiau-hua, and Wang Wan-yu) proposed a draft amendment to certain articles of the Act Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macao, printed and distributed on April 22, 2020, Yuan General No. 1669, Member Proposal No. 24521, which would expressly prescribe the eligibility, the receiving authority, the review panel, and the relief procedures for political asylum [8]; and 28 members including Chiang Chi-chen proposed a draft amendment to Article 18, printed and distributed on April 21, 2021, Yuan General No. 1669, Member Proposal No. 26392, which would add an exemption for entry without permission and a case-by-case residence mechanism [9]. Chiang Chi-chen was at the time a KMT member, and most co-signers were also KMT members (party affiliation follows the public roster; the bill documents themselves do not record party affiliation).
[Evidence] The current Article 18 remains the original single-sentence provision [3], which shows that none of the above draft amendments completed legislation. [Evidence] The Legislative Yuan’s proceedings system shows that the final recorded status of both bills (and of two other Article 18 amendment drafts of the same term) was, after first reading, “referred for review (to the Internal Administration Committee),” with no review report attached; under Article 13 of the Law Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Exercise of Powers, bills not decided by the end of the tenth term are not carried over for deliberation in the next term. It can therefore be said that they lapsed at the end of the term without committee review; it cannot be said that they were “voted down.”
[Inference] On the Hong Kong issue, the bills to institutionalize asylum came both from a small opposition party of the time and from the largest opposition party of the time, while the governing side tended to handle the matter through an executive project without amending the law (see Section 6). This suggests that in a mainland-transition scenario, party disagreement over “whether to assist” may be smaller than disagreement over “whether to proceed by executive discretion or by law.” This point is background to Hypothesis H4, not a conclusion.
(3) The role of civil society
[Evidence] Research by Chiang Min-yen and Candia Tong (the authors took part in related assistance advocacy, and part of the research material comes from their firsthand experience and interviews) points out that between July 2019 and June 2020, before the official window was established, civil organizations in fact undertook identity verification, emergency placement, and legal and psychological assistance, and that the government granted administrative facilitation to cases jointly assisted by reliable civil organizations [10].
[Inference] When official mechanisms are absent, civil society can step in quickly, but it holds no public authority, cannot confer legal status, and its funding and manpower have limits. If a mainland transition triggered population movements, the scale could far exceed the Hong Kong case, and the room for civil society to step in would be exhausted sooner.
5. Historical Comparison I: 1989
[Evidence] On June 4, 1989, President Lee Teng-hui issued a statement, on behalf of the government and people of the Republic of China, calling on the international community to severely condemn the CCP, demanding an immediate halt to the massacre, and calling on Chinese people at home and abroad to “give every possible support” [11]. The U.S. Department of State’s 1989 human rights report records that the January 1989 amendment of the Civil Associations Act legalized the organization of political parties, and that the DPP registered as a legal political party in April of that year; of the Legislative Yuan’s then 250 seats, only 67 were supplementary members elected in Taiwan, the majority still being members elected in 1948 [13].
[Evidence, weaker] A 1989 cable from the U.S. mission in Taiwan (released via WikiLeaks, not an official publication) states that the Second Plenary Session of the KMT Central Committee passed a similar resolution, that Minister of Foreign Affairs Lien Chan received the envoys of various countries to seek support, and that Premier Lee Huan stated that the policy of opening visits to relatives in the mainland remained unchanged [12]. A commentary article by John F. Copper states that Lee Teng-hui considered promoting sanctions against the mainland through the United States but did not sustain the effort [14]; the same article also dates the establishment of the Mainland Affairs Council to October 1989, which is inconsistent with the MAC’s own account (the organic act of the MAC was passed at third reading on January 18, 1991, and was promulgated and took effect on January 28) [16]; this paper therefore cites that article as background only and does not rely on it as sole evidence.
[Evidence, bibliographic] The Report on the Results of a Public Opinion Survey on the Attitudes and Opinions of the People of the Taiwan Area and of People Returning from Family Visits to the Mainland regarding the Tiananmen Incident, directed by Ding Ting-yu and Ming Chu-cheng, has records in National Taiwan University’s academic archive for a 1989 report and a January 1990 version; the National Central Library catalogue records 86 pages, and holdings are also recorded in CiNii (BA11905270) and WorldCat [15]. This paper has not obtained the full text, the questionnaire, the sampling description, or the statistical tables, and cites no percentages or sample sizes from it.
[Inference] The 1989 response consisted mainly of statements and moral support, while existing cross-strait exchange policies were maintained. Taiwan had not yet completed a full re-election of its legislature at the time, and its structure of political competition differed from today’s; the “unity of government and opposition” of 1989 therefore cannot be directly extrapolated into cross-party consensus under today’s democratic competition. If the 1989 survey can be obtained, its greatest value would lie in the fact that it surveyed both the general public and people who had just returned from family visits to the mainland, making it possible to compare the attitudes of those with direct contact with the mainland against those of the general public.
6. Historical Comparison II: 2014 and Hong Kong, 2019–2022
(1) 2014
The 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 anti-extradition-law movement must be treated separately. This draft has found no dedicated assistance program or budget in 2014 based on Article 18 of the Act Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macao, and therefore does not trace the assistance measures of 2020 and after back to 2014. The year 2014 serves as background only: it shows that Taiwan’s attention to the situation in Hong Kong predates 2019 but was not converted into an institutionalized humanitarian mechanism. This judgment rests on an “absence of evidence found”; if case-assistance documents from 2014 come to light in the future, it should be revised.
(2) 2019–2022: from commitment to project
[Evidence] In chronological order: the June 17, 2019 joint statement of the governing and opposition party caucuses of the Legislative Yuan [8]; on August 12, 2019, President Tsai Ing-wen, through a DPP spokesperson, expressed willingness to provide humanitarian assistance to Hong Kong protesters (as quoted by Chiang Min-yen and Tong) [10]; on May 28, 2020, the Internal Administration Committee of the Legislative Yuan required quarterly reports [7]; on June 18, 2020, the MAC announced that the “Hong Kong Humanitarian Assistance and Care Action Project” had been approved by the Executive Yuan, that a “Taiwan-Hong Kong Services and Exchanges Office” had been established under the Taiwan-Hong Kong Economic and Cultural Co-operation Council, beginning operations on July 1, and that humanitarian assistance would be handled “on the premise of safeguarding national security, in accordance with existing laws and regulations and through public-private cooperation” [6].
[Evidence] The MAC’s quarterly report to the Legislative Yuan of April 2021 (covering January–March 2021) states that since its opening the Office had handled more than 2,000 telephone calls and emails, most of them consultations on study, employment, investment, and immigration; that the government had drawn up operating rules for handling Article 18 situations, with joint review and case-by-case decisions based on the degree to which an applicant’s personal safety and freedom were threatened and the degree of imminent danger; and that a number of cases were already studying or working in Taiwan and living independently [7]. The quarterly report gives no concrete number of humanitarian-assistance cases.
[Evidence, secondary] Chiang Min-yen and Tong, drawing on the authors’ interviews, record that as of February 2022, about 110 people had taken part in the project, of whom about 84 were assisted in the first stage by civil organizations; about 92 to 99 people had passed the final joint review, about 10 to 15 were in process, and about 1 to 3 had not passed [10]. The same chapter quotes a Liberty Times report stating that since 2020 the project had assisted more than 130 people, and quotes the MAC’s reply to a legislator stating that the Co-operation Council’s total expenditure for 2021 was NT$31.42 million [10]. None of these figures is original government data directly checked by this paper; nor does the number of participants equal the number of persons who obtained long-term residence or status.
[Evidence, secondary] The same chapter states that after July 2022 the government, through an unpublished internal administrative document, established a set of “quasi-asylum mechanisms”: persons who had obtained project status could apply for individual work permits and extensions of residence, and after five full years, upon meeting income conditions, could apply for permanent residence [10]. This paper has not obtained that administrative document and lists it as pending verification.
(3) Four lessons
[Inference] First, there is a time lag between commitment and capability. About ten months elapsed between the President’s statement (August 2019) and the approval of the project (June 2020), a period during which civil society mainly filled the gap. Second, a broad statutory basis produces opaque procedures. Article 18 is a single sentence; the concrete criteria remained in unpublished operating rules, making it hard for applicants to predict outcomes [8][10]. Third, there is a genuine tension between security considerations and transparency: the government withheld details on the ground of preventing infiltration, while researchers and civil organizations held that opacity itself increases applicants’ risks [10]. Fourth, the amendment bills crossed party lines, yet none completed legislation; an executive project can operate, but its continuance depends on the will of those in power [8][9][10].
[Inference] The significance of these lessons for a mainland scenario lies in direction, not in scale. The recipients of Hong Kong assistance numbered in the hundreds; the population movements, fiscal questions, and security questions a mainland transition might involve are not of the same order of magnitude, and the legal relationship across the Taiwan Strait also differs from the Taiwan–Hong Kong relationship.
7. Five Conditional Scenarios
All of the following are [Scenario] and do not represent probabilities of occurrence. Each scenario sets out identifiable cooperation partners, feasible measures, and the principal veto conditions.
A. Peaceful reform in the mainland. There exists an identifiable reform authority willing to accept supervision. Feasible measures, in order: public statements; exchanges not involving agreements, such as election observation and judicial and administrative training; and, where personnel must be exchanged or cooperation instruments signed, the procedures of Article 4-2 and Article 5. Veto conditions: the counterpart’s source of authority is unclear; the content of the cooperation involves a political organ listed in Article 33-1 without permission having been obtained.
B. Fragmentation of central power. No counterpart exists that can represent the entire mainland. Humanitarian assistance should be organized by locality and by recipient and proceed through verifiable neutral channels (international organizations or civil organizations), avoiding treating any one side’s invitation as authorization from the whole mainland. Veto conditions: recipients cannot be contacted safely; the assistance might be diverted by armed forces.
C. Invitation to cooperate from an interim government. The inviting party’s effective scope of governance, popular basis, term of office, and revocability must each be examined; the Taiwan side must in turn confirm that the measure falls within executive authority or that Legislative Yuan authorization has been obtained. Constitutional consultation and public-administration capacity building are technical cooperation and should not be packaged as a political agreement; conversely, anything involving joint institutions or sovereignty arrangements must return to the procedure of Article 5-3 or to constitutional amendment.
D. Multiple competing regimes. The greatest risk is that assistance will be read as recognition of one side. It is advisable to limit action to humanitarian assistance and to implement it through multilateral channels. Veto condition: military and civilian uses cannot be distinguished.
E. The mainland democratizes but does not seek unification. Educational, academic, economic and trade, and judicial technical cooperation can proceed decoupled from political integration; Article 5-3, Paragraph 9 already excludes altering the free and democratic constitutional order of the Republic of China (Taiwan) by agreement, so the topic of political integration will not automatically enter the agenda merely because cooperation expands.
Cross-cutting checks: personal safety, the democratic authorization of each side, authority under current law, traceable budgets, independent audit, and exit mechanisms. The six are mutually independent; passing one does not mean passing the rest.
8. Three Operational Windows
[Scenario] The following matrix matches measures to time windows and legal bases. It is an analytical working hypothesis and does not indicate that the relevant agencies have already obtained authorization for cross-border implementation.
72 hours. What can be done: statements by the Office of the President and the Executive Yuan; situation assessments by the National Security Council and the Mainland Affairs Council; communication by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with friendly countries; release of safety information to the people of the Taiwan Area who are in the mainland. Basis: general executive authority. What should not be done: any commitment in the form of an agreement; any statement concerning sovereignty or unification. Should a major economic or financial contingency or an imminent danger arise, the emergency decree is the only instrument for rapidly expanding authority, but it requires a resolution of the Executive Yuan Council and must be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for ratification within ten days [1].
30 days. What can be done: humanitarian assistance within existing budget items, implemented by entrusting civil organizations or international organizations; case-by-case handling of persons entering the country under existing regulations; reporting to the Legislative Yuan and opening negotiations on a supplementary budget or a special budget. What is required: if any cooperation instrument involving public authority is to be signed, the consent of the Executive Yuan must first be obtained, and the instrument must be sent to the Legislative Yuan within thirty days of signing [2]. Observable indicators: documented expenditures, the number of recipients and the channels used, and the record of reports to the Legislative Yuan.
Six months. What can be done: establishing a permanent coordinating body by an organic law or an act, with express provisions on budget, supervision, information disclosure, and a sunset clause; amending the rules on entry and residence of persons as needed, so as to avoid repeating the Hong Kong case’s long-term reliance on unpublished operating rules. What is required: a Legislative Yuan majority. If an agreement involving political issues were proposed, six months would not suffice to complete the procedure of Article 5-3, because the conclusion plan alone must be sent to the Legislative Yuan ninety days before negotiations, and there follow a hearing, review under the three-fourths threshold, and a nationwide referendum [2].
9. Budgets, Accountability, and Exit Mechanisms
[Inference] For every category of measure, five things should be written down in advance: the statutory source; the source and item of the budget; the implementing agency and the entrusted institutions; the cycle and form of reports to the Legislative Yuan; and the conditions for stopping. In the Hong Kong case, the Co-operation Council’s annual expenditure was disclosed only when a legislator raised the question in interpellation [10], which shows that “having a budget” and “having a traceable budget” are two different things.
Recommended accountability design: emergency humanitarian expenditures are reported to the Legislative Yuan regularly after disbursement, stating uses and numbers of beneficiaries (in aggregate form that does not expose personal identities); permanent bodies carry a sunset clause, and upon expiry require reauthorization by the Legislative Yuan; technical-cooperation agreements carry an exit clause, so that if the counterpart loses its democratic authorization or breaches its human-rights commitments, the Taiwan side may terminate unilaterally; and the National Audit Office conducts an annual audit of the project.
Exit mechanisms must be designed at the same time as activation mechanisms. A transition may reverse; how personnel and assets already committed are to be withdrawn if the cooperation partner moves back toward authoritarianism, and how the status of assisted persons already in Taiwan is to be handled, should all be prescribed in advance rather than dealt with ad hoc after a reversal occurs.
10. Public-Opinion Evidence and the Design of a Survey Experiment
(1) Existing evidence and its limits
[Evidence] Mainland Affairs Council Press Release No. 044 of August 20, 2026: among respondents, 81.2% did not approve of “one country, two systems”; 68.9% supported Taiwan maintaining the status quo and refusing unification with the CCP; 83.6% supported the “broadly defined status quo” advocated by the government; and 83.9% supported the position that Taiwan’s future is to be decided by Taiwan’s 23 million people. The survey was commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council and conducted by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University by telephone among persons aged 20 and above from August 13 to 17, 2026, with 1,086 valid samples and a sampling error of approximately ±2.97 percentage points at the 95% confidence level [5].
[Inference] These questions measure attitudes toward the CCP’s political propositions and toward the manner in which Taiwan’s future is to be decided. They do not ask respondents whether they support assisting a mainland that has already democratized, nor do they distinguish among humanitarian assistance, technical assistance, fiscal expenditure, and political integration. Reading them as “the people of Taiwan oppose cooperation with a democratized mainland” or as “support for assistance” would in either case be an inference that goes beyond the evidence.
(2) Four falsifiable hypotheses
H1: Supporting democratic values is not the same as supporting direct government participation in mainland reconstruction. Falsification condition: if the gap between the approval rate for “supporting mainland democratization” and the approval rate for “dispatching government personnel to assist in building mainland institutions” is less than 5 percentage points, and the two are highly correlated (correlation coefficient ≥ 0.8), then H1 does not hold.
H2: Cooperation that involves no sovereignty, no military risk, and no long-term fiscal obligation enjoys higher support than political integration. Falsification condition: if, in a randomly presented scenario, the support rate for “humanitarian assistance” or “electoral technical assistance” is not significantly higher than that for “joint constitutional arrangements” (α = 0.05), then H2 does not hold.
H3: The democratic authorization of the cooperation partner, Taiwan’s own constitutional safeguards, and the safety of personnel are three mutually independent constraints. Falsification condition: in the factorial design, if the main effect of any one of the three factors is not significant, or if its effect is almost entirely absorbed by the interaction term of one of the factors, then H3 does not hold.
H4: Party identification has a smaller effect on “whether to assist” than on “by what procedure to assist (executive discretion or legislative authorization).” Falsification condition: if the effect size of party identification on support for assistance is greater than or equal to its effect size on procedural preference, then H4 does not hold.
(3) Experimental design
Population and sampling: Adults aged 20 and above in Taiwan, sampled by telephone using a dual frame of landline and mobile numbers, or administered in parallel to an online sample recruited by probability sampling, with the two modes reported separately.
Design: A 2×2×2 between-subjects factorial experiment, the factors being (1) whether the mainland cooperation partner was produced by a free election; (2) whether an explicit safeguard of “no change to Taiwan’s constitutional status” is attached; and (3) whether the estimated fiscal cost is high or low (presented as an annual amount in New Taiwan dollars). Personnel safety risk is an expanded version as a fourth factor, to be included or not depending on the sample size.
Outcome variables: Respondents are asked separately about their degree of support (five-point scale) for five measures: humanitarian goods and medical assistance; electoral and judicial technical assistance; fiscal assistance; dispatching public servants to the mainland to collaborate; and joint constitutional arrangements. They are also asked about procedural preference: handling by the executive branch under existing law, or the enactment of a special law by the Legislative Yuan.
Sample size: To detect a 5-percentage-point difference between two groups (for example, 50% versus 45%), with two-tailed α = 0.05 and power of 0.8, approximately 1,560 persons are needed per group; in a factorial design comparing the main effect of a single factor, a total sample of about 3,200 persons meets this requirement. If the expected effect is 6 percentage points, approximately 1,080 persons are needed per group, and a total sample of about 2,200.
Reporting requirements: Publish the full verbatim wording and order of the questions, the survey dates, the sampling frame, the weighting method, the refusal and non-response rates, and the sample size and confidence interval of each group; register the hypotheses and the analysis plan in advance. This design applies only to public opinion in Taiwan; in a mainland without the conditions for free sampling, no claim should be made to have obtained representative public-opinion data.
11. Research Limitations and Evidence Gaps
- 1989: for the National Taiwan University survey report, only the bibliographic record and holdings were verified; the full text was not obtained. The 1989 archives of the Office of the President, the Executive Yuan, and the Legislative Yuan were not consulted; the U.S. cable is an unofficially released text.
- 2019–2022: the numbers of persons assisted, the numbers who passed, and the budget figures come from researchers’ interviews and the media and interpellation records they quote; no publicly released original government statistics have been seen. The internal administrative documents of after July 2022 were not obtained; the MAC’s quarterly reports for subsequent quarters were not checked one by one.
- Legislative Yuan: whether the 11th Legislative Yuan has other proposals of the same kind remains to be checked bill by bill.
- Political parties: this draft has not checked the current party platforms and policy documents of the three parties one by one against their original texts; the description of party discourse in Section 4 serves as a research starting point only and makes no judgment of position.
- Seats: the Legislative Yuan seat count is based on the election results of January 2024; subsequent changes have not been verified.
- Parallel draft materials not incorporated into this draft have not yet been compared; if they contain verified material not covered by this draft, it should be added.
The above gaps do not affect this paper’s conclusions on legal thresholds, because the latter rest directly on the current statutory texts; they mainly affect the degree of quantification of the historical-comparison sections.
12. Conclusion
The existing Constitution and laws set out tiered channels for the Republic of China (Taiwan)’s participation in a democratic transition in the mainland. Statements and humanitarian assistance that does not involve signing an agreement can be initiated quickly by the executive branch; cooperation agreements involving public authority require the consent of the Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan deliberation or record-filing; agreements of a constitutional nature or of major political impact must pass the Legislative Yuan’s three-fourths threshold twice and a nationwide referendum, and may not have as their content the alteration of the sovereign status or the free and democratic constitutional order of the Republic of China (Taiwan); constitutional and territorial change is subject to the separate constitutional-amendment threshold. No existing provision authorizes the Republic of China (Taiwan) to govern the mainland area.
The Hong Kong case shows that political will can be expressed quickly, but that if the statutory basis consists of a single authorizing sentence and the procedures remain in unpublished operating rules, implementation will depend on civil society filling the gap and on the continuing will of those in power. In a mainland scenario, this problem would be amplified by scale. The comparatively sound approach is to write the procedures, budget reporting, and exit conditions for humanitarian assistance into law before a crisis, while leaving political integration to the high-threshold procedures the Constitution itself prescribes.
As to public opinion, this paper can establish only one point: the existing surveys do not measure the questions this paper is concerned with. The four hypotheses and the factorial design provide an executable and falsifiable testing program.
References
[1] Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China, amended June 10, 2005, Laws and Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan), https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000002 (Articles 1, 2, 4, 11, and 12; checked 2026-10-18). See also the Constitution of the Republic of China, https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000001.
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v1.0 ｜ 2026-10-18
Review record: Editorial independent review, 2026-10-18. Conclusion: PASS.