The Global Times, a daily news service published under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily, reported last week on the growing issue of the independence of Taiwan.

“The CPC’s warning against secessionism is not just talking the talk, and whether the final solution of Taiwan question will be peaceful or not, the secessionists will be judged, condemned and punished,” the Global Times tweeted. 

The Final Solution was the term used to refer to the Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews during World War II. 

The political status of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is contentious. Taiwan is claimed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as part of their territory and the PRC refuses diplomatic relations with countries that recognize the ROC. China has begun to act more aggressively, flying large numbers of warplanes into Taiwan’s airs defense zone in recent weeks. 

The reference by the Chinese Communist party was picked up by Frank Müller-Rosentritt, a member of the German parliament and its foreign affairs committee.

“If a Chinese propaganda medium operates with historically loaded terms, then all alarm bells should ring for us against the background of our history,” Müller-Rosentritt told the German news organization Welt on Saturday.

The reference was taken seriously by at least some in Taiwan. In an article in the Taiwan News, Keoni Everington made the connection between the “Final Solution” to the “Taiwan question” in the Global Times and the Holocaust. Everington emphasized that the “expert” cited by the Global Times made a “serious promise” that Taiwanese “secessionists will be judged, condemned and punished.” 

Everington noted that the Global Times article cited  Li Fei, a professor at the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, as claiming that the process had already begun.

“The mainland has already issued a blacklist of Taiwan secessionists, and this proves that the mainland will separate the secessionists and other political groups and ordinary people on the island,” Fei was quoted as saying. “And no matter what kind of solution, peaceful or not, those blacklisted will be brought to justice.”

Everington compared this to the Yellow Star which was used by the Nazis to segregate Jewish residents from other citizens. 

Everington also noted the use of aggressively militaristic images in the Global Times article, which he described as the “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops launching blitzkrieg-style offensives on a Taiwan beach, airport, and the Presidential Office in Taipei.”

Though Holocaust comparisons are generally misplaced, applying the title of “Nazi” to the Communist Chinese government is, perhaps, more than apt. In 2014, the Chinese government, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies that incarcerated more than one million Muslims, the majority of them Uyghurs, in internment camps without any legal process. This was the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The internment has included separating children from their parents, forced labor, severe ill-treatment, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortion.