The affair illustrates the rapidly developing ties between China and Taiwan, which split amid civil war in 1949 but have grown close since Ma Ying-jeou took over the Taiwanese presidency in May 2008.
The businessman was kidnapped in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in early January and held for ransom, the District Prosecutors’ Office in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung city said in a statement released late Tuesday.
Two Taiwanese were arrested in connection with the case the following month, the statement said.
Coast guard personnel rescued the man, surnamed Hsia, on an uninhabited Taiwanese islet early Tuesday after his kidnappers deposited him there, the statement said.
According to local media, Hsia is a 40-year-old electronics company owner with extensive business interests in Guangzhou.
Taiwanese judiciary officials were alerted to the case by Chinese police after the victim’s family complained the man was not released despite their wiring about NT$100 million ($3.33 million) in ransom to a Hong Kong bank account as specified by the kidnappers, the prosecutors’ statement said.
Taiwanese authorities arrested two suspects in the case when they returned to Taiwan in early February, it said.
Judiciary cooperation between Taiwan and China has drastically increased in the 2 1/2 years that Ma has been president.
More than a dozen agreements between the sides, including one facilitating bilateral crime fighting, have been signed since Ma took office.
