While authorities here have said Lin may return anytime he wants, a warrant for his arrest remains outstanding because in May 1979, he abandoned his post while serving as an Army company leader on the frontline island outpost of Kinmen (Quemoy) and defected to mainland China.

After his defection, Lin openly admitted swimming across the narrow channel that separates ROC-held Kinmen from the mainland Chinese city of Xiamen, leaving behind his wife and a child on Taiwan.

Lin, who received his master's in business administration from National Chengchi University in 1978, went on to get a master's degree in Marxist political economy from Peking University after his defection and eventually a Ph.D. in economics from the prestigious University of Chicago. He later returned to mainland China, reunited with his abandoned spouse, and became an economics professor at Peking University. He also founded the China Center For Economic Research, a prominent institution involved with economic research and predictions.

Ever since Lin first sought permission to return to Taiwan to attend his father's funeral in 2002, many influential people have urged the government to grant Lin lenient treatment because he defected such a long time ago.

Since Lin became the World Bank's chief economist in 2008, these people have noted that as he is among a tiny handful of Taiwanese who are carrying out leadership roles in major international organizations, he is helping demonstrate to the world that Taiwan can play a meaningful role in the international community.

These opinions are absolutely correct and it is indeed true that Lin's inability to return to Taiwan is nothing less than a humanitarian tragedy rooted in Cold War rivalry.

However, the Ministry of National Defense is also correct to keep Lin on its list of wanted defectors because no matter how much things have changed, Lin broke the law and should be held accountable for doing so.

No matter what kinds of high offices Lin might have been promoted to on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the fact remains that he was an officer in the ROC Army who abandoned his post on a crucial frontline position and defected to the other side.

While relations between both sides of the Taiwan Strait are currently the best they have been in a long time, this does not change the fact that Lin committed a grave act of disloyalty and should be held accountable for it.

If the government gave Lin a 'pass' merely because he is a prominent economic scholar and holds a high position in a major international organization, this would encourage fellow Taiwanese to commit disloyal acts.

If Lin is now forgiven for his treachery, soldiers and conscripts in Taiwan may begin to believe that as long as one can rise to high positions after joining the enemy's camp, it is perfectly fine to strip off your uniform, abandon your post and swim into the embrace of the other side.

It should also be noted that in 1979, when Lin made his defection, authorities in mainland China had just begun opening up and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's call for Taipei to open peaceful negotiations had just been issued. Unlike today, there was no sign of any framework or even a hope for a framework leading to peaceful co-existence of both sides, and indeed Beijing was still threatening to 'liberate' Taiwan by military force.

Lin was an opportunist who had already received a government scholarship to get his master's degree in Taiwan and, by all accounts, was on a fast-track to joining the elite of Taiwan's society before his defection.

Today, Lin has become a prominent economist who enjoys an excellent reputation for his studies and predictions. While the government should not seek to stop Lin from continuing in his position at the World Bank, he should be informed in no uncertain terms that his act of treachery, and indeed treason, carries a high price that he will have to pay no matter what high positions he is appointed to.

If Lin someday decides he wants to come home in spite of being arrested for defection and going absent without leave, he should be given a fair trial that does not take into account the high positions he has received after defecting to mainland China.

This lesson should be held out not only for Lin, but also several other defectors and draft evaders from Taiwan living in mainland China, most notably Wang Hsi-chueh, the former China Airlines pilot who in 1986 hijacked his own 747 cargo aircraft and flew it to Guangzhou in mainland China.

Wang then rose to become a high-ranking official in mainland China and still lives openly in Beijing, where he boasts about pulling off the hijacking so that he could see his elderly mother in Sichuan province before she died.