Experts warn of a growing threat from inside Taiwan

‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said

• AFP, TAIPEI

Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats.

While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack.

Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal defense secrets, make vows to surrender to the Chinese military and set up armed groups to help invading forces.

While espionage operations were conducted by governments around the world, the threat to Taiwan was far greater, Jamestown Foundation president Peter Mattis said.

“It’s not practiced at this kind of scale, with this kind of malign purpose, and with the ultimate goal being annexation, and as a result, that makes this different,” Mattis said. “This is something more fundamental… to the survival of a nation state or a country.”

The number of people prosecuted in Taiwan for spying for Beijing has risen sharply in recent years, official data showed.

The National Security Bureau (NSB) said 64 people were prosecuted for Chinese espionage last year, compared with 48 in 2023 and 10 in 2022. Last year, they included 15 veterans and 28 active service members, with prison sentences reaching as high as 20 years.

Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) said: “In general violations of the National Security Act (國家安全法), the prosecution rate for military personnel is relatively high.”

“This is because the military is held to stricter standards due to its duty to safeguard national security and its access to weapons,” Hsing said. “This does not mean that ordinary people do not engage in similar activities. The difference is that such actions may not always constitute a criminal offence for ordinary people.”

Taiwan and China have a history of political, cultural and educational exchanges due to a shared language, giving Chinese recruiters opportunities to cultivate spies.

As those exchanges dwindled in recent years due to cross-strait tensions and the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has found other ways to infiltrate Taiwan, experts said.

China has harnessed criminals, temples and online platforms to reach retired and active service members, using money and political propaganda to lure them into spying.

Informal banks have offered loans to those in financial difficulty and wiped their debts in return for information. Others have been recruited through online games.

Spies have been asked to share military intelligence, such as the location of bases and stockpiles, or set up armed groups.

The NSB said China has used “gangsters to recruit retired servicemembers to organize their former military comrades in establishing ‘sniper teams’ and to plot sniper missions against Taiwan’s military units and foreign embassies.”

Singers, social media influencers and politicians have also been coerced into doing Beijing’s bidding, spreading disinformation, expressing pro-China views or obtaining intel, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) said.

China’s spy network was “growing and growing,” Shen said.

“They are trying to weaken, not just our defense, but the whole democratic system,” he added.

President William Lai (賴清德) last week said China was a “foreign hostile force,” as he proposed measures to combat Chinese espionage and infiltration. Among them were ensuring the transparency of cross-strait exchanges involving elected officials and reinstating military trials during peacetime — a sensitive issue in Taiwan, where martial law was imposed for nearly 40 years.

Recent surveys showed most Taiwanese were not in favor of unification with China.

However, more needs to be done to raise public awareness about the threat Chinese espionage poses to Taiwan, European Values Center for Security Policy executive director Jakub Janda said.