By Focus and AFP | 2025-03-26

Taiwan faces a growing existential threat from its own citizens spying for China, observers warn, 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, espionage poses a bigger threat to Taiwan because of the risk of a Chinese attack, intelligence analysts told AFP.

Taiwan's intelligence agency has said China used "diverse channels and tactics" to infiltrate the island's military, government agencies and pro-China organizations.

The main targets were retired and active military personnel, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal defense secrets, vow to surrender to the Chinese military and set up armed groups to help invading forces.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has long threatened to use force to seize it -- which the Taipei government opposes.

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

"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," said Mattis, a former CIA counterintelligence analyst.

"This is something more fundamental... to the survival of a nation state or a country."

The number of defendants prosecuted in Taiwan on charges of spying for Beijing has risen sharply in recent years, official data show.

Taiwan's National Security Bureau said 64 defendants were prosecuted on accusations of Chinese espionage last year, compared with 48 in 2023 and 10 in 2022.

In 2024, they included 15 veterans and 28 active service members, with prison sentences reaching as high as 20 years.

The Ministry of National Defense on March 10 announced plans for a bill that would impose a prison sentence of one to seven years on active-duty personnel who pledge loyalty to an enemy and harm military interests.

"In general violations of the National Security Act, the prosecution rate for military personnel is relatively high," said Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao.

"This is because the military is held to stricter standards due to its duty to safeguard national security and its access to weapons," Hsing told AFP.

"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 offense for ordinary people."

Soldiers and singers

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

As these exchanges dwindled in recent years because of cross-strait tensions and the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has found other ways to infiltrate the island, analysts said.

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

Informal banks have offered loans to those in financial difficulty and then wiped out their debts in return for information.

China has recruited some spies through online games.

It has asked spies to share military intelligence, such as the location of bases and stockpiles, or to set up armed groups.

Taiwan's intelligence agency said China has used "gangsters to recruit retired service members to organize their former military comrades in establishing 'sniper teams' and to plot sniper missions against Taiwan's military units and foreign embassies."

China has coerced singers, social media influencers and politicians into doing its bidding, spreading disinformation, expressing pro-China views or obtaining intelligence, said Puma Shen, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker.

China's spy network is "growing and growing," said Shen, who has studied Chinese influence operations and was last year sanctioned by Beijing over alleged "separatism."

"They're trying to weaken, not just our defense, but the whole democratic system," he said.

Raising awareness

President Lai Ching-te, who also belongs to the DPP, earlier in March branded China 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 existed for almost 40 years.

Recent surveys show most Taiwanese oppose unification with China.

But more needs to be done to raise public awareness about the threat that Chinese espionage poses to Taiwan, said Jakub Janda of the think tank European Values Center for Security Policy in Taipei.

"If you betray your country, this needs to become completely unacceptable," said Janda, who advocates for tougher penalties.

"If you have this mood in the society, then it's much harder for Chinese intelligence to actually recruit people."