Taiwan sentences 8 military officers to prison for spying for China | World News

The defendants are also accused of planning a flight to a Chinese aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait using a CH-47 Chinook military helicopter and filming a video in which they said they would surrender to Beijing in the event of war, Taiwan's official Central News Agency reported.

“The impact could have been severe if Taiwan's authorities had not stopped the espionage and desertion of military assets such as helicopters in time,” said Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation.

“It is demoralizing to read that Taiwanese soldiers are voluntarily making videos declaring their willingness to surrender to China,” he added.

Notably, according to Taiwanese authorities, this conviction of eight military officers is the latest in a growing number of espionage cases committed by China on the democratically governed island.

Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said the recent rulings reflected a shift in strategy by Chinese intelligence.

“This group of convicted agents is relatively younger than in previous cases, which often involved older military retirees,” he said.

Hsiao said that while the older victims in previous cases were more likely to be driven by a mix of ideological motives and financial gain, “the motives in these recent cases appear to be primarily financial.”

He also noted that while the penalties imposed by the court were likely to be more severe than in previous cases, given the relatively low value of the information collected and shared by these agents, this could serve as a deterrent to potential spies.

China claims democratic Taiwan as its territory and has increased military and political pressure across the Taiwan Strait in recent years. The two sides have been spying on each other for decades.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “This is not a foreign policy issue, but an issue that concerns both sides of the Taiwan Strait, which belong to one and the same China.”

According to Hsiao, there has been an upward trend in the number of espionage cases involving Taiwanese military personnel over the past decade.

Taiwan's Control Yuan, the state regulatory agency, also confirmed this. It said that in recent years the number of espionage cases uncovered by Taiwan's military security units has increased significantly and that the targets and forms of infiltration are different from those in the past.

The Control Board's statement said that there had been 40 espionage cases between 2011 and 2023, three times as many as between 2001 and 2010. A total of 113 military and civilian personnel were involved in these cases and a lot of “top secret” information had been leaked.

“This certainly shows that Beijing is intent on infiltrating Taiwan's military and security services, so Taipei must remain vigilant against these efforts in the years to come,” Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA in an email.

A Taiwanese sergeant who worked at a naval training center was charged last month for allegedly photographing and passing on classified defense information to Beijing.

In June, the court upheld the sentences of two retired Taiwanese Air Force officers for helping or attempting to help China recruit intelligence agents in Taiwan.

“The cases demonstrate that Chinese-led subversion and espionage continue to pose a major threat to Taiwan,” Heath said. “The biggest impact is the continued loss of confidence by the public and even the United States in Taiwan's government and military to contain the threat of Chinese subversion and espionage.”

The Control Yuan has called on the Taiwanese government to increase its defense budget to prevent China's espionage activities.

Taiwan's Cabinet announced Thursday that defense spending for 2025 would rise 7.7 percent to $20.25 billion, VOA reported.

First published: August 24, 2024 | 9:41 am IS