A Chinese military official who defected to Taiwan in 1999 brought with him valuable classified information about the deployment of troops along China's southeastern coast, an intelligence source told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Previously, the defection was little known outside intelligence circles. But the case has now received greater attention following the high-profile defection of a Chinese colonel, Xu Junping (徐俊平), to the US last year.
The Chinese defector -- identified as a lieutenant colonel with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) -- is now living in Taiwan under the protection of local military authorities, the source said.
The PLA official defected in 1999 under arrangements made by Taiwan's intelligence agents in China. He offered information related to the PLA's military deployment along China's southeastern coast.
"The defection was mainly due to the official's dissatisfaction with a job transfer from the Nanjing military region to the Beijing military region," the source said. "The official's discontent with the PLA also stemmed from a personnel streamlining project across the services."
The PLA's personnel streamlining project is similar to the Taiwan military's Chingshih project, in which thousands of personnel are losing opportunities for promotion as the military reduces the number of its troops.
"Thanks to him, we now know more about how China deploys its troops along its southeastern coast, which faces Taiwan," the source said.
At the end of last year, PLA colonel Xu Junping asked for political asylum after arriving in the US by plane.
Xu is the highest-ranked PLA official to defect to the US in recent years.
But Xu's case was not the only one to happen last year.
Three other lower-ranking PLA officials also defected to the US last year, but their escapes have been kept secret, unlike the publicity given to Xu.
An intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Xu's case is not an isolated one and that almost every year one or two PLA officials defect to the US.
"Over the past decade, the US has received dozens of defectors from the PLA. These defectors all live in the same place in a Central American country under covert identities," the intelligence official said.
"The defectors were shipped to the Central American country by an anti-communist organization based in Miami. The organization is actually a front for the Central Intelligence Agency," he said.
But the official refused to identify the Central American country and the anti-communist organization.
"The organization has members from around the world. Its members in China, for instance, successfully smuggled out of China several student protest leaders in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident," he said.
"Defectors like Xu Junpin would be sent by the organization to the Central American country after they were believed to have told everything they knew about the PLA to US intelligence authorities," he said.
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