New Party spokesman Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠), his father, and New Party youth wing executives Ho Han-ting (侯漢廷) and Lin Ming-cheng (林明正) were indicted yesterday after prosecutors said they found evidence of espionage and Chinese funding.
The three New Party defendants “had endangered national security and social stability by developing an organization for use by the Chinese government and its military” in contravention of the National Security Act (國家安全法), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Wang’s father, Wang Chin-pu (王進步), was charged with being an accessory to espionage and other illegal activities conducted by the other defendants.
Photo: Cheng Hung-ta, Taipei Times
Prosecutors said they uncovered evidence of money transfers from China to the three party members to work with convicted Chinese spy Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) in his efforts to infiltrate Taiwan’s military and connect with Taiwanese politicians and youth organizations.
Zhou, a former graduate student at National Chengchi University, was Beijing’s liaison and was also responsible for monitoring progress and collecting reports made by Wang Ping-chung, Ho and Lin.
Zhou had set up a “Star Fire Secret Unit” and gave the four of them code names: Wang Ping-chung was “One,” Lin was “Two,” Ho was “Three” and Zhou was “Four,” the prosecution statement said.
Nine retired and active military officials were contacted to obtain classified materials, most of whom reportedly had links to the nation’s weapons procurement programs, prosecutors said.
Documents belonging to Wang Ping-chung showed that he was already working with Chinese officials in 2013, before meeting Zhou, and had later written that officials from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office had promised to provide him and Zhou up to NT$16 million (US$535,296 at the current exchange rate) a year for their work in Taiwan, they said.
Prosecutors said they had uncovered Wang Ping-chung’s accounting ledgers that showed money transfers from Chinese sources, in addition to a work document on which Wang Ping-chung wrote: “[I will] work under the guidance and assistance of the Chinese Communist Party to unite and integration the forces working to achieve unification across the Taiwan Strait.”
Wang Ping-chung allegedly cofounded the pro-unification Web site Fire News (燎原新聞網) with Zhou, which they used to recruit Taiwanese into their spy network.
The Taiwan High Court in April handed Zhou a 14-month prison sentence for attempting to recruit Taiwanese officials.
After the indictments were announced, Wang Ping-chung, Ho and Lin held a news conference in Taipei, at which Wang Ping-chung accused the prosecutors of “concocting a story” without any “smoking gun” evidence.
“If the judiciary has the guts, then I will ask for an open trial so that the public can see and judge for themselves,” he said.
Lin accused the administration of “adopting the ways of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to crack down on dissidents.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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