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 US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
Nearly half of Taiwanese believe President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has not done enough to prepare the nation against Chinese aggression, the a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed. Asked whether the Tsai administration’s military and non-military preparations to defend Taiwan are adequate, 30.6 percent said they were “mostly inadequate” and 18.9 percent said they “very inadequate,” while 25.7 percent said they were “mostly adequate” and 7.1 percent said they were “very adequate.” Another 17.6 percent had no opinion or did not know enough to form a judgement. Still, 51 percent of respondents approved of Tsai’s national defense policy,
RSS