Over the past few years, a considerable number of retired military officers have been to China to pursue "business opportunities," with some selling Beijing information about Taiwan's military, an intelligence source says.
These retired military officials are mostly lieutenant colonels or colonels, who left the military involuntarily in recent years due to the Chingshih personnel streamlining project (精實計劃), a program to improve the military's efficiency.
There are also retired generals, largely major generals, who work at companies suspected of having connections with the Chinese military.
Companies include a Singapore-based company which is a known front for the Chinese military. The company has hired a number of retired generals from Taiwan, an intelligence source said.
"The Chingshih project was aimed at getting good results -- to create a modern and elite fighting force. But it was implemented inhumanely. A large number of career officers were just kicked out of the service like they were trash. There was too little respect paid to their service to the country," the official said.
"This was the case with the first few years of implementation of the project. Last year, the military leadership noticed the problem and ordered more humane treatment of military officials who were considered no longer fit to serve," he said.
A high-ranking official with the National Defense University has admitted in private that the Chingshih project was pushed a little too fast and that military officers forced to leave the service due to the project should have been treated far better.
Quite a number of career officers forced to retire early could not find civilian work after leaving the military.
One former combat pilot earns a living selling beef noodles in a Taipei night market, while a retired army colonel who used to be responsible for combat affairs is now a taxi driver.
The two are only a sliver of a large group of retired military officers who to struggle to survive after being ignominiously dismissed and who resent the government for scorning them after years of service.
Another group of retired military officers, not content to sit and stew over the injustices suffered by them, chose to take their chances in China.
Most of them are one generation removed from the troops who withdrew with Chiang Kai-chek following the loss of the mainland after the 1949 civil war.
Now they have returned to the mainland, and, intelligence sources say, many have sold Taiwan's military secrets to make up for the shabby treatment afforded them in the military.
"These cases are far more serious than the recently reported defection to China by a retired lieutenant colonel identified only by his surname Liu," the intelligence source said.
A Taiwan newspaper reported yesterday that Liu, a retired lieutenant colonel, defected to the Chinese military a year ago and is now serving in the PLA as a colonel.
Liu is now said to be a regiment commander in an army division in the Nanking military region, the report quoted intelligence sources as saying. He is also said to have participated in the recent Dongshan island exercises leading a group of troops who would pose as Taiwanese soldiers in case of an attack. The exercises are basically simulations of an amphibious attack.
The military has denied the story.
RSS