China sentenced a Taiwanese man yesterday to four years in prison on charges that he spied on China's military for Taiwan.
Sung Hsiao-lian (宋孝濂) was convicted by a court on Hainan island of receiving money from Taiwan's military spy agency and providing information on unspecified "military conditions," the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Sung was among seven Taiwanese detained late last year and charged in January with spying. China says all seven confessed, but it has released few details of their cases. The status of the other cases wasn't announced yesterday.
China has announced arrests over the past two years of several groups of Taiwanese and Chinese nationals on spying charges.
China said last December that it detained 24 Taiwanese and 19 Chinese on spying charges and that all had confessed. It wasn't clear whether Sung and the Taiwanese charged with him were part of that group.
Sung received NT$20,000 (US$600) from Taiwanese military intelligence, Xinhua said.
He was recruited by a Taiwan-ese surnamed Tong with ties to Taiwan's military spy agency, Xinhua said. Chinese officials earlier identified one of those detained with Sung as "Tong Taiping," who it said was caught gathering military information at a shipyard in Guangzhou.
The other Taiwanese were identified earlier as Fu Hung-chang (傅宏章), Lin Chieh-shan (林介山), Wang Chang-yung (王長勇), Chang Keng-huan (張耿桓) and Chang Yu-jen (張豫人).
Taiwanese officials have denied the spying claims by Beijing.
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