A new study on the rising number of retired senior Taiwanese military officers who visit China concludes that retired officials of “mainland” heritage represent the constituency in Taiwan most likely to support unification and could serve as willing conduits for Chinese propaganda intended to manipulate public perceptions in Taiwan.
“Retired Taiwanese military officers have visited China in an individual capacity for many years,” writes John Dotson, a research coordinator on the staff of the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in the latest issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief.
“More organized exchanges between retired Chinese and Taiwanese flag officers — initiated primarily from the Chinese side — have expanded significantly in scale since 2009, he added.
Although the Ministry of National Defense says it does not authorize such visits, it has done nothing to curb the practice, which has raised concerns among US -defense officials over the potential for leaks of sensitive military information or the creation of a back channel for secret negotiations.
A common thread in cross-strait officer exchanges, Dotson writes, is the sponsorship role of the Huangpu Academy Alumni Association, nominally a Chinese civic organization for graduates of the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy.
However, the exchange program is actually a project of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD), he writes.
“[The association] is a thinly disguised front organization operated by the UFWD. It is one of several entities identified by name on a United Front Work Department Web site as organizations managed by the UFWD,” Dotson writes.
The association also shares the same contact telephone number and address with an organization known as the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Unification, which describes itself as “a voluntary association of people from all walks of life who support reunification, with an independent legal status.”
“The role of the UFWD in -organizing the exchanges of retired Taiwanese military and intelligence personnel makes it clear that there is more going on than simple reminiscing over friendly games of golf,” he writes. “Chinese officials hope to use the exchanges to achieve a two-track set of goals.”
The first goal, he says, is to “influence opinion in Taiwan’s elite circles of national security policymaking in favor of closer relations — and eventual reunification [sic] — with China,” a facet of the program that has been explicitly acknowledged by CCP officials, he writes.
“The second major goal behind the exchanges is almost certainly an effort to glean information of intelligence value,” Dotson writes, adding that although they are no longer are in active service, retired generals and intelligence officials represent “a highly valuable source of potential information for Chinese intelligence collectors — on areas such as command and control relationships, contingency planning, the status of unit readiness and the personalities of senior officials — whether gained through direct recruitment, or more subtly through targeted elicitation.”
“The exchanges provide an illuminating look at some of the methods by which the CCP conducts intelligence collection and perception management operations directed at Taiwan, as well as its employment of front organizations that masquerade as civil society groups,” he writes.
The department will almost certainly continue to expand its outreach to retired Taiwanese officials, Dotson writes, adding that it will be up to Taiwan’s democratic process “to decide where to draw the line between individual rights of expression and travel in a free society and the national security restrictions required to maintain those same freedoms.”
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
RSS