Much debate last week centered on whether the prosecutors' search of Next magazine's offices constituted repression of press freedom and whether the magazine's reporters actually leaked state secrets, rather than just explored the political significance of the alleged embezzlement by former National Secu-rity Bureau (NSB) chief cashier Liu Kuan-chun (
The NSB's use of intelligence funds is a problem left over from the long period of KMT rule. National security agencies argue that intelligence activities need to be carried out in secret, using a direct chain of command. But this kind of system apparently provided Liu with the opportunity to embezzle funds.
Taiwan lacks an effective mechanism for monitoring intelligence agencies. A small num-ber of high-level officials can decide whom they want to fund and how they will do it. This cloud of secrecy and the lack of supervision have obscured plans by officials to enrich themselves.
The exposure of the Liu affair highlights the urgent need to establish a mechanism for monitoring the activities of the intelligence agencies.
The Control Yuan has established a task force to investigate the issue and the party caucuses in the Legislative Yuan have reached a consensus on formalizing the national security sys-tem. The legislature will probably eventually pass a law on supervising intelligence activities and perhaps establish an oversight committee.
However, Next, in trying to protect the people's right to know, went too far in its story. It was inevitable that the NSB, citing concerns about protecting its intelligence-gathering appa-ratus, would claim that the magazine was in possession of documents concerning national security and that it might release to the public.
Liu's motives for reportedly giving secret documents to the media are certainly open to question. Either he did it to take revenge or to create more political infighting. If the materials really did come from Liu, then regardless of how many media organizations have them or who obtained them first -- the decision of whether they are classified should still be made by national security agencies.
Looking at the issue from the experience of Western nations, legislative monitoring of national security matters has its limits. Legislative intelligence committees in Europe and the US therefore place more importance on the honesty of intelligence officials. Systematization is a preventive measure against intelligence being turned into a tool for political infighting. So, as long as national security agencies conduct their business in the interests of the nation, the legislature will respect their expertise.
In recent years, examples of media abuses of press freedom have been common. We've rarely seen the media exercise self-discipline. It has to show particular restraint when it comes to reporting the vulgar habits of politicians in Taiwan defaming, smearing and frivolously accusing each other. Taiwan is rapidly moving towards a full-fledged democracy and the public finds it difficult to tolerate the use of national security to benefit a small group of people.
The lesson highlighted by the Next incident must be that the legislature needs to set up a mechanism for reviewing the budgets of national security agencies as soon as possible. At the same time, it should create clear legislation that blocks the media from possible violations of national security matters.
Wu Tung-yeh is a research fellow at the Institute for International Relations at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
RSS