Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter aircraft continue to probe Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on a near daily basis, putting Taiwan’s air force under enormous strain, fatiguing airframes and aircrew alike. Set to this background, during a radio show on Tuesday, retired army lieutenant general Chi Lin-liang (季麟連) said that any country can fly in the skies over the Taiwan-administered Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島), which he claimed to be international airspace.
“Let them [the warplanes] come through — it’s fine,” Chi said.
The Pratas Islands, situated southwest of Taiwan proper, are strategically important for their proximity to the Bashi Channel, a key strategic waterway that limits access into and out of the South China Sea. The PLA has conducted most of its “exercise” flights along a path close to the islands and toward the channel, including the surge in activity earlier this month, which saw a total of 150 aircraft fly through the area and into Taiwan’s ADIZ over a four-day period.
The implication of Chi’s words was that China has the right to fly its aircraft through its airspace as well as the ADIZ.
Responding to questions from legislators on Wednesday, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said that the Pratas Islands are Taiwanese-administered sovereign territory, and as such the skies above the atolls are ipso facto Taiwanese sovereign airspace.
Some lawmakers have questioned whether Chi’s remarks form part of a coordinated plan among a clique of pro-China retired officers to aid and abet China’s psychological warfare campaign against Taiwan, but this seems unlikely, as the intent of psychological warfare is to elevate, not diminish, the sense of threat.
More likely, Chi’s intention was to muddy the waters; information warfare rather than psychological warfare, designed to implant the notion within the minds of serving members of the military, and the wider public, that the islands do not belong to Taiwan and therefore do not require defending.
Chi’s mendacious intervention is the latest in an unedifying list of retired high-ranking military officers acting as a fifth column for Beijing or outright spying for China.
In August, retired air force major general Chien Yao-tung (錢耀棟) and retired lieutenant colonel Wei Hsien-yi (魏先儀) were questioned by prosecutors about their alleged involvement in a Chinese espionage ring and released on bail.
Part of the problem is that Taiwan’s courts are notorious for handing down trifling sentences in espionage cases. Research conducted by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) found that between 2015 and September last year, the judiciary dealt with 222 cases of Chinese espionage, of which only 19 resulted in jail terms of six months or more.
However, the problem is also ideological, particularly among the older generation of officers, some of whom identify as Chinese, not Taiwanese, and would rather see Taiwan “united” with the “motherland” than continue to exist as a de facto independent nation. Once retired, such individuals often travel to China to press the flesh with their Chinese counterparts and recruit serving members of the military to spy for them. Fortunately, this specific problem should become less acute as a younger generation of Taiwanese officers work their way through the ranks.
Until then, the National Security Bureau must weed out the remaining bad eggs within the military and veterans community, or there is a risk that the international community’s will to support Taiwan could be gradually sapped away by an unrelenting drip of security leaks, espionage cases and ideological convergence with the enemy, by the very people whose duty it is to defend the nation.
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