On Feb. 28, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or Nikkei, alleged that 90 percent of retired Taiwanese military officers had visited China and sold intelligence to the other side. Last week, The Economist magazine said the Taiwanese public appear to be undecided about how, and even whether, to defend themselves.
Nikkei’s figure of 90 percent might be exaggerated, if true at all, but even 10 percent would be far too much. On the other hand, the “true situation” reported by The Economist is no different from the Taiwanese public’s perception.
In October 2014, the US weekly Defense News ran a report on Chinese espionage in Taiwan, which said that improving relations between Taipei and Beijing had prompted Taiwan to gradually downsize its military. It said that many Taiwanese officers sought to profit from their knowledge of military secrets, including classified information about US equipment such as the E-2K Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and the PAC-2 and PAC-3 air defense missile systems.
In 2020, army colonel Hsiang Te-en (向德恩) accepted money from China to write a “surrender pledge” stating that he would offer his services to China’s People’s Liberation Army if it attacked Taiwan. Since the 2011 case of army general Lo Hsien-che (羅賢哲), head of the Army Command Headquarters’ communications and electronic information office, several more cases of spying for China have come to light. Such traitorous crimes, whose perpetrators would have been given lengthy jail sentences or even executed in the days of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), are now lightly punished.
This situation must be incomprehensible to democracies like Japan and the US. Japanese media are well aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) hegemonic ambitions and would not want to spread CCP propaganda. Their attention to this problem, which concerns East Asian and Indo-Pacific security, should be seen as a well-intentioned warning.
The Economist’s report highlights a predicament that faces some democracies. Democratic Taiwan must protect freedom of speech, so it cannot ban any narrative, however strange it might be, unless it overtly slanders or threatens someone. However, the “red” and “blue” political media that openly advocate unification with communist China continue to wield considerable influence in Taiwan.
The words and actions of people like retired air force general Hsia Ying-chou (夏瀛洲) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), a retired lieutenant general, have seriously harmed Taiwan’s sovereignty. The unification they call for means Taiwan’s integration into communist China.
Taiwan’s “quiet revolution” did not eliminate such behavior, which concerns Taiwan’s survival as a sovereign nation. If it continues to be protected by “freedom of speech,” the crisis foretold by The Economist would surely follow, and the international community would increasingly doubt Taiwan’s determination to defend itself.
Taiwan’s top priority should be to speedily amend laws related to national security, thoroughly investigate the criminal liability of CCP spies and strictly define the scope of “freedom of speech,” which should not include the freedom to eradicate Taiwan’s free and democratic system.
If unification advocates are so fond of dictatorship, they should feel free to move to China, but their freedom should not include helping the CCP take away the freedom of Taiwanese. Striking the right balance will be down to the wisdom of our legislators.
Jhang Shih-hsien is a former head of the National Palace Museum’s conservation department.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS