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
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