In the online Cross-Strait Situation Analysis newsletter published by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) China Affairs Department, former Military Intelligence Bureau director-general Liu Te-liang (劉德良) wrote that he believed the number of Beijing-backed spies that have infiltrated Taiwan since 2007 undoubtedly exceeds the original estimate of 5,000.
From the start of this year, the National Security Bureau has disclosed 159 cases of Chinese espionage occurring within the past five years, of which up to 60 percent were active or retired military personnel. This has placed tremendous pressure on the Ministry of National Defense’s counterintelligence efforts, and the five espionage cases linked to the DPP that followed raised alarm about the severity of the situation. Chinese spies have already spread throughout the Taiwanese government, private enterprises and civil society groups — an issue that the entire nation must confront.
While I understand this deeply, I also feel powerless. Since founding the Taiwan Youth Anti-Communist Corps (TYAC) in 2009, our organization has become a target of Chinese espionage and infiltration. At the very beginning, we received letters from overseas requesting funding and weapons. We refused to respond: first, because our purpose was to carry on ideology, and secondly, because former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was in office at the time and we could not determine whether the contact came from Chinese spies, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spies or both.
Analysis confirmed that our phone lines had been wiretapped by certain individuals via Chunghwa Telecom, so we knew that corresponding with those contacts could have been used as a pretext for our arrest. We also received letters from people pretending to be exiled Uighurs, deliberately written in simplified Chinese characters using broken grammar. After growing suspicions, I eventually broke contact. Someone also contacted us claiming to be a Uighur student attending the University of Oxford and requesting to meet with us in Taiwan, even sending a copy of his student ID. However, that meeting never took place, as we could not find any record of his entry into Taiwan.
Our small organization has experienced several infiltration attempts. There were even attempts to use founding members of the DPP to convince me to travel to Hong Kong so I could be introduced to individuals on the Chinese side. In another case, someone accepted money from people in China, but was ultimately not prosecuted because they did not complete the assigned task. We have also had frequent interactions with Hong Kong. I was taken to court by parties in Hong Kong for exposing certain matters. The plaintiff even hired Ma’s former lawyer, demonstrating their substantial financial resources.
During the Ma administration, we had no choice but to suffer in silence. Even in the early days of then-president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, we still felt powerless. We reported the situation to the DPP, but received little attention — perhaps they were equally helpless. There was hope when former deputy director-general of the National Security Council Arthur Iap (葉國興) was appointed in 2019 — he was easy to communicate with and our ideas were well-aligned. However, when Iap stepped down in 2020 due to being unaccustomed to the position, we were once again left with no course of action.
There were some national security developments in the latter part of the Tsai administration — especially in uncovering cases of espionage involving current and retired military personnel. However, even more spies remain hidden within the government and among civil society. In particular, another wave of infiltration occurred after the passing of Hong Kong’s sweeping National Security Law, forcing Taiwan to tighten its policies.
The CCP’s collaborators, who have undermined the Constitution and thrown governance into chaos in the Legislative Yuan, are on the front lines — we do not need “leaks” from CCP leadership to know this. National Taipei University of Education professor Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰) wrote about this issue more than two decades ago. The most difficult CCP spies to catch are those hiding among the pan-green camp and Taiwanese independence advocates, concealing themselves behind revolutionary slogans. Their so-called “anti-communism” is a tool to deceive Taiwanese, often using empty words and extreme rhetoric to divide Taiwan. They appear anti-communist on the surface, but in reality, they are carrying out the CCP’s agenda. Taiwanese must be vigilant and learn to distinguish between real and phony anti-communism. Never assume that, just because someone mouths anti-communist slogans, they are on our side — or worse, blindly follow them.
DPP Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) began researching the issue of CCP infiltration even before entering politics, and he has consistently put that research into action. However, effectively countering the CCP’s cognitive warfare is not a matter to be handled by a few government agencies — it is a responsibility that the entire nation must bear. Enemy spies are among us and operate within boundless online networks. It is up to all citizens to consciously resist and fight back against these threats.
Paul Lin is a Taipei-based political commentator.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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