Ten former and current military officers were yesterday indicted on charges of spying for China, including two who allegedly filmed themselves pledging loyalty to Beijing.
The High Prosecutors’ Office requested life imprisonment for the suspects in light of the severity of the crime.
The 10 active-duty and retired officers included members of the 601st Brigade of the Aviation Special Forces comprising attack helicopter squadrons and elite combat units in charge of defending northern Taiwan, including Taipei.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The other suspects came from Huadong Defense Command, in charge of defending the eastern coast; Kinmen Defense Command, in charge of defending Kinmen and Matsu; and one from the army’s Chemicals, Biohazards and Radiation Training Center based in Taoyuan tasked with defense against chemical and biological warfare.
Prosecutors charged them with treason in accordance with a provision in the Criminal Code, which was amended in May, which states that “any person colluding with a foreign state or its agent” with the intent to start a war against the nation may be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
Evidence showed that two active-duty officers, surnamed Wu (吳) and Lu (陸), were paid to film videos declaring their willingness to surrender to Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces, the indictment read.
“Active-duty soldiers pledging their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party is an extremely vicious act,” it said.
Three of the suspects were accused of recruiting active-duty servicepeople to collect military information to “develop a network for China,” the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.
The four officers that they enlisted were charged with handing over “multiple military secrets” to Beijing in exchange for money, it said without elaborating.
The 10th suspect was accused of stealing military secrets from a safe at his workplace.
“These 10 suspects are in active service or retired military officers, and receive salaries or pensions from the government. They have or had held positions in the armed forces, and were educated, trained and cultivated for many years by the government, and tasked with the duty of defending the nation,” the indictment said.
“Therefore the suspects are well-aware that loyalty to the nation is the most fundamental obligation of a soldier. However, they chose to betray the nation, broke their oath to protect state secrets and breached their duties as soldiers to defend the homeland,” it added.
“Due to personal greed, they betrayed the nation and its people by leaking and passing on numerous documents and materials pertaining to military and state secrets, which seriously harmed national security. It is painful to point out how these suspects betrayed their fellow soldiers in active duty by committing treason. They should therefore receive the severest punishment under the law,” it said.
Yesterday’s indictment was the latest in a recent string of espionage cases in the nation.
Last month, a retired air force colonel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for spying for Beijing and handing over confidential national security information.
In August, a father and son duo were indicted for recruiting two soldiers who allegedly helped them gather information for China about Taiwan’s Han Kuang military exercises.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS