Taiwanese academics urged the government to improve the protection of defense technologies from Chinese espionage, citing fears that leaks might compromise arms sales and technology transfers.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said that prosecutors obtained convictions on 222 breaches of the National Security Act (國家安全法) from January 2015 to September last year, but only 19 cases resulted in a sentence of six months or more in prison.
Hsu Chih-hsiang (許智翔), a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the US is keen on preventing China’s theft of advanced technologies as competition between the powers heats up.
“Naturally, this has an effect on Washington’s approval process for selling arms to and carrying out security cooperation with Taipei,” Hsu said.
“Legal changes that increase the penalty for leaking secrets would benefit Taiwan’s bid to enhance security ties [with the US],” he added.
Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), a political science professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, said that a leaky defense apparatus likely contributed to the US’ decision to withhold selling Lockheed-Martin F-35 jets to Taiwan.
Washington is worried that China could gain access to valuable technologies released to Taiwan, which could then be exploited for military or commercial gain, Kuo said.
While Taipei has not been oblivious to the threat of Beijing’s spies and had amended its national security laws, the government needs to counter China’s use of operatives, funds and disinformation with further changes to policy and law, he said.
Particularly, security must be enhanced in practice and not just in law, Kuo said, citing the example of long-ignored warnings from the US that China has been funding employment agencies to poach Taiwanese engineers.
It was not until Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) assumed office as the director-general of the National Security Bureau in February that the government opened probes into two alleged employment agencies, he said.
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