A national security analyst yesterday said that China’s Ministry of State Security has overstepped its jurisdiction within the Chinese government, a day after the secret police branch claimed to have uncovered thousands of Taiwanese espionage cases.
The ministry wrote on Sina Weibo it had “uncovered thousands of Taiwanese spying cases” and that it was “resolute in carrying out the holy mandate prescribed by the party to defend against and crush and punish espionage and infiltration efforts against the Chinese homeland.”
It said it had arrested “Taiwanese independence leaders” such as Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵).
Photo: EPA-EFE
The claims are unverified, and the ministry has been seeking to empower itself at the expense of other Chinese agencies, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Shen Ming-shih (沈明室) said.
That the ministry called attention to its purported success in counterespionage, protection of national security secrets and countering Taiwanese independence movement appears to be a gesture by officials to curry favor with China’s leadership, he said.
The security ministry has repeatedly exceeded its authority, including airing on social media criticism of the US and other foreign governments, a matter the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is usually responsible for, Shen said.
The ministry could be showing its frustration with the perceived weakness of other government ministries, he said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) joined five other government ministries and agencies in issuing 22 guidelines targeting Taiwanese deemed to support independence, using strong language when referring to Taiwan as it is the Chinese government body tasked with overseeing the matter, Shen said.
Yet the security ministry has “jumped in,” making its views on the matter known amid competition between agencies, he said.
The confabulation of counterespionage and fighting the Taiwanese independence movement — tasks that have nothing to do with one another — showed the security ministry’s motive was to “signal to the outside world that it has met its performance metrics,” he said.
Its claim that Yang is a “Taiwanese independence leader” is contradicted by the man’s absence on the TAO’s list of 10 “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” Shen said.
“The Ministry of State Security’s job is counterintelligence, which has nothing to do with countering Taiwanese independence,” he said. “It is laughable for the ministry to butt in.”
The Mainland Affairs Council said the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s claims about capturing Taiwanese nationals stemmed from a desire to exaggerate its achievements and underscored the danger posed by Beijing’s vague laws.
“Every Taiwanese who believes in freedom and not the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology is at risk of being branded a separatist or spy by China’s state security establishment,” it said.
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