China’s Ministry of State Security and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are expanding their infiltration in Taiwan, targeting elites and political parties, a former US intelligence analyst said in a seminar discussing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological and cyber warfare yesterday.
The seminar, which was hosted by the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) in Washington, was titled “Enhancing US-Taiwan Cooperation in Countering the CCP’s Ideological Work and Political Welfare” and featured five panelists who are US experts on Asia-Pacific security.
The panel compiled the findings of five reports written for the GTI on the CCP’s political, economic and ideological warfare on Taiwan.
Photo: CNA
Peter Mattis, former analyst for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said China has displayed a “persistent focus” on “military police command and therefore the presidential security camp,” adding that the PLA has learned from Ukraine the “importance of a national leader in wartime.”
It is “a very clear and deliberate effort to make sure that [the PLA] have real-time awareness of the president’s security detail,” and are testing that awareness, he added.
Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a non-partisan defense policy think tank, spoke on issues including “United Front” tactics, counterintelligence measures, building digital resilience and setting clear boundaries and consequences for those who undermine Taiwan’s integrity.
The seminar featured keynote speaker Mike Studeman, former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence and national security fellow at MITRE Corp, an independent advisory on national security.
“The enemy and cooptees who help the enemy are fully inside Taiwan and Taiwan is riddled, essentially, with a counterintelligence and security problem,” Studeman said in his opening remarks.
“United front” tactics are an explicit tool of political warfare, as stated by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and reiterated by Xi Jinping’s (習近平) massive reform of the “united front” system in 2015, Mattis said.
This is achieved through local government exchanges and cultural exchanges to promote the idea of “Chineseness,” achieved by targeting the elite and party level and through actors in Taiwan who are “very clearly working on Beijing’s behalf,” he said.
Taiwan faces an ongoing issue of politicians from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) being recruited for espionage by the CCP, Mattis said.
“Anyone can be a victim... it doesn’t matter where they come from,” he said, adding that the CCP’s political warfare mentality is that “it doesn’t matter what kind of spy [it is], as long as it hurts Taiwan, it's a good spy.”
Democracies must have transparency, debate and conversation, he said.
As in the US and Australia, Taiwan must set clear boundaries and consequences on behavior that undermines Taiwan and its integrity, and although the country has the legal infrastructure to do so, rulemaking authorities have often fallen short on this front, he said.
Regarding government officials, Mattis said that security clearances, including routine and ongoing vetting, is important to set a standard of behavior and define what is “not acceptable behavior to work in government... the presidential palace or the presidential security crew.”
Government bodies including the Ministry of Digital Affairs should be covered by the same “national security mentality” as the military, he added.
He said it is “a good sign to see the expulsion of people that are promoting CCP propaganda,” presumably referring to the recent deportation of three female Chinese residents from Taiwan for pro-unification social media content.
Speaking on cyber security, Mattis said that there needs to be a greater awareness in Taiwan of which threats have already entered Taiwan’s digital space, including local databases such as hospitals and national insurance.
“Many of the same actors that we have identified in US critical infrastructure... are active in Taiwan’s cyber domain,” he added.
In light of the CCP’s ideological and cyber warfare on Taiwan, Taiwan should set clear expectations on the conduct of government officials and expand security clearances across government bodies, Mattis said.
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