Beijing is using gang members and the Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) to infiltrate Taiwan, the Washington Post reported yesterday, detailing cases of espionage, bribery, election interference and information warfare linked to CUPP and its founder, Chang An-le (張安樂), also known as the “White Wolf.”
A months-long investigation by the Washington Post drew upon court records, corporate filings, social media posts and interviews with Taiwanese security and intelligence officials, CUPP members, the Bamboo Union (竹聯幫) gang and Chang himself.
Chang, “a self-confessed gang member turned political party leader,” and the CUPP support Taiwan’s unification with China, the article said, adding that Chang once told a rally that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family ... only with peaceful unification will Taiwan definitely be safe.”
Photo: Taipei Times file
Chang lived in China for almost two decades, where he established the CUPP in 2004, before moving back to Taiwan in 2013 to continue building the party, which is now estimated to have about 30,000 members, according to the Taiwanese government, it said.
The article highlighted the party’s close ties to criminal activity and the Bamboo Union, and quoted experts as saying that it is involved in drug smuggling and online fraud, with Chang having previously served almost a decade in a US prison on drug-smuggling charges.
Authorities have seized nearly 200 firearms from CUPP and Bamboo Union members with ties to the CUPP over the past five years, internal Taiwanese government data reportedly showed.
“To the government, their organization is a gang,” Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) said of CUPP in the article.
President William Lai (賴清德) has described the party as “a conduit for Chinese espionage,” the article said.
“CUPP members frequently meet officials from central and local governments in China, as well as from the United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] agency charged with expanding Beijing’s global influence,” the Washington Post said.
Multiple CCP spy networks involving CUPP members have come to light, and National Security Bureau data showed that the number of people charged with espionage in Taiwan increased more than 500 percent between 2022 and last year, the article said.
For example, CUPP spokesman Chang Meng-chung (張孟崇) and his wife, Hung Wen-ting (洪文婷), were this year indicted for accepting NT$74 million (US$2.42 million) from China to make radio and digital media propaganda to promote the Chinese government’s political agenda and influence the outcome of Taiwan’s elections.
China targets gang members for recruitment as intelligence assets, because it is difficult for them to find legal work and “they ask for very little, yet end up handing over highly classified information,” which they often obtain from Taiwanese military personnel, Paula Yeh (葉麗卿), director of the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau’s national security division, said in the article.
On Facebook, the page “Dark Family Empire,” which has been linked to CUPP members, has almost 1 million followers and pushes Beijing’s narrative by depicting Taiwan as “a society of chaos,” with videos of criminal behavior and traffic accidents, the article said.
The Ministry of the Interior has launched criminal investigations into at least 134 CUPP members, it said.
The interior ministry has also begun the process of dissolving the party through a petition to the Constitutional Court, on the grounds that the party is engaged in organized crime and is contravening national security and anti-foreign-influence laws, it said.
However, the article quoted Chang as saying that he would simply reconstitute the group.
“They cannot dissolve our belief ... dissolve one party today, and we will form another one the next day,” he said.
Beijing has called any action to dissolve the party an attempt to “wantonly suppress and persecute patriotic unification forces on the island,” the article added.
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