An armed forces reserve captain has been indicted on charges of selling secrets to China for NT$150,000, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office said in a news release yesterday.
The suspect, surnamed You (尤), served as a budget and finance officer at the Southern District Armed Forces Reserve Command, is accused of trading state secrets via Telegram in 2022 and 2023.
He is facing charges connected to bribery and contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the office said.
Photo: Pao Chien-hsin, Taipei Times
A Chinese person known only by their Internet handle Shengyin Haoting (聲音好聽, pleasant voice) is believed to have solicited You for national secrets via the Internet after the latter expressed an interest in taking out loans, it said.
You supplied Beijing photocopies of the armed forces’ doctrinal manuals and a list of the telephone numbers of service personnel in the Northern District Armed Forces Reserves Command, the office said.
He allegedly received payment in the form of the cryptocurrency tether, it added.
Modern Chinese espionage mainly targets Taiwanese who are motivated by financial gain, and not ideology, said Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a researcher at the state-run Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
Chinese intelligence services are embedded in illegal money lenders operating in Taiwan to cultivate sources among people from all walks of life who are desperate for money, he said.
The contacts are systematically questioned to submit names of other people who might need money and have intelligence value to help refine China’s list of potentially useful assets, he said.
Chinese intelligence also uses promises of perks and trade privileges to lure retired senior officers doing business in China into developing and maintaining rings of Taiwanese informants via their personal social network, Su said.
Taiwanese officials should make better use of the rewards for reporting suspected Chinese spies as authorized by the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法), he said.
The law stipulates rewards of NT$5 million (US$161,020) and NT$10 million for reporting suspected spies and spy rings respectively — which are far larger than the pittance that China pays for Taiwanese officers to commit treason, Su said.
Law enforcement authorities should organize a task force to surveil or neutralize money lenders that act as fronts for Chinese espionage, he said.
The armed forces could also enhance national security education among service members through educational films and short drama features, Su said.
Too many service members are oblivious to the fact that even selling intelligence of trivial value can be used as material for blackmail to coerce more important information from them in the future, he said.
Chinese spies might use money or sex to bait service members into volunteering information at first, and then use evidence of the initial compromise to pressure reluctant sources into compliance, Su said.
The reluctance of Taiwanese courts to punish Taiwanese agents of China has impeded the government’s efforts to secure the nation against Beijing-directed infiltration, he said.
Judges are too eager to reduce substantial sentences, including convicting failed spies on lesser charges of attempted espionage, perhaps out of a desire to protect the free and democratic constitutional order, he said.
Under Taiwan’s national security laws, foreign agents can be sentenced to death, but those convicted of spying for China — which is not a legally recognized foreign government — would not serve more than 12 years in prison, he said.
The average sentence imposed on those convicted of foreign espionage abroad is 19 years in prison, compared with less than nine months in prison for those found guilty of spying for China in Taiwan, he said.
Sending an officer to years in prison for stealing an NT$8,000 laundry machine while permitting convicted Beijing agents to serve suspended sentences is an absurd legal contradiction, he said.
Taiwanese courts’ sentencing patterns have substantially weakened national security at a time when most nations are fighting to harden themselves against espionage, Su added.
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