China’s execution on Friday of medical researcher Wo Weihan (伍維漢), 59, on charges of passing on “secrets” to a group affiliated with Taiwanese intelligence was a disgraceful act that warrants far more than the condemnation Beijing received from the US, the EU and a handful of rights organizations.
As Amnesty International and other critics pointed out, Wo’s confession that he discussed the health of a senior Chinese official and copied military data from unclassified magazines was made under duress. Even under Chinese law, however, Wo’s alleged offenses were so trivial and so unremarkable that the death penalty could not have been justified.
Apart from failing to modernize its antique definition of “state secrets,” Beijing also missed an opportunity to show Taiwan some of the “goodwill” President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been desperately seeking by sparing the life of an alleged Taiwanese intelligence asset. Nothing would have demonstrated that cross-strait relations had turned the page more dramatically than for Beijing to void a death sentence against a man who, if indeed guilty, stood as a symbol of the warring relationship of old, when spies, rather than envoys, defined the state of affairs between the rivals (Wo was arrested in Beijing in January 2005).
By failing to do so, China showed that cross-strait “peace” initiatives will not temper its pursuit of unforgiving objectives, destroying lives and families in the process.
The move did nothing to embellish Beijing’s reputation abroad, where hundreds of Chinese agents, students and businesspeople steal secrets — real secrets, as opposed to health information or articles from unclassified magazines — from Western countries. To give one example, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, created by the US Congress in 2000 to monitor US-China issues, wrote in its annual report last month that “China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks,” echoing conclusions from the previous year that Beijing was pursuing new technology “aggressively” through research and business deals and industrial espionage.
Other states have long considered Beijing to be the world’s foremost economic and military spy, whether targeting individuals, groups or governments.
If the West were to sentence to death every Chinese operative caught red-handed in an act of espionage and every employee of Xinhua news agency — long identified by Western counter-intelligence as an arm of Chinese intelligence — death row would run the length of the Great Wall.
To its discredit, Taipei remained silent in the days leading to Wo’s execution. After all, if Wo did work with Taiwanese intelligence, the least Taipei could have done for one of its assets was try to come to the man’s rescue.
If Wo was innocent, as he claimed to the day he died, the Cabinet could have easily established this by liaising with intelligence agencies and placing pressure on the Chinese to do the right thing.
Perhaps, as many states do when sensitive matters unfold, Taipei worked behind the scenes and contacted Beijing in an attempt to have the sentence overturned.
Absent official comment, there is no way of knowing. Still, Taipei could have easily taken the moral high ground on the matter by publicly calling for Wo’s life to be spared.
But it didn’t, and this silence was an act of cowardice that reflects very poorly on the Ma administration. Wo’s daughters, not to mention members of Taiwan’s intelligence community who place their lives at risk, would be justified in demanding hard answers.
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
War in the Middle East, global terrorism and the Ukraine war pose significant threats to the global economy. However, according to Global Guardian, a leading security solutions firm, a conflict between China and Taiwan would cause the greatest disruption since World War II. Its Taiwan Shock Index (TSI) analyzes the potential global impacts of such a war. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rhetoric about rejuvenating the People’s Republic of China heavily emphasizes “reunification” with Taiwan. Experts differ on when this might happen. Some point to 2027, the centenary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as a symbolic and strategic milestone. Others
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number