“Anyone wanting to betray the country could do so without having to go to China,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shuai Hua-min (帥化民) on the weekend in defense of looser regulations for senior political, military and intelligence officials visiting China.
Quite right, but looser rules make it a hell of a lot easier to betray the country.
In the world of counterespionage, two principal dynamics are at play: intent and opportunity. Does an individual entrusted with classified information have the intent to pass on that material to a third party, and if so, what opportunities exist for that person to come into contact with the third party?
Shuai is partly right: Visiting a country does not in and of itself create intent. But allowing a greater number of officials involved in national security to visit China certainly creates opportunities, especially when the country being visited has an aggressive espionage apparatus.
Without going into the increased risk of accidental leak of information such visits would create, the fact is that, despite all the talk of rapprochement between Taiwan and China, Beijing continues to aim around 1,300 missiles in this direction and remains resolute in its quest to ensure superiority in the Taiwan Strait.
In other words, and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) rhetoric notwithstanding, China continues to believe that it is at war with Taiwan, and this belief is reflected in its intelligence-gathering operations.
The implication is that Chinese intelligence will continue to target Taiwanese officials — and others, including journalists — visiting the country. If more visits are held, more operations will be active. And once Taiwanese officials are physically in China, the opportunities for Chinese spies to extract information from them — through means such as deception, blackmail, financial incentives and even “honey traps” — will be much greater in number.
Human fallibility being what it is, officials with no intention of betraying their country can be cornered, manipulated and exploited by skilled intelligence agencies, often with the target oblivious to their efforts. Not every traitor is a Kim Philby — a person who switches side for ideological reasons. Most are not, in fact, and the reasons why are far more mundane: money, sex, love and vengeance.
The dangers involved in breaching the barrier that has minimized contact between Taiwan and Chinese officials for more than half a century are exacerbated by the influx of Chinese now allowed to visit Taiwan. In an espionage scenario, this could create a continuum of opportunities for contact between a traitor and his handlers. This would, in turn, obviate the proposed regulations, in which officials would need to ask permission before visiting China. Once contact has been made and an official has been ensnared, physical continuity could be maintained without the official having to make another visit to China.
Taiwan’s allies, who are not unaware of the inherent dangers of such contacts, could react to this development by becoming more reluctant to share intelligence products and sensitive technology with Taiwan lest they are passed on to China. Should the US, Taiwan’s principal ally on defense and intelligence, reach this conclusion, Taiwan could find itself denied signals and imagery intelligence, or even military components, which are critical to self-defense.
The risks are too high and the benefits of allowing such visits too low to justify a policy change. As long as China remains a military threat to Taiwan, and as long as China’s intelligence apparatus aggressively targets Taiwan and its allies, the buffer of the Taiwan Strait should be kept intact.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not