The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau intends to investigate allegations of Chinese infiltration through a third-party committee, sources said on July 4.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly using Taiwan’s democracy and freedom against it, recruiting Taiwanese for espionage and interfering in Taiwan’s elections through influence campaigns, bureau Director-General Chen Pai-li (陳白立) said.
Suspects in such trials are regularly acquitted due to lack of evidence and difficulty tracing funds back to the CCP.
Then on Tuesday last week, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators passed a bill that removed restrictions on group tours to China and prioritizes Chinese tourists and tour groups wanting to visit Kinmen, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties.
It would be difficult for customs and immigration authorities to know whether Chinese visitors have ties to the CCP, and investigators would be hard-pressed to track the movements of all Chinese visitors for obvious logistical and legal reasons.
A CCP member visited the Institute for National Defense and Security Research — a Ministry of National Defense think tank — last year as part of a delegation, said the Liberty Times, sister paper of the Taipei Times.
Prioritizing Chinese tourism to Taiwan’s outlying islands could compromise the integrity of those islands, which are important to Taiwan’s defense strategy. That importance is evident in the stationing of US Army Special Forces personnel in Kinmen and Penghu, which was confirmed by Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) on March 14.
Despite prevailing concerns about espionage, KMT legislators Chen Hsueh-sheng (陳雪生) and Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) on July 4 proposed amendments to the Offshore Islands Development Act (離島建設條例) that would allow Chinese firms to tender for industrial development and public construction projects in outlying counties.
The amendments would have given unfettered access in the counties to Chinese employees of firms who win public tenders. Fortunately, the bill was halted when TPP caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said that his party would not support it.
The committee, which the Investigation Bureau established jointly with the National Security Bureau, the Mainland Affairs Council and the Military Intelligence Bureau, must be aggressive in tackling espionage cases to prevent the CCP from making inroads. Taiwanese collaborators must not be acquitted nor shown leniency, as this would only encourage others to work for the CCP, knowing they could do so with impunity.
Senior prosecutors said the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) does not need to be revised to pursue spying cases, but prosecutors need clearer targets. This might be true, but judicial authorities and investigators should also seek to understand why judges are so reluctant to prosecute those facing allegations of spying for the CCP.
The failure of Taiwan’s laws and the Constitution to identify China as a foreign power contributes to the difficulty in trying espionage cases involving the CCP. That suggests that laws might indeed need to be amended. However, if the problem lies in a lack of evidence, then the responsibility would fall on investigators. Hopefully, that is something the new committee can help rectify.
Regardless of how it is achieved, prosecutors and investigators must seek to punish those who compromise Taiwan’s sovereignty and national security by acting on behalf of the CCP. The US, Japan and other countries might be willing to assist Taiwan in the event of a conflict, but Taiwan must also demonstrate the resolve to protect itself.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,