Analysis: Growing Number of Chinese Espionage Cases and Why They Matter
TaiwanPlus speaks to judge KJ Hsu on what Taiwan can do about increasing numbers of Chinese espionage cases. That's after prosecutors on Tuesday indicted seven people, including two active-duty service members, for their roles in an alleged spy ring.
Countering Espionage and Strengthening Security in Taiwan
REPORTER:
Why do you think espionage case numbers have gone up in recent years?
KJ Hsu
JUDGE
TAIPEI DISTRICT COURT, NAT’L SEC. & MILITARY DIV.:
So there are two main reasons. First, formal and informal cross-strait communication has sharply decreased recently. So the CCP relies more on covert information gathering. Second, China pieces together small bits of information to strengthen its leverage and gray zone pressure on Taiwan.
REPORTER:
How do you think Taiwan can continue to strengthen its defenses against espionage and this type of Chinese infiltration?
KJ Hsu
JUDGE
TAIPEI DISTRICT COURT, NAT’L SEC. & MILITARY DIV.:
First encourage earlier internal reporting rather than Land, creating fear through soul punishment by national security laws. People in the military must feel safe to speak it out. Second, provide incentives for reporting espionage. Many institutions leak counter-intelligence unit. So reporting is very essential.
Catching spies should be seen as a positive sign instead of a sign of poor discipline. It reflects more attempted infiltration, not institution failure. Successful detection shows our system works and that Taiwan is becoming more resilient as this threat spreads across society. So we should encourage investigations across institutions, both in the military and nonmilitary.
If we only blame instead of encourage, we will have more espionage activity in Taiwan.
I think we should, uh, increasing a little bit for the sentence and also for the criminal due process. We also needed some improvement of evidence, like we need more collaborations with our allies from our side to side, intelligence sharing MoU to strengthen our abilities and to provide more solid evidence on the trial.
We should balance between human rights protections and the espionage regulations. If we do too less, that will make espionage activity increase. If we do more, it will become another authoritarian power.
