China is infiltrating Taiwan’s armed forces
In 2021 a retired Taiwanese general named Kao An-kuo made a video of himself dressed in camouflage, calling on Taiwan’s armed forces to overthrow the island’s government. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (dpp) was full of “ethnic traitors” who were selling Taiwan out to America, he said, and obstructing the Chinese nation’s great rejuvenation. At that time it drew little attention. Mr Kao was the ageing leader of a fringe pro-unification group with scarce support in Taiwanese society. But in January Mr Kao, who is now 80, was indicted for military espionage. Prosecutors allege that he and five others created an armed group to work with China’s armed forces towards an invasion of Taiwan. They were accused of using drones to track military drills, reporting training results to China and trying to recruit more collaborators.
Mr Kao is the highest-ranking veteran of Taiwan’s armed forces to have been accused of spying for China, but he is not the first. In January another group of veterans was indicted for allegedly sending photos and maps of America’s de facto embassy in Taipei and of Taiwanese military bases to Chinese agents. Last year Taiwan’s courts prosecuted 64 people for spying for China. Two-thirds were current or retired military personnel. Prosecutions have jumped fourfold in the past four years, according to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau. Yet China’s infiltration is still evolving in both scope and tactics.
There have been 1,706 instances of Chinese intelligence trying to recruit Taiwanese officers and soldiers online between January 2022 and June 2024, says one government report, creating an “unprecedented challenge” for Taiwan’s armed forces. China is targeting rank-and-file soldiers as well as high-level officers, reaching them through channels such as online gaming platforms and underground lenders. Chinese goals are shifting, too, from stealing tactically useful intelligence to using co-opted soldiers for psychological warfare. Some have allegedly filmed “surrender videos” in which they pose in Taiwanese uniform with a Chinese flag and promise not to fight, or sign oaths of loyalty to the Chinese motherland if war broke out.
How is China convincing Taiwan’s soldiers and officers to collaborate? In the past it targeted retired officers first. These older veterans tended to come from a generation that may have fled the mainland, identified as Chinese nationalists and opposed Taiwan’s independence. Many also disliked the dpp for cutting veterans’ pensions in 2018. Resentful Taiwanese veterans were susceptible to Chinese agents, says Chang Yen-ting, a retired air-force general. They would befriend them on family visits or business trips, taking them out to meals, inviting them to play golf, “peeling them like an onion, layer by layer”, until they felt that the mainlanders were their true allies and the dpp their enemy.
Turning the tide
China is now targeting younger personnel, says one of the special prosecutors who handles national-security cases in Taiwan. Many of the younger targets are in debt, he says. They start out searching for ways to make money online. Some of them get into gambling. Others look for loans through informal lenders, often linked with criminal gangs that are associated with Taiwan’s temple networks.
China works through middlemen affiliated with those groups, who will offer base payments of up to NT$200,000 ($6,000) for “rubbish intelligence” he says, such as a photo of toilets in a training base or a video saying they don’t want war. Naive soldiers think it’s easy money. “Hundreds of thousands just for a twenty-second video, it’s incredible,” says the prosecutor. But once the first payment has been made, the middlemen will ask targets to provide more advanced information.
None of these videos have been released. But, says the prosecutor, China may be collecting them for use in future, when it wants to break the Taiwanese public’s will to resist. “They can be used to tell ordinary Taiwanese people, ‘Look, even your army is not loyal to your country,’” says Nie Ruiyi, a lawyer who has worked on many military-espionage cases.
That psychology is also one of China’s recruitment methods. Agents will reveal to Taiwanese targets that they already know all about that soldier’s deployment orders. They scare the target, then tell him that war is coming soon, and they can keep their family safe if they collaborate, says Mr Nie. Some of these methods are working. The prosecutor says he dealt with a recent case where a Taiwanese lieutenant agreed to collaborate in return for Thai passports, obtained through Chinese investment on behalf of his family. “That lieutenant told me, if war happens, he will remain here to fulfil his duty. But he wants to get his wife and children out right away.”
Taiwan is trying to stop China’s military infiltration. Most of the prosecuted cases have been uncovered through internal reporting, showing that anti-spy education is working, says the defence ministry. Its courts have also been meting out heavier sentences as a deterrent. China is maximising the propaganda value of these cases by using them to fan Taiwan’s domestic divisions. Asked about Mr Kao’s case this month, Chen Binhua, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the dpp was using an “evil” national-security law to suppress opponents. ■