Up to 100,000 in Taiwan spying for China: expert

‘GLOBAL WARNING’: The infiltration is not just a local problem, as Beijing has been deploying the same tactics worldwide against Western democracies, a report said

• By Huang Ching-hsuan and Hollie Younger / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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Between 50,000 and 100,000 Chinese spies are operating in Taiwan, far more than the National Security Bureau’s previous estimate of 5,000, German journalist and author Jurgen Kremb said on Monday.

Kremb presented his research, titled “The War of Spies: How China’s Intelligence Services Are Infiltrating Taiwan — and What Europe Must Learn from It,” at a joint event held by the Taiwan offices of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the European Values Center for Security Policy.

The report was published in June in the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau’s Prospect & Exploration Monthly (展望與探索月刊).

German journalist Jurgen Kremb, right, speaks at an event in Taipei on Monday.

Photo: Lin Cheng-kun, Taipei Times

By spies, he said he was referring to informants, sources and people who provide intelligence, rather than formally employed intelligence officers, comparing them to “throwaway agents.”

They might not receive monthly payments from the Chinese Ministry of State Security, but could still work on its behalf, he said.

Kremb, a visiting academic in the Human Rights Program at Soochow University in Taipei, also recounted his experience of being surveilled by a spy while traveling in Alishan (阿里山) in Chiayi County in June last year.

He said he was not afraid nor shocked by the incident, as “Chinese spies are everywhere in Taiwan.”

Becoming fearful of them would play directly into China’s hands, helping Beijing to instill fear in people, he added.

A woman who appeared to be about 30 years old asked him to take a photograph of her and the two began talking, during which he noticed she had a northern Chinese accent, Kremb said.

After he asked her where she was from, she said China, but that she lived in Denmark, and from that point he began feel that something was strange and walked back to his hotel, he said.

Along the way, he noticed that the woman was making phone calls, he said.

Two days later, after returning to Taipei, the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau reviewed surveillance footage from the hotel and found that the woman had hidden behind a car and watched Kremb from a street corner, he said.

The bureau determined that the woman was a Chinese spy and forwarded the information to the German Institute Taipei and the German and Danish intelligence agencies, although she had already left Taiwan.

As many as 180,000 intelligence personnel in China work solely on Taiwan-related affairs, Kremb said, citing sources in China.

The agents work under agencies such as the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Public Security, the People’s Liberation Army and the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, the report said.

China’s largest intelligence agency is the CCP, which has more than 110 million members who are required to write weekly reports to submit to their superiors even while abroad, which might be passed on to intelligence agencies, Kremb said.

Researchers and overseas communities must not be afraid to express their views, or Beijing would achieve its goal of transnational repression, European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan head Lutz Gullner said.

Democratic nations must strengthen their capacity to prevent, detect, deter and protect against transnational repression, and boost transparency and awareness in order to bolster democratic resilience, he said.

“The methods Beijing is perfecting in Taiwan — the combination of high-tech espionage, economic blackmail and psychological manipulation — are already being used worldwide against Western democracies,” the report said.

The infiltration of Taiwan is not a local problem, but a “global warning sign,” it said.