Taiwan: China Is Exaggerating or Abusing Its Power With Spy Claims
Taiwan says China is either exaggerating or abusing its power with its claims of having uncovered more than 1,000 cases involving Taiwanese spies.
Transcript
00:00Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council says this claim of a thousand spy cases is
00:05all about Chinese bureaucrats trying to meet a performance target and to do so
00:11they're either exaggerating or they're abusing their power. The deputy
00:16head of the Mainland Affairs Council, Liang Wenjie, he says that the Chinese
00:21Communist Party is doing what it's done for decades, that is high-ranking
00:25officials come up with a goal and then it's up to lower-ranking officials to
00:30make that goal happen however they may. Now this claim of a thousand spy cases
00:36was revealed this week by China's top spy agency. They said they broke up a
00:42large number of spy networks set up by Taiwanese in China. They said that they
00:49had come across more than a thousand cases involving espionage and the theft
00:55of Chinese state secrets and they also warned that they will continue to punish
01:01what they call Taiwan independence forces. Now here they mentioned the name
01:07of a particular individual, Yang Jiuyun. Now he's a former Taiwanese political
01:13activist who is the first Taiwanese to be prosecuted for the crime of
01:19secession in China. He's already been in custody there for two years. China is
01:25calling him a Taiwan independence leader. Well, Deputy Director Liang of the
01:30Mainland Affairs Council here, he says this is just nonsense and he says before
01:35Yang's arrest in China he was there teaching Chinese chess and participating
01:41in competitions. Yang is not the first Taiwanese to be prosecuted in China.
01:48There's been a series of, there's been past cases of Taiwanese imprisoned for
01:54charges including subversion and espionage and this idea of advocating
02:01for Taiwan independence, China has been trying to criminalize that. In June they
02:06said that extreme cases of what they called diehard Taiwanese separatists,
02:11they would face the death penalty. So what does all this mean? Well the Chinese
02:18and Taiwanese governments aren't talking and every time there's news of
02:23Taiwanese being arrested in China it puts more Taiwanese off traveling there,
02:29hampering relations between China and Taiwan, not just on a political level but
02:35on a personal level too.