A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China.
The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several months” between 2022 and 2024, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.
Three of the four convicted were members of a military unit in charge of security for the Presidential Office, while the fourth was a soldier in the defence ministry’s information and telecommunications command. Three of the soldiers were discharged from the military before an investigation was launched in August last year after a tip-off to the defence ministry, and the fourth was suspended.
According to the court, the four received payments from around NT$260,000 to NT$660,000 ($7,850-$20,000) in return for taking photographs of information with their mobile phones.
The defendants had worked for “extremely sensitive and important units but violated their duties to accept bribes, and stole secrets by photographing”, the court said in a statement.
“Their acts betrayed the country and endangered national security.”
The four received jail terms ranging from five years and 10 months to seven years.
The number of people prosecuted in Taiwan for allegedly spying for China has risen sharply in recent years as the military and civilian investigative bodies crack down on infiltration and espionage. Many of those prosecuted have been current or retired members of Taiwan’s military, recruited by Beijing or its agents in Taiwan.
Beijing has vowed to annex Taiwan, which it claims is Chinese territory. It has not ruled out using force to do so, but in the meantime runs multifaceted pressure campaigns including greyzone acts of military intimidation, cyberwarfare, disinformation and espionage.
Earlier this month Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, designated China as a “foreign hostile power” and announced a swathe of new measures to counter its efforts. The measures include plans to reinstate military courts to hear cases of espionage and other offences involving military personnel.
Last week Taiwan’s government also announced increases to the base pay rates of Taiwan military personnel.
The relatively small payments disclosed in some cases had drawn attention to the conditions and benefits offered to Taiwan’s serving military. Last year Dr Shen Ming-Shih, a research fellow at the Taiwan government-linked thinktank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said some recruited spies were lured by financial and sexual incentives, while others were driven by bitterness over their treatment or lack of advancement during their career.
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been spying on each other for decades. But analysts have warned that espionage is a bigger problem for Taiwan, which faces the existential threat of a Chinese invasion.
Taiwan’s intelligence agency previously reported that 64 people were prosecuted for Chinese espionage in 2024, compared with 48 in 2023 and 10 in 2022. In 2017 Taiwan’s government estimated there were more than 5,000 spies working for China in Taiwan.
Cases have included soldiers filming themselves declaring they will surrender as soon as China’s military invades, or making written pledges of loyalty to the Chinese Communist party. Some retired officers have allegedly been paid to recruit active soldiers.
