Taiwan’s expanding spy web: China’s post-reunification strategy

A Taiwanese journalist’s role in a Chinese espionage case targeting lower-ranking military personnel has sent shockwaves through Taiwan, highlighting how military infiltration has spread beyond isolated soldiers into broader society.

Academics interviewed say that China’s infiltration of Taiwan now goes beyond gathering military secrets. Instead, it shows a trend of “preparing for post-reunification governance”, using digital technology to map the relationships of potential targets.

Over the past week, the spotlight has been on the case of CTi News reporter and anchor Lin Chen-you, a Taiwanese journalist suspected of bribing soldiers to produce pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) videos about defecting to the mainland, and for probing for military secrets. Lin has since been detained incommunicado on suspicion of violating the National Security Act, among other offences.

The case began with an investigation by the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office in Kaohsiung into a Marine Corps sergeant, surnamed Chen, who filmed a surrender video while holding China’s five-star national flag. Probing the flow of funds, prosecutors uncovered unusual transactions between Lin’s account and those of several active and retired officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). This led to the discovery of multiple related cases involving officers and soldiers producing videos pledging allegiance to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and leaking military intelligence.

The Ciaotou Prosecutors Office stated that the five active-duty servicemen implicated in the case come from the army, navy, and air force, including personnel in missile and air defence units. Many were targeted due to personal debt problems and were approached on social media by mainland intelligence officers using aliases. The servicemen were offered cash or virtual currency in exchange for filming videos expressing political allegiances or providing specific information.

As the officers and soldiers did not know each other, the overlapping financial transactions suggested the presence of an intermediary responsible for coordinating the operations as well as the fund transfers. Prosecutors subsequently identified Lin as a suspect in this role. On 17 January, Lin and five others — including both active-duty and retired military personnel — were detained incommunicado.

These revelations triggered widespread shock and outrage in Taiwanese society. At a regular press conference on 21 January, Peng Qing’en, spokesperson for mainland China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, accused Taiwan’s green camp of abusing judicial power to suppress political opponents.

In fact, cases involving the recruitment of rank-and-file Taiwanese officers and soldiers have risen sharply in recent years. In 2024, the Taiwan High Court handled an espionage case involving a lieutenant colonel surnamed Hsieh and other personnel from the Aviation and Special Forces Command. The court found that several active soldiers were allegedly lured with money to film psychological-warfare videos stating, “I agree to surrender to the PLA”, which were then sent to the mainland as proof of loyalty and cooperation.

In December 2025, another case emerged, involving a sergeant surnamed Sun who previously served at the Matsu Defense Command. It was revealed that due to financial troubles, he was targeted and subsequently recruited by unknown persons in 2022 to film and transmit classified military documents, including operational plans, in exchange for about NT$60,000 (US$1,907).

The aforementioned cases show that mainland recruitment targets in Taiwan have shifted from a previous emphasis on senior officers and intelligence personnel towards the rank-and-file NCOs and enlisted soldiers. Many of those involved were targeted because of debt or livelihood pressures.

According to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, a total of 159 people were indicted in espionage-related cases from 2020 to April 2025, of whom 95 were active or retired military personnel — accounting for about 60%. Among these 95 individuals, there were 46 officers, 27 NCOs and 22 enlisted soldiers, further indicating that the mainland’s targets are no longer confined to high-ranking officers.

It is noteworthy that videos pledging allegiance or surrender have repeatedly surfaced in cases in recent years. Such videos might not necessarily involve classified information, but have a distinctive psychological and symbolic effect — they can be used repeatedly in both peacetime or wartime to undermine military morale and deliver a demonstrative, destabilising shock to society.

The key significance of the journalist’s case lies in the fact that he was not a member of the military, yet is suspected of serving as a financial intermediary and conduit for payments. This indicates that infiltration within the military is no longer confined to the institutional system, but has extended into the media and wider social networks.

Wang Chan-Hsi, a long-time observer of the mainland’s united front and intelligence operations targeting Taiwan and an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told Lianhe Zaobao that Beijing’s infiltration of Taiwan has moved beyond the collection of classified information or isolated acts of sabotage. Instead, infiltration tactics are now becoming part of a long-term strategy linked to plans for future reunification and governance, increasingly displaying a trend towards “preparing for post-reunification governance”.

Wang pointed out that the mainland has, in recent years, made extensive use of electronic and technological means to gain a comprehensive understanding of Taiwan’s overall social landscape, collecting data on online behaviour and related information to identify suitable individuals for further engagement. Beijing’s formal articulation last year of the concept of “patriots governing Taiwan” likewise suggests that it may be using information collection and analysis to map out and define who would qualify as “patriots” under a future governance system.

He believes that, in this context, if infiltration is viewed as part of long-term preparations for governance, related activities are no longer directed solely at the military system. Rather, they are combined with efforts to comprehend the overall state of society, thereby rendering Taiwan’s security defence work “more complex and challenging”.

Meanwhile, other observers argue that the mainland’s ability to precisely target individuals in its infiltration operations may well rely on the long-term collection and analysis of vast amounts of data on Taiwanese society through online and digital technologies.

On 20 January, Taiwan’s Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) published a report titled “The Authoritarian Gaze: Chinaʼs Global Data Reach and the Systemic Risks to Democracy”, which noted that the risks posed by data collection through mainland Chinese AI services stem not only from information directly provided by users, but also from those indirectly inferred through data processing. Such inferred data can be used to build behavioural profiles of individuals or groups, further mapping ideological fault lines and social structures within democracies.

At the report’s launch, one of its authors, Lai You-Hao, deputy director of DSET’s Democratic Governance Program, acknowledged — in response to a question from Lianhe Zaobao’s — that, in his assessment, data collected by these applications could indeed be used for intelligence-gathering purposes.

However, although Taiwan’s military announced last year that mainland-made information and communications hardware, software and services cannot be used for official military or civilian purposes, Chou Chih-ho, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Digital Affairs’ Cyber Security Administration, told Lianhe Zaobao that for devices used privately by military personnel or national security staff, “there is indeed no legal basis for us to ban [mainland-Chinese products]”. He added that they can only “offer guidance, or specifically require that if personal mobile phones have such applications installed, they must not be used to handle official business”.

Based on the cases disclosed so far — from rank-and-file Taiwanese servicemen leaking secrets for just tens of thousands of dollars, to media figures becoming involved in the transfer of funds — they all point to a shared, sobering reality: mainland spies are no longer limited to a small number of senior personnel with access to classified information, but has evolved into a deliberately engineered, replicable model of infiltration. The real risk now lies not only in the leakage of information itself, but in the growing sense of anxiety and distrust accumulating within both the military and society at large.

As such cases continue to occur, the challenge facing Taiwan is no longer merely how to refine its legal framework or impose harsher penalties, but how to rebuild institutional trust and risk awareness without fuelling panic or encouraging witch hunts. Otherwise, this infiltration war — waged on the battlefield of trust — risks eroding the most fragile, yet most vital, foundations of a democracy.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “从基层官兵到媒体人 大陆对台渗透网络横跨军队社会”.

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