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.