Taiwan ‘spy scandal’ a symptom of Beijing’s growing distrust of Taipei, observers say
State media reports alleging espionage by self-ruled island ‘intended as a warning’, former deputy defence minister of Taiwan says
Beijing’s claims that Taipei has been blackmailing mainland students at Taiwanese universities to spy for the self-ruled island reflect the increasingly fraught relationship between the two sides, observers said.
In the past week, mainland Chinese state media have reported that the authorities had “cracked” more than 100 espionage cases involving the self-ruled island since 2011, including several of them allegedly operated from college campuses.
“Mainland students in Taiwan are far away from home and therefore have a strong desire to make friends. Taiwan’s intelligence agents made use of this,” the report said.
Beijing’s ties with Taipei have been under pressure since Tsai Ing-wen from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party was elected the island’s president in 2016, and those tensions might have been a catalyst for the mainland’s allegations of espionage.
But spies – both real and imagined – have been around since the official separation of the two sides’ governments in 1949.