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Taiwanese ‘won’t dare visit mainland China’ after TV ‘spy confessions’
- State broadcaster’s claim that mainland China has caught over 100 spies had a chilling effect on academic and cultural exchange, commentators say
- ‘Confessions’ were unusual for Beijing because disclosing spying would risk leaking state secrets and admit it has been infiltrated, academic says
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The Chinese government’s targeting of Taiwanese “spies” has scared off cross-strait experts based in Taiwan from visiting the mainland and further damaged non-official exchanges between the two sides, observers say.
Cross-strait scholars, journalists and commentators in Taipei said that a series of high-profile “spy confession” programmes aired by mainland Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) across three days this month had had a chilling effect in the self-ruled island.
The report said mainland Chinese authorities had uncovered “hundreds” of Taiwanese espionage cases since 2018, though the reports identified just four people accused of spying.
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“I’ve stopped visiting the mainland since the outbreak of Covid-19, and now I definitely won’t go during the ‘espionage saga’,” said Chi Le-yi, a Taipei-based defence expert.
Many other Taiwanese scholars had made the same decision because they “did not feel secure”, he said.
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Another cross-strait expert in Taipei, Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, said there were question marks over the basis for the alleged espionage, given mainland ’s opaque, Communist Party-controlled legal system.
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