Pointing to lenient sentences handed out in national security cases, Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office Chief Prosecutor Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) on Thursday called for stricter measures to deter espionage in Taiwan.

Hsing, a former Taipei district chief prosecutor, said that a review of more than 200 national security cases showed that none of the convicted defendants received a sentence of more than five years in prison.

Cases of people working on behalf of China to infiltrate government and military positions to obtain top-level and classified materials to undermine Taiwan’s security are a serious concern that erodes public confidence in the nation’s leadership, he said.

Over the past year, the world has observed what many of us in the US Congress have warned about for years: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is an unreliable partner intent on chasing its ambitions to be the world’s superpower at the expense of its people, its partners and the international community at large.

In December last year, the CCP had evidence that a new strain of the coronavirus was infecting and killing Chinese citizens at an alarming rate. Their response was to censor medical professionals and lie to their own people out of fear of tarnishing China’s global image, and then to allow millions to travel outside Hubei Province to the rest of China and throughout the world.

Office of Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence Deputy Chief Yang Ching gives a briefing at the Ministry of National Defense in Taipei last night.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times

The Ministry of National Defense yesterday criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for holding a joint naval-air exercise 90 nautical miles (166km) off the coast of Taiwan, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the global community to squarely face up to the threat posed by China.