TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) is pushing tougher measures as suspected Chinese espionage cases surge across Taiwan’s core institutions, Nikkei Asia reported on Friday.
Taiwan’s security agencies say infiltration has touched the Presidential Office, the defense and foreign affairs ministries, the legislature, and the armed forces, implicating suspects across party lines from the ruling DPP to the opposition KMT.
In March, Lai announced 17 security reform proposals, including stricter residency vetting for Chinese nationals and reviving military courts for active-duty spies, scrapped over a decade ago. Critics from the KMT slammed the moves as creeping authoritarianism, arguing they stoked fear to shield Lai politically.
National Security Bureau data shows 159 people have been indicted for suspected spying since 2020, 60% with military ties, while the High Prosecutors Office alone prosecuted 64 espionage cases last year, triple the 2021 figure. Courts in March sentenced four soldiers, including three from Lai’s own security detail, for leaking confidential data to Chinese intelligence between 2022 and 2024.
Legal scholars argue Taiwan’s espionage laws are outdated, vague, and too lenient, with Business Today reporting the average spy sentence is just 18 months. Su Yen-tu (蘇彥圖), a legal expert at Academia Sinica, said that poor legal definitions and a lack of specialized judges weaken deterrence, no matter whether trials are held in civilian or military courts.
Some of Lai’s critics in the KMT accuse him of using national security as a fig leaf for “party security,” with KMT Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) likening the proposals to “martial law.” Others argue that defining China as a “foreign hostile force” under the Anti-Infiltration Act, as Lai did this year, is politically polarizing and heightens cross-strait tensions.
A senior Taipei-based diplomat told Nikkei Asia that while nobody in the government is surprised by Beijing’s tactics, “the depth of infiltration is still shocking.” The diplomat called the new reforms “better late than never,” while questioning their consistent enforcement and legal soundness.
Observers note Taiwan’s domestic politics make a unified counterintelligence strategy hard to sustain, given KMT opposition and broader public doubts. One senior national security official warned that some Taiwanese media, aligned with China’s narratives, freely undermine democratic institutions with impunity, complicating efforts to build consensus on tougher spy laws.
Lai, meanwhile, insists stronger defenses are non-negotiable. “How is he supposed to lead the country to a stronger defense if he can't talk about the threat?” asked Philip Shetler-Jones of the Royal United Services Institute, pointing to Lai’s push for a more vocal posture than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Moving ahead on reforms like reviving military courts faces a tough legislative path, since the KMT holds enough seats to block major changes. Still, DPP Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amendments to strengthen security clearances, including periodic checks tailored to individuals with classified access, modeled after US systems refined over decades.
Chen argued Taiwan “doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel” to protect itself from infiltration but it does have to act decisively.
