TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Military personnel and others named or wanted by China have run into loan-application roadblocks at state-owned banks because queries hit a China-linked database, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) has claimed.

Speaking before the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) took questions on whether the Chinese Communist Party’s “long arm” has reached into Taiwan’s loan-approval processes, per CNA.

Wang said some members of specialized units — including at the Military Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of National Defense’s Political Warfare Bureau Psychological Operations Brigade — were denied loans despite strong credit because they had been named by Chinese authorities. He said Bank of Taiwan, First Commercial Bank, and Chang Hwa Bank, among others, use China-linked databases as part of their Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.

Tsai said the Ministry of National Defense is reviewing the issue and that the National Security Bureau is also conducting a special review. He said the bureau’s look at the cases found “some individual, personal factors.”

Arguing the problem is not isolated, Wang explained that when a credit-bureau pull is not made, banks often query third-party databases. He said one such tool, the World-Check database, is tied to data from China — including China’s Ministry of Public Security and Chinese media — which can trigger high-risk flags.

Wang said he asked a bank employee to run test queries for two service members and both came back as “negative media” hits in a high-risk category, per UDN.

Tsai countered that other military personnel have secured loans without issue, reiterating that the defense ministry’s special project is ongoing, while Wang urged a comprehensive solution and questioned whether stopgap “white list” cross-checks simply mask the underlying problem.