China Executes Military Officer
By wendell minnick
Published: 11 Sep 13:18 EDT (17:18 GMT)


TAIPEI - A Chinese military officer has been executed for spying for
Taiwan. A report, which appeared in the pro-Beijing daily Hong Kong
newspaper Ta Kung Pao, said Lt. Dai Yibiao of the People's Liberation
Army (PLA) was executed on Sept. 5 after a Nanjing Military Court found
him guilty of sending 116 classified electronic documents to Taiwan via
the Internet.

According to the report, Dai had contacted an unnamed Taiwan
intelligence organization in April 2006 via the Internet and received
$12,000 for his services.


"Frankly, I have been a bit surprised," said Lin Chong-Pin, former
Taiwan deputy minister of defense and now the president of the
Taipei-based Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies. "I
had the impression that our intelligence network has been badly damaged.
The recent arrest, sentence and execution of a 'spy' working for Taiwan
in the PLA seems to suggest that our intel work has somehow continued
inside the PLA."

Over the past eight years, Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB)
has seen serious rollbacks of its human intelligence (HUMINT) networks
in China as nationalism and better salaries for military officers has
made recruitment efforts by the MIB more difficult.

York Chen, a former member of the National Security Council, now with
the Institute for Taiwan Defense and Strategic Studies, said J-2 had
told him the "main reason of downgrading HUMINT in China is the PLA
welfare is much better than before. Our MIB finds it is getting harder
to buy them off."

Taiwan's MIB, nicknamed "the Men in Black," once enjoyed wide success in
recruiting spies in China. One valued source was the million-plus Taiwan
businessmen, many former military veterans, living in China. This
created a large pool of potential recruits to ferret out intelligence
and serve as talent spotters.

However, since 2000, China has arrested more than 40 alleged Taiwan
spies. In 2004, the worst year for Taiwan's intelligence service, China
arrested 24 alleged spies. All were Taiwanese businessmen working in
China and recruited by the MIB. There have been allegations that the MIB
and Taiwan's National Security Bureau have been penetrated by Chinese
intelligence and that Taiwan's China operations have been totally
compromised.