Politics Hit Taiwan's NSC
Time Might Be Running Out for Joseph Wu
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26 April 2025 (Thursday)
Politics Hit Taiwan's NSC
Time Might Be Running Out for Joseph Wu
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - Spies caught inside the Presidential Office, Legislative Yuan (Parliament) and Ministry of National Defense is a recurrent problem going back 20 years.
It is rarely used for Party politics, but the recent arrest of Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), who served as an aide to National Security Council (NSC) Secretary General Wu Chao-hsieh (吳釗燮), or Joseph Wu, is now a foil for the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party/Kuomintang (KMT) Party via a Honey Badger by the name of Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) on the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
She is known for her investigative talents for unearthing government corruption.
Do not let the photographs fool you. If she is not a Honey Badger, she most likely is a Velociraptor:
Ho, encircled below, allegedly worked as a Chinese spy while serving as an aide to Wu when Wu was Secretary General of the Presidential Office, Minster of Foreign Affairs, and now as the Secretary of General of the NSC. It is unclear when Ho was recruited by China.
ABOVE Wu (left) and Ho (right); BELOW: Ho (Screen Shots)
I first interviewed Wu in December 2007 while working as the Asia Bureau Chief for Defense News. Wu was serving as the de facto Ambassador to the United States at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). He was then and now an extremely intelligent and politically savvy player in both Washington and Taipei power circles.
Wu’s relationship to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been fruitful for his career.