Taiwan - Why Not Spy for China?
Op-Ed = Satire and Cold Facts
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8 January 2023
Taiwan - Why Not Spy for China?
Op-Ed - Satire and Cold Hard Facts
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - Taiwan military personnel spying for China will be sending their handlers IOUs when China invades.
Too many in the U.S. military and intelligence community cannot understand why someone in Taiwan would sell out their fellow countrymen.
The real question after 25 years here in Taiwan is why not spy for China?
The DPP has cut pensions for future retirees, but for now the average Lieutenant Colonel retires at 20 years of service with a monthly pension of NTD 43,000 (US $1,406). This number goes up (if they are lucky to survive) at 26 years to NTD 60,000 (US $1,962). Lt. Col. is normally the highest rank for careerists. This is why so many of my Lt. Col. friends, now retired, are driving taxis.
No joke…that is how bad it is. So…why not spy?
Unlike the U.S. military, there is no family housing. This means that if you are sent to Kaohsiung for a three-year tour of duty and your wife and kids live in Taipei, and this continues to repeat itself with equally distant or remote postings throughout your career, there is no reason to explain the high divorce rate.
After retirement as a Lt. Col., you often have to continue paying child support, if divorced. So would you become bitter as you cruise about in your taxi? Maybe fly to China via Hong Kong and make a phone call?
So many U.S. Pentagon and intelligence community folks complain to me that Taiwan is too lenient on military personnel spying for China. “Three years only!?” Yes, that is the average prison sentence for spies working for China. Do they not suffer enough just being in the military in the first place?
Taiwan is a strange place. It is not Israel or West Berlin or the Alamo. Folks in DC must begin to look at Taiwan differently. It is an independent progressively moronic island, sometimes dubbed Fantasy Island, that has no clear plan on what to do about an invasion and/or evasion from a Chinese military strike force.
END
I would like to recommend one book for the readership on Chinese espionage written by two former U.S. intelligence analysts:
