Taiwan says China is either exaggerating or abusing its power with its claims of having uncovered more than 1,000 cases involving Taiwanese spies.
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00:00Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council says this claim of a thousand spy cases is
00:05all about Chinese bureaucrats trying to meet a performance target and to do so
00:11they're either exaggerating or they're abusing their power. The deputy
00:16head of the Mainland Affairs Council, Liang Wenjie, he says that the Chinese
00:21Communist Party is doing what it's done for decades, that is high-ranking
00:25officials come up with a goal and then it's up to lower-ranking officials to
00:30make that goal happen however they may. Now this claim of a thousand spy cases
00:36was revealed this week by China's top spy agency. They said they broke up a
00:42large number of spy networks set up by Taiwanese in China. They said that they
00:49had come across more than a thousand cases involving espionage and the theft
00:55of Chinese state secrets and they also warned that they will continue to punish
01:01what they call Taiwan independence forces. Now here they mentioned the name
01:07of a particular individual, Yang Jiuyun. Now he's a former Taiwanese political
01:13activist who is the first Taiwanese to be prosecuted for the crime of
01:19secession in China. He's already been in custody there for two years. China is
01:25calling him a Taiwan independence leader. Well, Deputy Director Liang of the
01:30Mainland Affairs Council here, he says this is just nonsense and he says before
01:35Yang's arrest in China he was there teaching Chinese chess and participating
01:41in competitions. Yang is not the first Taiwanese to be prosecuted in China.
01:48There's been a series of, there's been past cases of Taiwanese imprisoned for
01:54charges including subversion and espionage and this idea of advocating
02:01for Taiwan independence, China has been trying to criminalize that. In June they
02:06said that extreme cases of what they called diehard Taiwanese separatists,
02:11they would face the death penalty. So what does all this mean? Well the Chinese
02:18and Taiwanese governments aren't talking and every time there's news of
02:23Taiwanese being arrested in China it puts more Taiwanese off traveling there,
02:29hampering relations between China and Taiwan, not just on a political level but
02:35on a personal level too.