Dozens in Taiwanese Military Found Holding Chinese Residency Permits

At least 62 Taiwanese service members were found to hold the permits, which are not illegal but regulated for members of the military.

Guards raise Taiwan's national flag on the Democracy Boulevard at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei on Nov. 29, 2024. I-Hwa Cheng/AFP via Getty Images

Dozens of active-duty members in Taiwan’s military have been found to hold residency permits in China and will have their access to military intelligence revoked.

At least 62 Taiwanese service members were found to hold the permits, which are not illegal but are prohibited for members of the military and government workers, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said on April 17.

Communist China does not recognize Taiwanese passports and Chinese immigration laws require applicants to have lived and worked in China before being approved to hold such a permit.

As such, they may be seen as a symbol of Chinese influence in the Taiwanese military, and those members found to hold them will now be barred from handling intelligence and confidential data, Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo said on April 16.

Koo added that none of the service members possess Chinese passports or resident identity cards, which would denote Chinese citizenship and a forced revocation of their Taiwanese citizenship.

Taiwan and China split apart in 1949 following years of civil war. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was successful in conquering the rest of China but the government of the Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan, which the CCP has never controlled.

Nearly 10 percent of Taiwan’s population is made up of those who personally fled, or had parents and grandparents who fled the communist takeover under CCP leader Mao Zedong.

Many still therefore maintain emotional or financial ties to the mainland, which the CCP has historically sought to exploit.

Since the time of Mao, a key CCP strategy to undermine Taiwan’s de facto independence has been to infiltrate Taiwan’s military and particularly its officer corps, oftentimes by playing upon these ties.

Cases of such CCP espionage have risen significantly in recent years. Taiwanese authorities prosecuted only 10 people for such espionage in 2022 but this number rose to 64 in 2024. More than half of those arrested for spying for China last year were active or retired military members, some of whom worked for units directly involved with providing security to the president’s office.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said last month that the CCP seeks to “divide, destroy, and subvert [Taiwan] from within” through such espionage.

“What they are trying to do is to sow seeds of discord in our society, keep us occupied with internal conflicts, and cause us to ignore the real threat from outside,” Lai told reporters.

Lai cited cases in which active-duty or retired military personnel have been bought out by the Chinese regime or in which entertainers have spread CCP propaganda to advance their careers.

To that end, Lai introduced 17 new countermeasures to combat the threat of rising CCP espionage, including the restoration of a military trial system for active-duty personnel suspected of aiding the enemy.

The new countermeasures will also impose a more strict review of Taiwan visits or residency applications by Chinese citizens and will make “necessary adjustments” to the flows of money, people, and technology across the strait.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.