Two MIB agents vanish near China-Vietnam border

Taiwan News, Staff Writer
Page 2
2006-07-21 02:51 AM

Two senior officers from Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau have gone missing on an overseas mission and may have been arrested by Chinese agents on the China-Vietnam border, the Taipei-based China Times quoted sources as saying yesterday.The paper said the purpose of the officers' trip to Vietnam was classified information, but added it was likely that the intelligence officers had been trying to make contact with informants in China's People's Liberation Army.

One of the two missing colonels, identified by his last name Chu, is deputy director of the MIB fourth department, and the other is Hsu Chang-duo, a section chief within Chu's department. The men lost contact with the MIB shortly after they arrived in Vietnam to meet some people in late May, the source said.

Sources in the MIB said they suspected that Chu and Hsu might have been abducted by Chinese agents while they were in a Vietnamese border city to meet contacts, and were then taken back to China for questioning. The sources added, however, that they did not rule out other possibilities, such as that the two might have been kidnapped by local gangsters or had had an accident.

However, since neither the MIB nor the two men's families have received any ransom demands, the bureau suspects that the two were nabbed by Chinese agents, the sources said.

A MIB official said it was unlikely that Chu and Hsu would go into China on their own, as the MIB had not assigned its officers or engaged Taiwanese businessmen to go to China to collect information or do other work on its behalf in recent years.

The official said it was suspected that China might have deployed a decoy in Vietnam to win Chu and Hsu's trust over a long period until the time was ripe to lure them into a trap. If this is so, it would be the first time that Chinese intelligence authorities have adopted such a strategy to approach and nab Taiwanese agents in a third country, he said.

"They used the same method to capture pro-democracy activist Wang Bingzhang in Vietnam and political dissident Peng Ming in Burma a few years ago," the official said.

The MIB has a station in Vietnam, but it is difficult to say if Chu and Hsu went there on their own or on a trip arranged by the station, the official said.

Given Chu and Hsu's positions in the MIB, the person they met in Vietnam must have been someone in a very high position, or someone who could have provided the MIB with military information on China on a long-term basis, the official said.

Chu reportedly might have gone to Vietnam for the same reason he went to another Southeast Asian country in April - to convince a Chinese official in charge of regional security issues in that country to work for Taiwan.

Chinese intelligence authorities have remained silent on the matter, and there was no evidence that the two agents were in their hands, according to the paper.

The paper urged the government to do whatever it can to find Chu and Hsu and to negotiate with the authorities concerned for their release.

Chu's mother has been in intensive care in a hospital since her son went missing, the report said.

ROUNDUP: Vietnam Denies Chinese Agents Abducted Two Taiwan Spies

Chinese agents kidnapped two Taiwanese military spies in Vietnam in May, took them to China and they have since been under house arrest, a Taiwan newspaper alleged Wednesday.

Chu Kung-hsun and Hsu Chang-kuo, colonels in Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB), flew to Vietnam to gather information on China on May 25 and were scheduled to return to Taipei on May 29, but vanished after meeting an informant on May 26, the China Times daily said.

However, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry has issued a statement saying it categorically denies having any knowledge of any such incident inside the territory of Vietnam.

According to the report in the China Times, the MIB sent an official to Vietnam to probe the pair's disappearance and found out that they had been abducted by Chinese agents based in Nanning, capital of China's Guangxi province.

The newspaper said Chinese agents had been questioning them every day but have not formally arrested them.

The incident has dealt a heavy blow to Taiwan's intelligence work, because Chu was in charge of MIB's spying in China, the paper said.

In 2002, Chinese spies kidnapped three US-based Chinese pro-democracy activists at the Vietnamese border and forcibly took them to China. China acknowledged their arrest only a year later and sentenced one of them, Wang Bingzhang, to life imprisonment.

The Taiwan government has not commented on the latest incident.

Before Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, the MIB directed its intelligence-gathering in China from Hong Kong.

After 1997, MIB moved its operations to South-East Asian nations and Chu was in charge of a dozen intelligence stations in the region.

Taiwan and China have been technically at war since 1949, when the Kuomintang nationalists lost the Chinese civil war and set up their government-in-exile in Taipei.

Taiwanese spies arrested in Vietnam, media reports say

AP , TAIPEI
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2006,Page 3

Chinese agents have arrested two Taiwanese spies in Vietnam following a fierce fist fight, Chinese-language newspapers reported yesterday.
The two officers from Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau were meeting with a Chinese informer whom they had recruited in Vietnam when they were arrested on May 30, the Apple Daily reported, citing unidentified Taiwanese officials.

One of the officers, Hsu Chang-kuo (許昌國), allegedly sent a text message to a colleague in Taiwan requesting help. A fist fight ensued between the eight Chinese agents and the two Taiwanese, but the Taiwanese were soon overpowered, the Apple Daily reported.

The China Times identified the other Taiwanese agent as Colonel Chu.

The arrests took place at a Vietnamese checkpoint in an area near the border with China's southwestern Guangxi Province, China Times quoted unidentified officials as saying.

Chinese intelligence agents found out about the informer months ago, just after he was recruited by the Taiwanese, Apple Daily reported.

They "fed false intelligence" to the informer so that he could win Taiwan's trust. The informer then demanded to meet with high-level intelligence officers from Taiwan to cement the relationship, it reported.

The Defense Ministry declined to comment on the reports.

Vietnam asked China to release the two men, acting on a request from Taiwan, but Chinese authorities denied any knowledge of the affair, the Apple Daily said.

Taiwan and China have spied on each other since the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

The China Times said Taiwan had stopped sending spies to China in recent years because of the high risk of arrest, instead recruiting Chinese nationals to gather intelligence.

The Men in Black: How Taiwan spies on China
By Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick is the Jane's Defense Weekly correspondent for Taiwan and the author of Spies and Provocateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action (McFarland 1992). He can be contacted at [email protected].

Well I am glad that these arrests have greatly improved the national security of China, although it might be too much to expect that the MIB agents have inside information on activities of other countries who want to obtain intelligence on internal Chinese affairs. But I do hope that we treat these detainees well and maybe show them all the progress in major Chinese cities so they are happy to help China.

This little ´incident´ strenghtens my perception that the whole fuss about how intimate and cosy the new relationship between Viet Nam and US is fully beside the point. Hanoi engages in shrewd double dealing: giving US the impression that they are in fear of the big bad dragon and need help (i.e. money!!) from Wahington, simultaneously the Viets establish new intelligence and military relations with Beijing and do as much business as they can with China. Also Hanoi has extensive party-party relations between CPC and CPV which make Hanoi one of Beijings few special partners. Some people in the pentagon think that Viet Nam can be turned into an strategic outpost against China (rumour has it US Navy wants back into Cam Ranh!).

Ridiculous!, Viets will take all the money, roses and smiles which will cement the power of the CPV and Hanoi will not dare to provoke China since they know that Viet Nam will border China also in 1000 years when US may not even exist anymore.

Simply inconceivable that chinese intelligence acted without knowledge and cooperation of the vietnamese agencies. Viets and chinese seem to get along better and better so its time to forget that nasty little war fought between comrades in 1979!

Taiwan spies captured in China -magazine

By Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have captured two Taiwan intelligence agents, a Hong Kong magazine reported, in an incident likely to embarrass the island as the number of foiled espionage cases grows.

The apprehension of the agents near China's border with Vietnam, reported in the latest edition of Yazhou Zhoukan, comes after government sources in Beijing said China executed a Taiwan-employed spy in April.

The report said the two Military Intelligence Bureau captains were detained in the southwestern region of Guangxi in late May, making them the highest-ranking Taiwan agents ever caught in China. They had crossed from Vietnam in the hope of meeting informants from local police, but it turned out to be a trap.


The magazine said Chinese intelligence authorities in Guangxi had denied arresting the two men.

Taiwan's Defence Ministry and the Chinese cabinet spokesman's office had no immediate comment on the reports.

"Taiwan has never stopped these acts towards the mainland. These incidents are very common," Xu Bodong, director of Taiwan research at Beijing Union University, said by telephone. "They come in the name of Taiwan business people and then spy."

China and Taiwan have been spying on each other since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. China claims Taiwan as its own and has vowed to attack the self-ruled democratic island if it formally declares statehood.

Despite the political animosity, trade and tourism have blossomed since the late 1980s and as many as a million Taiwan citizens live in China.

"Occasionally, China arrests groups of these businessmen and displays them to the press as 'Taiwanese agents'," said Wendell Minnick, a security expert with the Defence News.

"Normally they are released after a while."

Taiwan security expert Andrew Yang said the latest case will come as an embarrassment for the island.

"It's an embarrassment to the intelligence community because this has happened before," Yang said. "The intelligence community has to be very cautious and come up with some damage control, so this kind of incident never happens again."


In April, China executed Tong Daning, who held a rank equivalent to one notch below assistant minister in the National Development and Reform Commission, for being a Taiwan spy.

In 1999, a Chinese major-general and a senior colonel were executed for selling state secrets to Taiwan, for $1.6 million (840,000 pounds), in the biggest espionage scandal of the Communist era.

Sounds like either a sting operation by Chinese Intelligence or, the PLA has effective informants within the Taiwanese Military.

Alternatively, Tiawanese forces wishing to preserve the staus quo have acted to stop Independance Extremists from embarking on a course of action that could seriously have rocked the boat.

Then again they could have simply defected.

I agree with V.O., had read somewhere recently that the U.S. has been negotiating with Vietnam over the use of Cam Ranh Bay.

Viking, IMO, it was a sting. The point about the informer insisting on meeting with high level intel officials from Taiwan strengthens that argument, I think.