Two
detained in espionage case
‘STAY ALERT’: A staffer in
the Presidential Office’s Department of Special Affairs and a friend were taken
into custody on suspicion of handing classified documents to China
By Ko Shu-ling
and Flora Wang
STAFF REPORTERS
Friday, Jan 16, 2009, Page 1
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) yesterday called on
the government to conduct a “thorough national security check” on Presidential
Office staffers after one was taken into custody on Wednesday night for
allegedly spying for China.
Wang Ren-bing (王仁炳), a senior specialist at the Presidential Office’s Department
of Special Affairs, was taken from the Presidential Office on Wednesday
afternoon after a group of investigators with a search warrant conducted a
search of Wang’s office.
Wang is suspected of handing classified Presidential Office documents between
March and April last year to his friend Chen Pin-jen (陳品仁), who allegedly gave
them to Chinese intelligence officers. Chen was also questioned.
Wang and Chen’s residences were also searched on Wednesday.
Commenting on the suspected espionage case, KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方),
head of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, yesterday said
it suggested both sides of the Taiwan Strait were still spying on each other
despite warmer cross-strait relations.
“We need to stay alert, but we should not overreact and turn the case into
political wrangling,” Lin said.
Earlier yesterday, the Taipei District Court approved a request by prosecutors
to take Wang and Chen into custody.
Taipei District Court Spokesman Huang Chun-ming (黃俊明) said the pair was
suspected of violating the National Security Act (國家安全法) and their detention was
intended to prevent them from colluding with each other to give false
statements.
Although both denied the allegation, their respective statements were
contradictory, Huang said.
At a separate setting yesterday, the Presidential Office said the detention of
Wang was purely a legal case and was not political.
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said the Presidential Office’s
position is clear: It respects the judiciary and will cooperate fully with the
investigation.
“There is no political consideration whatsoever,” he said in response to a media
inquiry about whether the case would have any impact on cross-strait relations.
Wang Yu-chi said Wang Ren-bing was suspected of leaking documents concerning the
handover of power to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) from former president Chen
Shui-bian (陳水扁) last spring.
Wang Yu-chi yesterday said he did not know if other staff members leaked
information, but he believed the national security agencies would have
first-hand information.
Wang Yu-chi said the Presidential Office would take no further action until
prosecutors complete their investigation. If Wang Ren-bing turned out to be the
source of the problem, the spokesman said, it would be easier to handle.
What they can do now is to conduct an overall examination of the management of
the filing system and regular monitoring of the moral conduct of new staff
members. They will also mete out harsh punishments to anyone who leaks
information, the spokesman said.
Wang Yu-chi gave the assurance that Ma’s personal safety was secure, adding that
Ma was informed of the matter a few days before the search and his immediate
instruction was to respect the judiciary and fully cooperate with the
investigation.
Wang Ren-bing began working at the Presidential Office in 2001 in the office of
then deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男). After Chen Che-nan’s
departure, Wang Ren-bing continued to work at the same office.
Wang Ren-bing, a career civil servant, then asked for a transfer to the
Department of Special Affairs in April last year after the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) lost the presidential election in March.
Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟) confirmed that Chen Pin-jen used
to work as an assistant for him and former People First Party legislator Lin
Chun-teh (林春德).
Saying he was very shocked to learn of Chen Pin-jen’s alleged offense, Liao
added he was not familiar with Chen Pin-jen because he had mainly helped him
with constituency business rather than legislative affairs. Liao said he would
implement stricter screening measures for his staff.
S Korea
nuclear envoys set to travel North
BARGAINING CHIP: Pyongyang,
which has committed itself to nuclear disarmament in 2007, called for ‘free
field access’ to ensure there are no such weapons in the South
AGENCIES, SEOUL
Friday, Jan 16, 2009, Page 5
South Korean nuclear envoys were set for a rare visit to North Korea yesterday
aimed at advancing sputtering disarmament talks, days after it issued tough
terms for ending its atomic ambitions.
North Korea will challenge the team of US president-elect Barack Obama after it
takes office next week and may try brinkmanship to increase its bargaining
leverage, US President George W. Bush’s top Asia adviser said in Washington on
Wednesday.
No date has been set for the return of South Korean nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook,
leading one of the few nuclear delegations the South has ever sent to its
secretive neighbor, the foreign ministry said.
Hwang told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday he would discuss the purchase of 14,000
unused fuel rods from the North’s nuclear plant as part of a disarmament-for-aid
deal the North struck with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US.
The South might be able to extract material from the rods to use in its civilian
nuclear program, an expert said.
The North, which was hit with UN sanctions after its October 2006 nuclear test,
cannot sell the rods overseas due to export controls and could try to dispose of
them by having one of the five powers in the nuclear talks act as an
intermediary.
The rods, if processed in a reactor, could produce enough plutonium for at least
one or perhaps two nuclear weapons. The five powers have been in talks for
months about their export.
The North has sent mixed signals in the past few weeks about how it will conduct
its nuclear dealings.
It appeared to have extended an olive branch to Obama by saying in a New Year’s
message it was willing to work with countries that were friendly.
Seoul yesterday rejected North Korea’s fresh demand for verification that all US
nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from South Korea, saying there are no such
weapons on its territory.
The North made the demand Tuesday in a foreign ministry statement seen as its
first message to the incoming US administration of Obama.
“We will never do such a thing as showing our nuclear weapons first even in 100
years unless the US hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK [North Korea]
are fundamentally terminated,” the spokesman said, according to its official
media.
He added that if the US “nuclear umbrella” was removed, the North would feel no
need to keep its nuclear weapons. While the US says it has no nuclear weapons in
South Korea, it is bound guarantee to Seoul’s security and it has long-range
nuclear capabilities.
The communist state, which has committed itself to nuclear disarmament under a
February 2007 six-nation pact, called for “free field access” to ensure there
are no such weapons in the South.
Washington and Seoul say US atomic weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in
1991.
The South’s foreign ministry, in a statement, accused North Korea of “distorting
the substance of the situation.” It called for the North’s active cooperation to
denuclearise the peninsula.
In its Tuesday statement the communist state also vowed not to give up its
nuclear weapons until the US drops its “hostile” policy and establishes
diplomatic relations.
The Pyongyang statement reaffirmed current policy but came just days before the
Obama administration takes power.
“There will be no such case in 100 years’ time that we will hand over our
nuclear weapons first without the fundamental settlement of the US hostile
policy toward Korea and its nuclear threat,” it said.
The 2007 pact calls for the scrapping of the North’s nuclear weapons in return
for aid, normalized relations with the United States and Japan and a formal
peace agreement on the Korean peninsula.
The North is disabling its nuclear plants under the latest phase of the pact.
But negotiations have not started on the final phase, which would involve the
surrender of weapons and diplomatic ties.
The US says the North must scrap its nuclear weaponry before such ties are
forged.
The six-nation disarmament talks group the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and
Japan.
South Korea’s foreign ministry yesterday criticized the North for its statement,
which Seoul said ran counter to the principles of the six-way nuclear
negotiations.
If North Korea wants to raise tension, it could try to restore its
plutonium-producing nuclear plant, which it has been taking apart under the deal
in return for aid and better diplomatic standing.
Nuclear experts said it could resume operation at its plant that separates
plutonium from spent fuel in a few months.
North Korea’s already weak economy will be dragged down even further the longer
the nuclear talks are stalled because Washington has called for a suspension of
most aid to North Korea for not abiding by the disarmament deal, which experts
said could lead it back to the bargaining table.
Ma’s
spending won’t stop the rot
By Paul Lin 林保華
Friday, Jan 16, 2009, Page 8
Talk about a “February crisis” began in China. Since the Lunar New Year falls in
late January this year and because of the large number of companies that have
closed or are closing as a result of the economic crisis, next month may begin
with a wave of unemployment sweeping across China causing social instability.
In addition to sending the unemployment rate into a double-digit percentage, the
economic crisis is also affecting the middle classes, who have acted as a buffer
between China’s privileged and lower classes. Their addition to the ranks of
unemployed will have a direct impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)
rule. The upshot of this is that since November the CCP has done its best to
help the middle classes ride out the storm by propping up the stock market and
the real estate market. These attempts include trying to push the Shanghai
composite index to somewhere between 2,400 points and 3,000 points to help the
middle classes who entered the market that reached its height of 6,124 points
around the time of the CCP’s 17th national congress in the fall of 2007.
However, although Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) has spent 4 trillion yuan
(US$586 billion) trying to prop up the market, the index has barely increased
from its low of 1,678 points in November and is still languishing below the
1,900-point mark.
In early November, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) warned that the
economy would slow down this year. Before that, a wave of bankruptcies occurred
among Hong Kong-invested businesses in the Pearl River Delta, a situation that
is likely to deteriorate further after the Lunar New Year.
In late October, Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), Hong Kong’s richest man, stopped making new
investments anywhere in the world. He recently also sold his shares in Bank of
China and Bank of America Corp is selling part of its stake in China
Construction Bank Ltd. The question is, is this a foreboding of more to come.
During an interview with the Washington Post on Dec. 9, President Ma Ying-jeou
(馬英九) said: “The idea is not to encourage our people to invest on mainland
China, because the investment climate over there isn’t as good as it was before
... So the idea is not to encourage investment over there, but instead to make
Taiwan’s own investment climate better.”
In 2007, during the presidential election campaign, I warned about the
restrictions on foreign businesses included in China’s Foreign Investment
Industrial Guidance Catalogue (外商投資產業指導目錄) and now Ma talks about the investment
environment as not being “as good as it was before.” The man has some nerve.
Compared with China and Hong Kong, Taiwan’s government is being optimistic if it
thinks issuing consumer vouchers is enough to solve the problem and that China
can be relied upon to solve all the other economic problems. Apart from speeding
up Taiwan’s opening up to China, all Ma is doing is running around performing
his “spending show.”
I don’t think there is much risk that people will save their consumer vouchers
for their historical value. It is pretty clear that they are meant for spending,
so there is no need for Ma to run around promoting their use. What worries the
public more is any unexpected problems that may occur because of the
government’s arrogance and inability. The only reason Ma is promoting the
vouchers and encouraging spending is because he wants to create an image of
himself as “Ma the Savior.”
The problem is that, whether it is the consumer vouchers or the “special state
affairs” fund, the money comes from hard working Taiwanese taxpayers, not from
Ma’s own pocket.
Ma’s spending is not only incapable of stimulating the public’s willingness to
spend, but it also leaves an unpleasant feeling that he is trying to show off
his own wealth. Ma and many of his top officials have savings in excess of NT$10
million and they also have other funds, shares and real estate. How could they
understand the plight of the average citizen or the unemployed?
This spending act does nothing to stop a recent spate of deaths from starvation
during cold weather, suicide and murder, or arrogant attitudes toward Taiwan’s
sovereignty and living standards.
Paul Lin is a political commentator
based in Taiwan.