Taiwan's security bureau says China spy indictments rose from 6 in 2020 to 73 this year

Taiwan's National Security Bureau has told the Legislative Yuan that the number of people indicted each year in Chinese espionage cases has climbed from six in 2020 to 73 so far in 2026, as Beijing keeps trying to reach people inside military units and government agencies to obtain sensitive information. The figures are in a written report delivered to lawmakers on Tuesday 20 October, ahead of an appearance by bureau director Tsai Ming-yen before the legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee on Thursday 22 October.

According to the report, Chinese intelligence officers make contact with targets directly or recruit them through online links. The bureau's count leaves out cases brought under the Anti-Infiltration Act. United Daily News, citing the report, said 264 people have been indicted in these cases since 2020. Courts have ruled on 179 of them and found 163 guilty, a conviction rate of 91 percent. The average sentence has also grown, from one year in 2020 to six years and six months in 2026.

The bureau also described a sustained effort to acquire Taiwanese technology. It said Chinese actors pose as foreign investors and route purchases through third parties in order to poach skilled staff, steal technology and buy high-end chips. Since 2020, investigators have uncovered 151 cases in which Chinese-funded firms operated in Taiwan without approval or recruited talent there, along with 50 cases of technology theft.

On the cyber front, the report says the government's own Government Service Network faced an average of more than 2.58 million intrusion attempts a day through September. The numbers have risen since June, and the total detected in July alone passed 100 million. The Liberty Times, reporting on the same document, put the July figure at more than 185 million.

The bureau said Chinese hacking units have long treated Taiwan's critical infrastructure as a target, and in the first half of this year they frequently probed academic research, telecommunications and the defence supply chain. In its assessment, the aim was to disrupt defence policy, damage Taiwan's cooperation with foreign partners and steal sensitive technology. It added that China has begun using AI agent tools to scan government websites for weak points automatically, and is applying AI to reconnaissance, the search for unknown software flaws and targeted email attacks.

The bureau did not rule out that the rise in network attacks is preparation for intelligence gathering and interference ahead of local elections at the end of the year. Between January and September, analysts tracking suspicious accounts logged more than 2.5 million items of disputed information, compared with about 1.69 million in the same period of 2025. The material targeted government policy on energy, food safety and defence, and Facebook's share of it rose from 43.6 percent to 68.9 percent. During the 2024 presidential and legislative elections, 71 cases were prosecuted under the Anti-Infiltration Act.

The report also describes what it calls transnational repression. It says China has directed people abroad and collaborators in Taiwan to follow and film particular Taiwanese citizens to collect private information that can be used as leverage, to send threatening emails in the names of anti-China figures, and to stage scuffles, paint attacks disguised as debt collection and fake traffic accidents intended to intimidate.

The bureau said it would coordinate the agencies involved, strengthen security arrangements for the elections and pass warnings to the responsible authorities as soon as it gathers evidence of interference. Lawmakers on the defence committee are due to question Tsai and other intelligence chiefs on the report on Thursday.