Chinese authorities have placed bounties on 18 Taiwanese military personnel accused of conducting psychological operations and spreading messages Beijing considers “separatist.”
Police in the coastal city of Xiamen announced the rewards on Saturday, offering up to $1,400 for information leading to the arrest of officers they described as core members of Taiwan’s psychological warfare division.
The move came one day after Taiwan’s President William Lai Ching-te pledged to bolster the island’s defences with a new air protection system and increased military spending.
Authorities published photographs, names and identification numbers of the individuals, claiming they operated websites for disinformation campaigns, created online games promoting independence and produced misleading video content.
Xiamen’s public security bureau, the local police authority in the Chinese coastal city, said the officers had long plotted to incite what it called “separatist activities”.
Taiwan’s Defence Ministry rejected the accusations as “despotic and pig-headed thinking” of the Chinese government, aimed at dividing the population and conducting “cognitive warfare”.
The bounty announcement followed an angry response from Beijing to Lai’s National Day address on Friday, in which he unveiled plans for a “T-Dome” air defence network and called on China to abandon threats of force.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called Lai a “troublemaker, creator of danger and a war-maker,” while the Taiwan Affairs Office accused him of attempting to push separatism through violence and external support.
State-aligned media amplified Beijing’s criticism. The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, dismissed Lai’s defence plans in an editorial, calling the T-Dome “nothing but an expensive illusion” which Taiwan’s residents were expected to foot the bill for.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite strong objections from Taipei, and has intensified military and political pressure in recent years with the threat of a Chinese military invasion never far from the minds of those in Taiwan.
The wanted notice carries little practical weight, given that Taiwanese intelligence personnel do not openly visit mainland China and Beijing’s legal system holds no authority over the island. China issued a similar set of bounties in June targeting 20 people it alleged were military hackers, which Taiwan ignored.
US-China tensions
The escalation comes as broader trade tensions simmer between Beijing and Washington.
On Friday, Trump threatened an additional 100% tariff on Chinese imports in retaliation for Beijing’s rare-earth metals export controls.
He also cast doubt on whether he would meet China’s leader Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit later this month, though later said he hadn’t cancelled.
James Zimmerman, former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, warned the dispute was “putting people’s lives at risk” while signalling to Beijing that “America is an unreliable and untrustworthy trading partner”.
The US is Taiwan’s principal security partner, though Trump in September paused $400m in weapons aid, according to a report, raising concerns he could use the island as a bargaining chip.
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