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TAIPEI. A Taiwan military intelligence officer has been arrested for allegedly selling defense secrets to China, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
"We are investigating Chuang Po-hsin, a major at the intelligence unit of the electronic information development division, for suspicion of leaking defense information," said a Defense Ministry spokesman, Liou Chih-jein.
Chuang was arrested by the military police on Tuesday.
His division is in charge of electronic surveillance of China, and the major was suspected of stealing information that the division had collected about China's military activities and technological research, said the division chief, Lieutenant General Lee Hsiang-cho.
Lee said that Chuang "was in a low-level position, and the secrets he leaked were nonessential."
"Prosecutors didn't find anything relating to the secret codes for missiles or radar systems, as some media reports suggested," Lee said.
He was referring to a United Daily News report that Chuang had sold since April last year the island's missile data to China through a retired military officer for about one million Taiwan dollars, or $32,000.
The report said that the officer had also been linked to a crime ring involved in credit card fraud and had introduced Chuang to Chinese intelligence units.
Prosecutors accidentally discovered Chuang's alleged espionage work during investigation of the crime ring, the report said.
The case emerged as an opposition leader, James Soong, the head of the People First Party, was visiting the mainland, and only days after another opposition leader, Lien Chan, of the Nationalist Party, returned from a landmark trip.
Beijing has viewed Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, since the two sides split at the end of a civil war in 1949.
Tensions across the Taiwan Strait reached a peak in March after China passed an anti-secession law giving its military the legal basis to invade Taiwan if the island declared formal independence.