April 14, 2006: China recently released a lot of information about how Taiwan recruits spies inside China. Taiwan uses the Internet, trolling chat rooms and bulletin boards, as well as emailing likely candidates, and even using online ads. Actually, the Taiwanese are simply doing openly, what the Chinese have been doing clandestinely, for decades. The Taiwanese were not asking for anything that one would think of as state secrets. Mainly, they asked for unclassified magazines and documents that, because of their specialized nature, are only going to be found in China.

However, in China, which is still basically a communist dictatorship, and a bureaucrat can declare as espionage anything they want, you can have the secret police on your case for anything. Chinese bureaucrats do just that, and the accused ends up in prison, or worse. So, while China feels free to collect unclassified material in foreign countries, don't try and do it in China.

Apparently, the Chinese ordered the media to publicize this nefarious Taiwanese plot in order to discourage Chinese from getting involved. Then again, it will also make more Chinese aware of a new way to make money easily, if a bit dangerously.