An Old Taiwan Spy, Drifting Like Flotsam

HONG KONG, April 7 -- Jiang Jianguo was no James Bond. As a spy for Taiwan, he acknowledged, his biggest exploit was getting a map of the Shanghai port. But he did what he was told by his Taiwanese spymasters and spent 13 years in Shanghai's Tilanqiao Prison after Chinese counterespionage agents caught him in a sting.

Now, the Chinese national said in a lengthy interview here, he believes that Taiwan's government owes him for the risks he took and the time he served. Specifically, he said, he wants back salary for the long jail stretch, a decent monthly pension and a residence visa allowing him to live out the rest of his life in Taiwan. As for the whereabouts of his missing wife and daughter, he said, he is willing to consider that water over the dam as far as Taiwan is concerned.

Taiwan has rejected his demands, however, and Jiang, a gaunt 73, has become a piece of collateral damage in the shadow war between the Chinese and Taiwanese intelligence agencies. Along with dozens of other Chinese recruited by Taiwan and imprisoned for espionage over the years, he has been left drifting like flotsam since his release, despised as a traitor by his own government and dismissed as too demanding by the Taiwanese government.

Jiang's two-year career as a spy -- one chapter in a life ripped apart by China's tumultuous recent history -- provides a rare glimpse of the relentless espionage between mainland China and Taiwan. Although China is the world's most populous country and Taiwan only a little island 100 miles offshore, each government is the other's main intelligence target. In particular, each devotes large amounts of human and financial resources to obtaining information on the other's military every year.

Jiang, once an asset but no longer useful in the spy war, spent most of March in Taipei dunning the Taiwan Military Intelligence Bureau for what he believes he is due. After 26 days and several tense meetings, he said, the Taiwanese espionage agency said it concluded that Jiang has no claim on such financial support and no right to a residence visa. Jiang said a senior bureau official told him as much Wednesday and ordered him not to speak publicly about his work for the service, warning that under Taiwanese law he could be jailed again if he did.

"I told them, 'I was your man then, and I should be your man now,' " Jiang said, heedless of the warning. "What kind of a government is that? I was very disappointed."

The Taiwanese spy agency, responding to an inquiry, said it had decided Jiang was ineligible for benefits because he had never been a full-time Taiwanese Defense Ministry employee and that the government had fulfilled its obligations with payments that Jiang said totaled $36,000 to help meet medical expenses after his release from prison in 2001.

With regard to Jianguo's case, "the Military Intelligence Bureau has already made compensation according to his relative rights and interests, in December 2001," the spy agency said in a statement issued in Taipei. "In considering Jiang's situation and based on the old-time fellowship, the bureau did whatever it could to help him, according to the regulations."

Jiang said he got started in the espionage business without really intending to, and without realizing how cold-hearted it could be.

In the 1980s, he was running a trading company based in Hong Kong. One of his money-making tricks, he said, was to buy silk garments in China, relabel them to indicate they were made in the Philippines and export them to Taiwan, where Chinese-made goods were banned.

An alert customs officer in Taiwan spotted the ruse in one shipment in 1985, however, and Jiang risked losing a considerable investment. A friend with connections to the then-ruling Nationalist Party said he might be able to help, Jiang said, and soon a man showed up saying he could fix the problem if Jiang would agree to spy for Taiwan during his frequent trips to the mainland.

"I agreed to sign up, because I had no choice at the time," Jiang said. "I wanted to resolve the customs issue as soon as possible. They gave me a form to fill out. And I also took an oath," he added, raising his hand to show how he was sworn in. "It said I had to be loyal to the Republic of China or else I would be heavily punished and even my family members would be affected."