An Old Taiwan Spy, Drifting Like Flotsam

Jiang had no ideological problems with his new mission. A surgeon who had graduated from the Shanghai Second Medical Institute, he was torn from his medical practice during the Cultural Revolution and sent from town to town doing menial work that at one point included cleaning community toilets. Jiang's "crime" was that his father, a successful businessman who had fled Shanghai for Hong Kong, was labeled a reactionary.

"The bitterest of the bitter, I ate it," Jiang recalled of that turmoil-ridden era.

As the country was regaining its senses under Deng Xiaoping in 1981, Jiang was allowed to leave the mainland, which he had been petitioning to do since his father's death in 1978. He arrived in Hong Kong, then a British colony, but could not practice medicine because he could speak neither English nor Cantonese and had no way to qualify. So he picked up the pieces of his father's business and began the trading that four years later led him to espionage.

Jiang said he gained possession of the Shanghai port map and other information on maritime traffic in 1986 because his company was considering investing in a $40 million development project soon to begin there. When they learned what Jiang had obtained, elated Taiwan intelligence agents flew him to Taiwan and gave him a $4,000 bonus, he recalled.

In normal times, Jiang said, Taiwan's military intelligence paid him $3,500 a month while he was in Hong Kong and $4,000 a month when he was traveling in the mainland.

Jiang said that during a business trip to Shanghai in 1987, some business acquaintances urged him to travel with them to Dalian, a northeastern Chinese commercial port that is also the site of a major naval base.

"They took me to a military port and asked me to take pictures," he recalled. "At first, I refused to do so, because there were signs on the fence saying no photography by foreigners. But they said it would be fine because we were only tourists and we were Chinese. I was from Hong Kong, and Hong Kong was really part of China, they told me."

On his return to Shanghai, Jiang was arrested by Chinese National Security Bureau agents, who proudly called their catch "a big fish." In the course of long interrogations, they produced photographs showing him meeting with business and intelligence contacts in Hong Kong and even with intelligence officers in Taiwan.

"I suspected some of my business partners were their people," Jiang said, recalling his reaction at seeing the photos. "One of the interrogators said to me, 'You have people inside us, and we also have people inside you.' "

On his release from prison 13 years and four months later, Jiang was broke and unsure of what had happened to his family. He returned to Hong Kong and contacted the Chung Hwa Travel Service, which he said was acting as a de facto Taiwanese embassy. Staff members recommended a cheap hostel but offered no money.

The hostel's owner recommended he apply for benefits to the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department, which has been supplying him with about $390 a month ever since. Jiang said he bolsters the welfare payments by picking up rubbish and selling it to recycling companies. He also found time to found the Cross-Strait Relations Victims Association, a group of about 60 former spies seeking compensation from Taiwan.

Although he has made inquiries through the Red Cross, Jiang said he has been unable to discover any trace of his wife and daughter over the last five years. They must have emigrated to another country during his years in prison, he speculated.

"I also asked the Taiwan authorities for help, but I got no reply," he said. "I understand that my wife might have married another man and started a new family. She might not want to see me again. But what about my daughter? Was she killed? Or where has she gone? I want to know."

Special correspondent Jane Rickards in Taipei contributed to this report.