Taiwan has opened a website for Chinese nationals unhappy with the situation in the country to share tips and private information.
The island’s intelligence agency, National Security Bureau, said the launch of the secure website was in line with practices adopted by western spy agencies.
“The National Security Bureau, pursuant to the National Intelligence Services Act and with reference to the practices adopted by intelligence agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, has established an information-reporting channel for Chinese nationals,” it announced on Sunday.
The aim, it added, was to “expand the collection of intelligence on China's political, military, economic and social developments”.
China and Taiwan are engaged in an increasingly fraught territorial and diplomatic stand-off. China considers the self-governed island as its territory and does not rule out the use of force to reunify it with the mainland. Taipei rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claim.
The island’s intelligence agency claimed it had already been approached by several Chinese nationals upset with the Xi Jinping administration.
“In recent years, China’s economy has faced mounting difficulties, while political control has remained tight,” it said in a statement.
“Coupled with a growing range of social and livelihood-related problems, these conditions have fuelled public discontent.”
The information warfare campaign came after Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump that the US and China could clash over Taiwan if the issue was not properly handled.
The Taiwanese agency explained how the new spying channel would work. Once prospective spies accessed the website, it noted, they would be required to follow six security guidelines to finish the reporting process.
The agency said that it would “continue to review and refine its intelligence-related tactics for Chinese nationals who share the same values of democracy to collaborate with us”. This will “safeguard Taiwan's national security and interests”.
An AI-generated promotional video on the website shows a Chinese civil servant witnessing colleagues being investigated and fired from their positions without any explanation.
It depicts “a pervasive atmosphere in which everyone is on edge under China's totalitarian regime,” the Taiwanese agency claims.
Taiwan’s move mimics a similar attempt by the CIA. The US intelligence agency released videos in Mandarin last year inviting unhappy Chinese officials to contact it and share information.
In contrast, spies for the Chinese military intelligence pose as workers acting on behalf of private businesses or think tanks, advertise for bogus jobs such as foreign policy or defence analysts and pressure candidates to provide “non-public” information, the FBI claimed last week.
Earlier this month, the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US issued a bulletin warning that China was targeting personnel from those countries on job websites to get access to classified or sensitive information.