Taiwan Updates PSYOPS

Taiwan is planning to upgrade one of the most renowned weapons in its secret war against China, the GPWD.

Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian is clearly anxious to scrap some of the leftovers from the Cold War that he inherited from the time of the Kuomintang, such as the markings on the uniforms of frogmen from the 101th Amphibious Reconaissance Unit. The unit regularly dispatches its frogmen on spy missions to the mainland. Elsewhere, the General Political Warfare Department (GPWD) that was formed in 1951 near Taipei under the discreet eye of Ray Cline, an Asian expert at the CIA, is going to be completely overhauled in the coming two years to cope with major psychological operations surrounding the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and the Universal Exhibition in Shanghai in 2010.

Answering to the defense ministry, the GPDW had acted up to now as a traditional physiological warfare agency coupled with a system similar to that of the communists with their “political commissars.” Starting from 2001, however, infowar operations were integrated into GPDW by general Huang Nan-tung, previously head of the political war department at the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology.

Earlier this year, general Wu Ta-peng, chief of the garrison on Kinmen island that sends frogmen to spy on People’s China, took over as boss of GPWD in succession to general Hu Chen-pu, who had been named army commander in chief.

The changeover led to a shift in policy. When a book was published in May on the way to counter communist psychological warfare (The Anti-Three Wars), the secretary of the National Security Council, Tsai Ming-hsien let it be understood a completely fresh approach was needed for PSYOPS operations. Ma Chen-kun, co-author of the book, said Beijing was no longer targeting the Taipei government with its psychological warfare but rather Taiwan’s population and right-wing forces. He hinted Taiwan should drop outdated aspects of its own PSYOPS in response.

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 537