CCP Escalates Cyber Fight With Taiwan, Offers Bounty on 20 Taiwanese

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Jun 6, 2025 - 09:58 Updated: Jun 6, 2025 - 03:12
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CCP Escalates Cyber Fight With Taiwan, Offers Bounty on 20 Taiwanese
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The Chinese communist regime on June 5 placed bounties on 20 people it claims were involved in a hacking operation on behalf of Taiwan’s military, sparking outrage in Taipei.

A district public security bureau in Guangzhou, a southern Chinese city, is offering rewards of 10,000 yuan ($1,392.25) to anyone who provides information or works with the Chinese authorities, leading to their arrest, according to a June 5 notice featuring the group member’s photos and Taiwan identification card numbers.

Chinese authorities allege that those targeted are connected to Taiwan’s military unit, the Information, Communications, and Electronic Force Command (ICEFC).

The claim was amplified by China’s state media, Xinhua, which said in a June 5 report that this marks the first time the regime has targeted Taiwan’s “separatist forces” through law enforcement measures.

The regime’s public security bureaus and courts lack jurisdiction over Taiwan, which operates under a government elected by its 23 million people.

Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) never having governed Taiwan, it views the self-governing island as part of its territory. The CCP leader Xi Jinping has stated publicly that it would never renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
Taiwan’s ICEFC denied the CCP’s allegations in a June 5 statement, saying that Beijing misused personal information of Taiwanese service members to “slander” the command.

The CCP’s actions—ranging from officials’ accusations to the state media’s amplification and the announcement of bounty rewards—reflect its “rude and unreasonable attitude in oppressing Taiwanese people through intimidation and coercion,” the command said.

Moreover, the command pointed out that it is, in fact, the CCP that has conducted cyberattacks against Taiwan and posed risks to personal information security. It stated that the European Union, the United States, and the Czech Republic have recently condemned the CCP-affiliated hacking groups for malicious activities.

“The CCP is not only a regional troublemaker but a common threat to the global internet.”

The Czech Republic revealed last month that its foreign ministry and infrastructure were targeted by the same group of Chinese state hackers who are currently under international scrutiny over their cyber espionage efforts against the United States, the UK, and other countries.

The Czech government identified the hacking group as Advanced Persistent Threat 31, or APT31, which it believed to be an arm of China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s top spy agency.

In March 2024, the U.S. Justice and State departments took measures against individuals linked to APT 31, accusing them of engaging in a 14-year-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted foreign politicians, academics, journalists, and companies. The British government also imposed sanctions against individuals and an entity tied to APT 31 last year, claiming that the Chinese state-sponsored hackers stole millions of voters’ data.

The CCP’s cyber espionage also alarmed Taiwan, which endured a surge in cyberattacks by state-backed Chinese hackers in recent years.

A January report from the national security bureau in Taipei stated that its government network experienced an average of 2.4 million cyberattacks each day in 2024, most of which originated from Chinese cyber forces.
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