For Party and Country, But for Which?

The Erosion of Loyalty in Taiwan’s Democratic Fabric

Recent espionage cases involving Taiwanese nationals have understandably reignited concerns about China’s infiltration efforts. From courtrooms to newsrooms, the narrative often centers on the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless ambition to subvert Taiwan’s institutions from within. Yet that explanation, while not incorrect, is incomplete.

What if the deeper problem is not foreign coercion, but domestic erosion? What if the real vulnerability is not Beijing’s strategy, but Taiwan’s thinning sense of civic and institutional loyalty?

This is not just a question of national security; it is a test of belonging in a democratic society.

Loyalty Reimagined

Taiwan’s political culture has long been structured around systems of loyalty – first enforced, then reimagined. Under the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) during the martial law era, loyalty was bound to state ideology. Surveillance, censorship and hierarchical control ensured allegiance to the Republic of China (ROC) and the party-state structure. Loyalty was mandatory, not optional.

With democratization and the rise of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a new form of loyalty took shape: one centered on democratic values, resistance to authoritarianism and the affirmation of a uniquely Taiwanese identity. But over the past two decades, both of these frameworks, ideological nationalism and democratic idealism, have begun to fragment.

Younger generations view loyalty less as a civic duty and more as a personal choice. In a landscape defined by political polarization, economic anxiety and generational change, the once-clear contours of allegiance have blurred. Institutional trust, once inherited, must now be earned.

Changing Patterns

Cold War-era defections between Taiwan and China often stemmed from a combination of ideological disillusionment, material incentives and coercion. In contrast, recent espionage cases tell a different story.

Between 2011 and 2025, Taiwan faced escalating espionage threats from China, involving high-ranking military officers leaking sensitive data. Notable cases include life imprisonment for Major General Lo Hsien-che and a spy ringoffering millions for military defection. In 2024 alone, Taiwan prosecuted 64 individuals, reflecting a sharp rise in Chinese intelligence activity.

What stands out is not just the persistence of these cases, but the motivations behind them. Legal proceedings and public records suggest that these individuals were not necessarily ideologically aligned with China. Their choices were shaped more by financial desperation, personal drift, or opportunistic calculation than by political conviction.

No Longer Just a Partisan Problem

This erosion of loyalty is not confined to one party or institution. While the KMT’s historical entanglements with cross-strait infiltration have been well-documented, more recent cases implicate figures within the DPP as well. In early 2025, figures such as Chiu Shih-yuan, Huang Chu-jung and Ho Jen-chieh were detained for allegedly leaking sensitive presidential, legislative and diplomatic information to Chinese operatives.

What is emerging is not equivalence between parties, but a broader civic condition: betrayal is no longer confined to political ideology. It cuts across affiliations and hierarchies, manifesting in places where loyalty was once assumed. It is not ideology that binds or breaks loyalty now, but something more diffused – emotional disengagement and personal alienation.

The CCP’s Quiet Playbook

Beijing has adapted its tactics to this shift. No longer seeking to convert enemies, the Chinese Communist Party now targets those who already feel unmoored. Recruitment strategies increasingly resemble forms of emotional and social exploitation, designed to appeal to the vulnerable rather than the ideologically malleable.

Financial leverage is often the hook – through cryptocurrency payments, offshore contracts or offers to erase debt. But the relational architecture matters just as much. Classmates, old comrades and even family members become trusted intermediaries. Initial contacts are casual, non-political, even mundane. They build rapport before making requests. The line between casual favor and criminal collaboration becomes easy to miss.

Most telling, perhaps, is the emotional register of these approaches. The CCP’s most successful recruits are often not the angry or radical, but the disengaged – the ones who no longer feel they have a stake in the system. In this context, betrayal doesn’t feel like betrayal. It feels like drift.

Loyalty as Conditional

What we are witnessing is a shift from inherited loyalty to conditional loyalty. The younger generation in Taiwan does not automatically identify with the ROC’s symbols, nor are they beholden to party narratives crafted in the 20th century. Their loyalty is not toward a static identity, but toward lived values: dignity, autonomy and democratic voice.

When institutions fail to embody or deliver on these values, loyalty becomes fragile. If political parties feel like power machines rather than moral communities, if participation feels transactional rather than meaningful, then civic disengagement becomes inevitable. And disengagement, in a security context, creates risk.

This is not the betrayal of traitors in the traditional sense. It is the slow, silent withdrawal of people who no longer see their story in the state’s story. They are not acting against Taiwan; they are simply no longer acting with it.

Institutions as Mirrors

The erosion of loyalty thus reflects a deeper institutional fragility. The KMT must reckon with the fact that Cold War-era appeals to patriotism no longer resonate. Its challenge is not just policy relevance but cultural renewal. The DPP, for its part, must move beyond its roots as an opposition force. Governance requires not only mobilization but integration, especially among those who feel excluded from the fruits of Taiwan’s democratic and economic successes.

Security institutions, too, must adapt. Intelligence failures are symptoms, not causes. Deterrence alone cannot restore what alienation has hollowed out. The frontline of defense in a democracy is not always hardware, it is the civic bondbetween the governed and the governing.

Rebuilding Belonging

Rebuilding loyalty begins where politics often ends: with care. Taiwan needs not only stronger laws but stronger civic ecosystems. Political parties must offer more than electoral slogans; they must cultivate relationships of trust and purpose. Civil society must continue to make space for pluralism, debate and civic learning. Education must go beyond rote civics to help young people understand what loyalty means in a democratic society and why it matters.

Above all, the state must be something its citizens can recognize themselves in – not just legally, but emotionally and morally. Loyalty is not obedience. It is a relationship. And relationships must be nurtured.

The most urgent question Taiwan faces today is not how to catch the next spy. It is whether enough people still believe in the project of Taiwan to make betrayal unthinkable.

Because true loyalty is never enforced. It is earned, sustained and shared. And in a fragile world, that may be Taiwan’s most powerful form of resilience.

(Featured photo by Jimmy Liao on Pexels)