Pamir Special Commentary: MICE-R? How Chinese intelligence services use "renqing" to collect intelligence in Taiwan

The classic explanation of why people spy may be summed up nicely by the acronym MICE, which stands for money, ideology, coercion/compromise, and ego. The latest spy case in Taiwan shows that the intelligence services of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are not relying on ideology alone to recruit Taiwanese assets.

To be clear, almost no one in Taiwan embraces the PRC ideology of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” And after the PRC so blatantly violated its commitments to Hong Kong, no one in Taiwan will likely ever fall for the PRC’s “One China, Two Systems” con.

In democratic Taiwan, the political spectrum stretches from Green to Blue. Broadly speaking, the Greens favor a more assertive (the Blues would say provocative) approach to relations with the PRC. The Blues favor a more conciliatory (the Greens would say prostrate) approach. Thus, it comes as a bit of a surprise that someone on the Green side might ever spy for the PRC.

Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), an assistant to the decidedly Green-hued Secretary-General of Taiwan’s National Security Council, Dr. Jauhsieh Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), was arrested on April 10 and is currently being held incommunicado for violating Taiwan’s National Security Law. Ho is suspected of providing extremely sensitive materials from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to PRC intelligence personnel.

Until very recently, Ho was a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which dominates the Green end of the Taiwanese political spectrum. Embarrassed and angry, the DPP stripped Ho of his party membership last week.

According to Taiwan media reports, Ho is the latest DPP figure to be implicated in an espionage probe. Other DPP members accused of being involved in national security breaches include Office of the President consultant Wu Shang-yu (吳尚雨), former DPP staff member Chiu Shih-yuan (邱世元), and Huang Chu-jung (黃取榮), an assistant to a New Taipei City councilor.

Repeating a pattern that has surfaced frequently in other national security cases in Taiwan, Huang was allegedly recruited by PRC intelligence personnel during a business trip to China. Upon returning to Taiwan, Huang formed a spy ring that collected significant intelligence in exchange for financial rewards. Huang subsequently latched onto Ho, who had been closely associated with Dr. Wu for many years. Huang knew that Ho was serving as a secretary to Dr. Wu, who at the time was Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Dr. Wu was the Foreign Minister from February 2018 to May 2024.) Thinking that Ho would be a very useful connection, Huang worked through a common acquaintance to recruit him.

The M in MICE was definitely at play in this latest case. Huang reportedly received financial rewards from his PRC handlers. We don’t know yet whether he paid Ho. But perhaps we should add a new letter to MICE. I would suggest R for renqing (人情), or “rapport and reciprocity” based on a personal relationships. It was renqing that Huang used when he worked through an old mutual acquaintance to recruit Ho.

Leaders of HR, Compliance, and/or Insider Threat programs often focus on individual behaviors. Given the social nature of renqing-based targeting, corporate leaders can better identify and mitigate risks if they remember that no employee is an island. All employees exist at the center of a web of social connections – including alumni, former colleagues, external business partners, and others – which can be manipulated by savvy intelligence officers.

Jon Welch is Senior Vice President of Advisory Services at Pamir Consulting. He is the co-author of a forthcoming report about Taiwan’s counterintelligence capabilities that will be published by the Atlantic Council.