Taiwan has detained an army officer and several collaborators on suspicion of handing military secrets to China.

The defence ministry said Wednesday that a lieutenant colonel surnamed Hsieh and other defendants were suspected of having been recruited by China to leak national defence secrets and other information.

The detentions come as military tensions between China and Taiwan continue to rise.

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has allegedly run a long-standing campaign to recruit retired Taiwanese military personnel to supply state secrets in exchange for money or gifts.

Hsieh is also suspected of developing a spy organisation of current and retired military personnel tasked with collecting intelligence for China, according to the Taipei Times newspaper, which quoted unnamed prosecutors with Taiwan’s High Prosecutors Office.

The office did not immediately answer emailed questions about the case.

“The Ministry of National Defence is saddened and severely condemns the small number of unscrupulous people who violated the duty of defending the country and committed such crimes as betraying the people of the country,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

A retired army major and three other people have also been questioned in the case and released on bail between 20,000 New Taiwan Dollars ($630) and 600,000 New Taiwan Dollars ($19,000), according to the Taipei Times.

Last month, Taiwanese authorities detained five people, including a Chinese yo-yo instructor, on suspicion of spying for China.

Disastrous results

In a separate development, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have "disastrous results" for the world, citing the island's strategic importance for the semiconductor industry and global shipping lanes.

Wu's warning comes as democratically ruled Taiwan heads towards a presidential election next year, while facing increased military and political pressure from China across the Taiwan Strait.

Wu said any act of force against Taiwan would have global reverberations.

"What we need to do is to explain to the international community that if there's any conflict involving Taiwan, it's going to have disastrous results for the rest of the world," Wu said, pointing to the food and fuel shortages, and spiralling inflation, that resulted from Russia's offensive in Ukraine.

The commercial consequences of a cross-strait conflict would be enormous –– more than 50 percent of the world's shipping containers pass through the 180-kilometre (110 miles) wide waterway separating Taiwan from mainland China.

Freedom of navigation is therefore one of the "crucial elements of international security and prosperity", Wu said.