Former Hillary Clinton employee Candace Marie Claiborne has been arrested for treason

State Department office manager admits conspiring to hide contacts with Chinese agents
By Spencer S. Hsu

Candace Marie Claiborne, member of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle arrested, charged with treason

A view of the U.S. State Department. 

The list of gifts given from Chinese agents to Claiborne and “co-conspirator A”

 

A veteran State Department ­office manager pleaded guilty Wednesday to hiding extensive contacts with two Chinese intelligence agents who showered her with tens of thousands of dollars in gifts as they asked for diplomatic and economic information.

Candace Claiborne, 63, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by repeatedly covering up foreign intelligence contacts over more than five years. 

She was required to report the contacts because of her top-secret security clearance.
Because the lies allowed Claiborne to keep her job and salary, prosecutors calculated the scheme netted Claiborne the equivalent of $550,000, and both sides in a plea agreement said Claiborne faces a maximum five-year prison term at sentencing July 9.
U.S. authorities did not describe any of the material passed on by Claiborne as classified. 

However, they said she responded to requests for internal U.S. government information “that would provide an advantage to Chinese officials” in ongoing economic talks between the two countries, and failed to report her exposure to foreign contacts that could subject her “to coercion, influence, or pressure” to compromise U.S. national security.
The Justice Department said from 2011 to 2016, two intelligence agents for the People’s Republic of China gave Claiborne’s family $20,000 in cash, electronics, trips, an apartment and tuition for a young relative at a Chinese fashion school.
“Ms. Claiborne... is everything in the statement of facts true and correct?” U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss asked in a 45-minute plea hearing in Washington.
“Yes, your honor,” said Claiborne, wiping a tear from her eye after pleading guilty.
Prosecutors agreed to drop counts of felony obstruction, lying to the FBI and wire fraud.
The case comes as U.S. officials have called Chinese economic espionage the nation’s most severe counterintelligence threat, and mounted a string of espionage and trade-secret prosecutions.
Claiborne had worked at the State Department since 1999, including overseas postings in Iraq, Sudan and China, and as an office manager for the minister of public affairs for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Since her March 29, 2017, arrest, Claiborne, who is from Northwest Washington, has spent 10 months under house arrest, then a release to the community with high-intensity supervision including electronic monitoring. 

She will remain under those conditions until she is due to report to jail June 5, the day after the end of Ramadan, Moss said, according to the plea deal.
Claiborne and two conspirators described as agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security in Shanghai “conspired to hide their close and continuing connections” and gifts to keep Claiborne employed and able “to supply internal State Department information,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Gillice of the District told the court.
“They carried this out through lies spoken and written, and through deletions of relevant communications, contact and gifts,” said Gillice, who handled the case with Justice Department national security division prosecutors.
In a 24-page statement of facts agreed to by both sides, Claiborne admitted that one agent asked her to provide internal U.S. analyses of economic talks with China in 2011, and wired her bank account nearly $2,500.
After Claiborne responded with publicly available information, the agent replied, “What they are looking for is what they cannot find on Internet.”
The agent, who was not named but was described as an importer and exporter who runs a spa and restaurant in Shanghai and has known Claiborne since 2007, added, “If you find something next time don’t send them by email bcs others also can catch it with ­Internet.”
In 2012, Claiborne met every month or so with the two agents after they requested internal information on upcoming meetings or visits between U.S. and Chinese officials, dialogues or plans.
Claiborne believed the pair to be agents of the Chinese government, and would turn over envelopes containing State Department cables, white papers or other nonpublic documents that she had searched for. 

In return, she would receive an envelope with Chinese currency, according to plea documents.
Other gifts went mainly to an unidentified younger family member who lived with Claiborne, including tickets to the United States and Thailand, one year’s tuition and a job, court filings said.
Claiborne, who appeared in court with seven supporters who declined to comment after the hearing, has no criminal record, the judge said. 

American Amateurism

Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
The number of informants executed in the debacle is higher than initially thought.
BY ZACH DORFMAN

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of U.S. spies. 

But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.
How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?
Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. 

The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.
“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. 

The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.”
Other factors played a role as well, including China’s recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time. 

Chinese mole: Ex-CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee

Federal prosecutors indicted Lee earlier this year in connection with the affair.
But the penetration of the communication system seems to account for the speed and accuracy with which Chinese authorities moved against the CIA’s China-based assets.
“You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing. The Ministry of State Security [which handles both foreign intelligence and domestic security] were always pulling in the right people,” one of the officials said.
“When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”
The former officials also said the real number of CIA assets and those in their orbit executed by China during the two-year period was around 30, though some sources spoke of higher figures. 

All the CIA assets detained by Chinese intelligence around this time were eventually killed.
The CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency declined to comment for this story. 

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
At first, U.S. intelligence officials were “shellshocked,” said one former official. 

Eventually, rescue operations were mounted, and several sources managed to make their way out of China.
One of the former officials said the last CIA case officer to have meetings with sources in China distributed large sums of cash to the agents who remained behind, hoping the money would help them flee.
When the intelligence breach became known, the CIA formed a special task force along with the FBI to figure out what went wrong. 

During the investigation, the task force identified three potential causes of the failure, the former officials said: A possible agent had provided Chinese authorities with information about the CIA asset network, some of the CIA’s spy work had been sloppy and might have been detected by Chinese authorities, and the communications system had been compromised. 

The investigators concluded that a “confluence and combination of events” had wiped out the spy network, according to one of the former officials.
Eventually, U.S. counterintelligence officials identified Lee, the former CIA officer who had worked extensively in Beijing, as China’s informant. 

Lee was in contact with his handlers at the Ministry of State Security through at least 2011.
Chinese authorities paid Lee hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts, according to the documents. 

He was indicted in May of this year on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage.
But Lee’s betrayal alone could not explain all the damage that occurred in China during 2011 and 2012, the former officials said. 

Information about sources is so highly compartmentalized that Lee would not have known their identities. 

That fact and others reinforced the theory that China had managed to eavesdrop on the communications between agents and their CIA handlers.
When CIA officers begin working with a new source, they often use an interim covert communications system—in case the person turns out to be a double agent.
The communications system used in China during this period was internet-based and accessible from laptop or desktop computers, two of the former officials said.
This interim, or “throwaway,” system, an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad.
Although they used some of the same coding, the interim system and the main covert communication platform used in China at this time were supposed to be clearly separated. 

In theory, if the interim system were discovered or turned over to Chinese intelligence, people using the main system would still be protected—and there would be no way to trace the communication back to the CIA. 

But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. 

When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. 

They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials.
In the words of one of the former officials, the CIA had “fucked up the firewall” between the two systems.
U.S. intelligence officers were also able to identify digital links between the covert communications system and the U.S. government itself, according to one former official—links the Chinese agencies almost certainly found as well. 

These digital links would have made it relatively easy for China to deduce that the covert communications system was being used by the CIA. 

In fact, some of these links pointed back to parts of the CIA’s own website, according to the former official.
The covert communications system used in China was first employed by U.S. security forces in war zones in the Middle East, where the security challenges and tactical objectives are different, the sources said. 

“It migrated to countries with sophisticated counterintelligence operations, like China,” one of the officials said.
The system was not designed to withstand the scrutiny of a place like China, where the CIA faced a highly sophisticated intelligence service and a completely different online environment.
As part of China’s Great Firewall, internet traffic there is watched closely, and unusual patterns are flagged. 

Even in 2010, online anonymity of any kind was proving increasingly difficult.
Once Chinese intelligence obtained access to the interim communications system,­ penetrating the main system would have been relatively straightforward, according to the former intelligence officials. 

The window between the two systems may have only been open for a few months before the gap was closed, but the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability.
Precisely how the system was breached remains unclear. 

The Ministry of State Security might have run a double agent who was given the communication platform by his CIA handler. 

Another possibility is that Chinese authorities identified a U.S. agent—through information provided by Lee—and seized that person’s computer. 

Alternatively, authorities might have identified the system through a pattern analysis of suspicious online activities.
China was so determined to crack the system that it had set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military’s signals directorate (roughly equivalent to the NSA), one former official said.
Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)
One of the former officials said the agency had “strong indications” that China shared its findings with Russia, where some CIA assets were using a similar covert communications system. 

Around the time the CIA’s source network in China was being eviscerated, multiple sources in Russia suddenly severed their relationship with their CIA handlers, according to an NBC News report that aired in January—and confirmed by this former official.
The failure of the communications system has reignited a debate within the intelligence community about the merits of older, lower-tech methods for covert interactions with sources, according to the former officials.
There is an inherent paradox to covert communications systems, one of the former officials said: The easier a system is to use, the less secure it is.
The former officials said CIA officers operating in China since the debacle had reverted to older methods of communication, including interacting surreptitiously in person with sources. 

Such methods can be time-consuming and carry their own risks.
The disaster in China has led some officials to conclude that internet-based systems, even ones that employ sophisticated encryption, can never be counted on to shield assets.
“Will a system always stay encrypted, given the advances in technology? You’re supposed to protect people forever,” one of the former officials said.

Australia has become China's puppet state, says Clive Hamilton in Silent Invasion

Chinese agents and Australian Quislings are undermining Australia's sovereignty
By Dylan Welch
Subversion: Huang Xiangmo (R) donated $1.8m to build a "research" institute headed by Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob.

Thousands of agents of the Chinese state have integrated themselves into Australian public life — from the high spheres of politics, academia and business all the way down to suburban churches and local writers' groups — according to a brilliant book to be published on Monday.
The book, Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State, is written by Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University.
In it, he alleges that a systematic Chinese government campaign of espionage and influence peddling is leading to "he erosion of Australian sovereignty.
That erosion is caused, in part, by a recent wave of Chinese migration to Australia including "billionaires with shady histories and tight links to the [Chinese Communist] party, media owners creating Beijing mouthpieces, 'patriotic' students brainwashed from birth, and professionals marshalled into pro-Beijing associations set up by the Chinese embassy," Professor Hamilton writes.

Professor Clive Hamilton denounces Chinese interference in Australian affairs. 

ABC News has been given a pre-publication copy of the book, which is being published in the middle of widening public debate over China's influence in Australia and concerns Beijing has thousands of unofficial spies in the country.
Those concerns were given some credence by the Government late last year, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced he planned to enact new foreign interference laws to counter such espionage.
Mr Turnbull used strong language at the time, paraphrasing a famous Chinese communist slogan to say Australia would "stand up" to foreign governments meddling in Australian affairs.
The book will cause particular angst among Australia's political class.

Australia's Quislings
It lists more than 40 former and sitting Australian politicians who are doing the work of China's totalitarian government, if sometimes unwittingly. 

Many are household names.
"Former prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, when their political careers ended they went on to become reliable friends of China, shuttling between the two countries, mixing with the top cadres and tycoons," Professor Hamilton writes.
"While Hawke's China links proved lucrative, Keating was more interested in influence."

Beijing Bob

Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob, is the most famous Australian Quisling. He is currently running a Beijing-backed propaganda outfit: the Australia-China Research Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology, Sydney.

An entire chapter, titled Beijing Bob, is dedicated to former Labor foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr.
The chapter accuses Carr of pushing an aggressive pro-China stance in Labor caucuses.
Professor Hamilton chronicles Carr's 2015 appointment as the founding director of the Australia-China Research Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology, Sydney.
ACRI was created with a $1.8m donation from billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo, who has donated millions to Australian politicians and has been described in the book as being one of Beijing's most powerful agents of influence in Australia.
"Huang sits at the centre of a web of influence that extends throughout politics, business and the media," Professor Hamilton writes.
Huang has been the subject of public speculation ever since the ABC News revealed his millions of dollars in political donations, and his questionable connections to senior federal politicians, in a series of stories in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
"Let's call the Australia-China Research Institute for what it is," Professor Hamilton writes.
"A Beijing-backed propaganda outfit disguised as a legitimate research institute, whose ultimate objective is to advance the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party's] influence in Australian policy and political circles, an organisation hosted by a university whose commitment to academic freedom and proper practice is clouded by money hunger, and directed by an ex-politician suffering from relevance deprivation syndrome who cannot see what a valuable asset he has become for Beijing."

Huang denies his donations and influence within Australian society are connected to the Chinese Government, describing the allegations as innuendo and racism.

Carr, who declined to comment for this article, has previously said ACRI took a "positive and optimistic view" of the Australia-China relationship.

The book also details a list of Chinese-Australian academics who are allowing the transfer of national security-significant research — in sensitive areas such as space, artificial intelligence and computer engineering — from Australian universities to the Chinese military.
Silent Invasion appears to have also divided Australian Parliament, with Labor and Liberal members of a classified parliamentary committee at odds over whether they should provide legal cover for the book.
Plans were hatched recently by members of Parliament's intelligence oversight body, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), to publish a digital copy of the book.
The release would have been the first time the Australian parliament published a book in its entirety — therefore granting it a limited form of parliamentary privilege — in an effort to protect the information it contains from legal attack.
While Liberal members of the committee broadly supported publication of the book, the majority of Labor committee members did not, arguing it was not appropriate for the Australian Parliament to give the book its imprimatur.
Silent Invasion was provided to the committee in a submission as part of an inquiry into Mr Turnbull's foreign interference laws.
The book's release by the committee would have been seen as an inflammatory act by Beijing, already smarting from Mr Turnbull's announcement.

Co-opting God
In another section of the book, Professor Hamilton describes a curious relationship between Chinese Christian churches in Australia and the atheist Chinese Communist Party, which has a history of suppressing Christianity at home.

The cover of the controversial book, Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State, authored by Professor Clive Hamilton. 
He refers to classified Chinese Government reports which instruct Chinese officials to infiltrate overseas churches that have Chinese congregations. 

"They instruct cadres to monitor, infiltrate and 'sinify' overseas Chinese churches by actively promoting the CCP's concepts of Chineseness and 'spiritual love'."
In 2014, he notes, the website of the Canberra Chinese Methodist Church included a statement which linked the rise of the CCP to God's will: "The awe-inspiring righteousness of Xi Jinping, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the rise of a great nation that is modern China are part of God's plan, predestination and blessing."
Many Chinese church pastors believe their congregations have been penetrated by Chinese Government cadres, Professor Hamilton writes.
"One pastor told me: 'There are lots of communists in our church community.' He guessed that around a quarter or a third are or have been communists. Some join the church for the companionship, some for the social contacts; others are the [Chinese Government's] assets."
People connected to the Chinese Government have also infiltrated Australia's writing scene. 

A group called the Australian-Chinese Writer's Association was recently taken over by "pro-Beijing forces".
Professor Hamilton describes how well-known Australian writing forums such as the Melbourne Writers Festival and Writers Victoria have unwittingly hosted local Chinese writing groups operating under Beijing's control and "whose aim is to spread into Australian society the CCP worldview, one that is extremely intolerant of artistic license and dissenting views."

A 'landmark win' for China
Silent Invasion is so hated by Beijing it almost didn't make it to publication. 

It was due to be released late last year by Allen & Unwin, but the publisher baulked over concerns it would be targeted by Beijing and its proxies in Australia. 

Melbourne University Press also turned down the book.
That led Professor Hamilton — the author of half-a-dozen books about climate change, politics and economics — to hit out at this attempt by the CCP to muzzle public debate in Australia.
"[This is a] landmark win for the Chinese Communist Party's campaign to suppress critical voices," Professor Hamilton wrote to Allen & Unwin chief executive Robert Gorman at the time.
The book was recently acquired by Hardie Grant, run by Sandy Grant, who in the 1980s published the memoir of former British intelligence officer Peter Wright. 

The publication occurred against the wishes of the British government, which was trying to censor the book.
Mr Grant told the ABC he was aware publishing Silent Invasion may invite the attention of the Chinese government, but he hoped it would not be serious. 

"This is a debate being held at the ABC, the New York Times, the London Times; we are just one voice in that, we are hardly a serious thorn in the Chinese government's side," he said.
Professor Hamilton may also have reason to be concerned about the impact of authoring the book. This week New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered intelligence officers to investigate break-ins at the home and office of prominent NZ China academic Anne-Marie Brady.
Professor Brady has spent her career researching China's global influence and her 2017 paper, Magic Weapons, caused global waves when it revealed how deeply China had penetrated NZ's Government.

Countering China's Anti-Taiwan Campaign

In theory, time favors Taiwan because it is on the right side of history. Militarily, however, it is not clear that the Taiwanese self-defense forces could resist China.
By Ian Easton

Taiwan’s rise as one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies and an alternative to China’s repressive authoritarian model is viewed with extreme concern in Beijing’s halls of power. 
From China’s perspective, the existence of Taiwan as a democracy is a grave challenge to its political legitimacy.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views Taiwan as its most dangerous external national-security threat, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as the armed wing of the party and guarantor of the regime’s ever fragile legitimacy, has been tasked with the mission of preparing for an assault on the island as its principal war planning scenario.
The overarching plan is referred to in restricted-access Chinese military writings as the “Joint Island Attack Campaign.”
The campaign includes operations that span the entire spectrum of the modern battlefield, including the air, land, sea, space and cyberspace domains.
Even media outlets are a target.
The fundamentally political nature of the dispute means that the Chinese government conducts an ongoing, clandestine campaign of diplomatic, economic and psychological warfare around the globe. 
This includes operations that spin the news and manipulate international law to delegitimize and demoralize Taiwan.
The Chinese military refers to this as “political warfare.”
To better prepare the future battlefield, China’s undercover agents of influence blanket Asia, and especially Taiwan, with disinformation.
They use state media outlets, business enterprises and cross-Strait educational exchanges as platforms for covert actions. 
The mission of these messengers is to poison the powers of resolve and weaken resistance to eventual takeover.
The American public has little visibility on China’s anti-Taiwan campaign, which is being waged primarily in Mandarin on the far side of the Pacific.
Many Americans experience the effects of it only indirectly.
There are a considerable number of Chinese agents in the United States, who pose as diplomats, reporters, scholars, language instructors, lobbyists and entrepreneurs. 
Their job is to shape foreign perceptions about China and Taiwan, and to undercut arms sales and other forms of support for the island. 
These hostile influence operations are particularly noticeable in Washington and on university campuses across the country.
The result is that an increasing number of everyday Americans have been unconsciously gripped by the hand of Chinese propaganda and treat false information as if it were the truth. 
Making matters worse, an astonishing number of American companies and colleges have their financial futures anchored in China, making them vulnerable to being subjected to pressures and situations that may run against their moral and ethical principles. 
The CCP has worked hard to create opportunities for obtaining leverage over those it wants to manipulate or control, and few issues are more important to them than defeating Taiwan.
When viewed from the perspective of Beijing, the risks associated with Taiwan are growing.
With thousands of students from China now studying on the island, it may only be a matter of time before greater demand for good governance on the mainland overwhelms its oppressive authoritarian system.
In theory, time favors Taiwan because it is on the right side of history.
Militarily, however, it is not clear that the Taiwanese self-defense forces can continue to resist China’s buildup.
There is a growing chorus of voices that argue the island’s military will soon become too weak to defend against the world’s second most powerful country.
China’s growing national strength has enabled it to advance efforts to politically marginalize Taiwan in the international community.
The main focus of Chinese efforts has been Washington, where Beijing has had some remarkable successes over the past decade. 
Under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, China secured long freezes or delays in new notifications of arms sales to Taiwan, and especially important sales were canceled, including new F-16 fighters, diesel-electric submarines, Aegis destroyers and Abrams tanks. 
At the same time, a string of influential Americans have published articles arguing that Washington should abandon or reinterpret its legal obligations to help defend Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act, the law of the land.
China’s successes have been only partial.
Attempts at driving a deeper wedge between Taiwan and the international community have served to embitter and repulse the island’s electorate. 
As has been the case with Japan and many other nations, Taiwan’s greater involvement in the Chinese economy not only failed to cement greater political cooperation, it actually fostered a growing sense of vulnerability and confrontation.
In light of demographic trend lines, polling data and election results, it has become increasingly clear that the people of Taiwan want to be treated as citizens of a country recognized around the world for what it actually already is: independent, free and sovereign.
This sentiment has not gone unnoticed in China, where the military has been planning for the worst all along.
Internal PLA writings have recently emerged that confirm China plans to use force when it believes that other means are not achieving its strategic objective, and especially when there is a good chance that the United States can be kept out of the fight.
These writings state that once China has “exhausted” all nonlethal options to ensure the annexation and occupation of Taiwan, a large-scale amphibious attack will be launched against the island.
According to Chinese military documents, there are scenarios other than invasion.
The PLA could prosecute coercive operations against Taiwan, including long-duration (but intermittent) and low-intensity naval blockades and air campaigns.
However, they make clear that these are suboptimal solutions that cannot be expected to get at the root problem.
Intimidation will fail if the Taiwanese government and the people are impervious to it and unwilling to submit to Beijing’s authority under pressure. 
For this reason, the PLA is focused on the employment of an all-out invasion campaign.
The chilling official narrative seen in the PLA’s internal literature is that a future invasion of Taiwan is probably inevitable.
The exact timing is uncertain, but attacking and conquering the island is a “historic mission” that will not be put off indefinitely.
The problem is cast in remarkably simple terms: Taiwan is a “separatist province,” and China’s national territorial integrity remains under severe threat until it is returned to the ancestral “Fatherland.”
The following lines crystallize the pro-invasion PLA view: In the end, only by directly conquering and controlling the island can we realize national unification . . . otherwise ‘separatist’ forces, even if they momentarily compromise under pressure, can reignite like dormant ashes under the right conditions.
Internal documents show that the Chinese military refers to all Taiwanese government and military personnel as “separatist enemies,” with no distinction made for political party affiliation or self-identity.
All those who want to maintain the status quo are painted as China’s enemies.
Yet despite the bellicosity of PLA writings, it would be a mistake to think the Chinese military establishment is overly eager for the fight.
One PLA field manual, for example, warns its readers (Chinese military officers) that, “The Island has complex geography, and its defensive systems are rock solid around critical targets.”
PLA officers are told that only through a massive and masterful military campaign could they take Taiwan.
The operation would be an extremely challenging undertaking, the likes of which China has never conducted before, and the sacrifices required would be tremendous.
Much can be done by the Trump administration to bolster Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and keep the world’s most dangerous flashpoint from erupting in violent action.
Unfortunately, the crisis of the moment, North Korea, appears to do occupying the foremost time and talent of official Washington.
Much more attention needs to be paid to countering China’s anti-Taiwan campaign.

Chinese Fifth Column

WHAT SINGAPORE IS SAYING BY EXPELLING CHINESE AGENT HUANG JING
BY ZURAIDAH IBRAHIM
Expelled: Beijing stooge Huang Jing. 

Older Singaporeans travelling beyond Asia are all too familiar with encountering ignorance about their country’s geography. 

“You’re from Singapore? Is that part of China?”
Being the only Chinese-majority state outside Greater China and being no larger than a city, some confusion about Singapore’s status is understandable. 

After 52 years, Singapore still finds itself needing to educate the world that it is a sovereign republic.
One lesson was delivered a week ago. 

On August 4, Singapore announced it was expelling a Chinese professor for trying to influence the city state’s foreign policy on behalf of an unnamed foreign government. 

Huang Jing, an "expert" on United States-China relations at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was accused of passing “privileged information” to senior Singapore officials with the intent of influencing their decisions.
“He did this in collaboration with foreign intelligence agents,” the statement said. 

“This amounts to subversion and foreign interference in Singapore’s domestic politics.”
It marked the first time in more than two decades that Singapore had publicly booted out an alleged functionary of a foreign power for interference in its domestic affairs.
Singapore did not name the country Huang Jing was working for, but most people assume it is China.

The affair has sparked intense discussion and speculation. 

Since such expulsions are invariably symbolic, the question is what Singapore is trying to communicate.
The move has to be read in the context of a rising China. 

Like most other countries, Singapore is having to adjust to this megatrend. 

Ironically, Singapore played a prominent role in helping the West understand China in its early opening-up years. 

Singapore feared, and continues to fear, that if the relationship is mismanaged, China’s Asian neighbours will pay the price.
Singapore’s late elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew was determined to persuade the United States not to alienate this emerging Asian power but to encourage it to play a responsible role in the international community. 

Lee was such an effective China whisperer he was sometimes misunderstood in the West as a Beijing stooge.
More recently, Singapore has been dealing with the opposite perception problem. 

China, already arrived as a major global player, has been hinting that Singapore is too pro-American and not giving enough face to its Asian neighbour.
Analysts point to various Singapore actions that displeased Beijing. 

On a Chinese current affairs programme in April now making the rounds online, Huang Jing said Singapore should not have spoken up about the arbitration of the South China Sea dispute between the Philippines and China. 

Huang also suggested Singapore had gone overboard in selling the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which China was not a part of. 

Lastly, Singapore had put too much faith in Barack Obama’s Asia rebalancing or pivot strategy, assuming that Hillary Clinton would be elected and build on it.
In May, Singapore’s prime minister, unlike most of his counterparts in the region, did not receive an invitation to Xi Jinping’s inaugural Belt and Road summit. 

Another intriguing development was the two-month seizure of nine Singapore Armed Forces Terrex military vehicles by Hong Kong en route home from military exercises in Taiwan. 

Whatever the explanations – now being sorted out in court – the incident in Hong Kong was a reminder to Singapore of the inconveniences that Beijing could cause if it were so inclined.
The Singapore-made Terrex infantry carriers seized at a container terminal in Hong Kong. 
Although putting up a brave face, there have been clear signs that the Singapore government is extremely sensitive about claims that it may have made mistakes in managing relations with China. In December last year, two academics from the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, which has links to Singapore’s security and foreign policy elite, wrote an op-ed criticising Singaporean commentators by name for stating the obvious – that the Terrex affair was a sign of China’s irritation. The academics claimed such speculation was unfounded and “misguided assertions” could just fuel domestic anger and escalate the situation.
A much stronger reaction greeted Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School, when he wrote an article urging Singapore to “exercise discretion” and “be very restrained in commenting on matters involving great powers”. 

He mentioned in particular the China-Philippines maritime dispute, saying that it “would have been wiser to be more circumspect”.
A ton of bricks fell on Mahbubani. 

His highly influential former colleague Bilahari Kausikan called his argument “muddled, mendacious and indeed dangerous”. 

The powerful Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said it was “questionable, intellectually” and ran contrary to the thinking of the late Lee Kuan Yew.
Against this backdrop, Huang Jing’s expulsion can be read as the government’s unequivocal warning that it will not allow too many cooks in the kitchen of Singapore-China relations. 

Singaporean foreign policy wonks are not the only intended audience of this message. 

Another key target must be the many potential opinion makers of mainland Chinese extraction in Singapore institutions.
Meanwhile, Singapore-China relations seem to be warming up. 

Xi and Lee met ahead of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany last month, where they “affirmed the substantive bilateral relationship”, according to the prime minister’s office. 

State-run Xinhua quoted Xi as saying China was “ready to work with the Southeast Asian country to enhance the bilateral partnership step by step”.
At the recently concluded Asean meeting in Manila, Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan met with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The statements from both sides were positive. 

Balakrishnan told the media later that “the challenges we’ve had in the last one or two years are actually part of a maturation process in our relationship”.

A signal has been sent: the Lion City is tiny and depends on the friendly cooperation of China; but contrary to ignorant opinion, Singapore is its own country. ■

Chinese Torture

Pro-democracy activist was beaten by Chinese agents who stapled his skin for being 'unpatriotic'.
Aljazeera
Lam said he earlier received a warning phone call from Chinese intelligence.
A prominent member of Hong Kong's Democratic Party said he was beaten and "stapled" by Chinese agents in Hong Kong before being dumped on a remote beach.
Howard Lam, a key pro-democracy activist in the former British colony, told reporters on Friday he was confronted by men speaking Mandarin -- spoken in Beijing but not widely in Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong -- outside a sports store.
Lam said the men took him away, interrogating him and stapling his skin 21 times for being "unpatriotic" in a nine-hour ordeal.
He was knocked out and eventually found himself dumped on a beach in Hong Kong's remote Sai Kung district.
Hong Kong's police commissioner, Lau Wai-chung, told media he was taking Lam's accusations seriously and they were attaching great importance to investigating the case. 

The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of China's State Council were not immediately available for comment.
The attack comes as hostility to Beijing has spiralled in Hong Kong and the battle for full democracy has become a defining issue for the city of 7.3 million people.
Hong Kong became a "special administrative region" of China in 1997 and has been governed under a "one country, two systems" formula that guarantees a range of freedoms not enjoyed in China, including a direct vote for half of the 70-seat legislative assembly.
But activists say those freedoms have come under threat with meddling by Communist Party rulers in Beijing.
In July, Hong Kong's high court expelled four pro-independence politicians from the city's legislature after invalidating their oaths of office, in what was seen as the clearest indication of direct intervention by Beijing.
The 2015 abduction of several Hong Kong booksellers, who sold publications critical of China's leaders, by mainland agents also shook confidence in Beijing's promise of non-interference, activists say.

China tortured him for Lionel Messi photo

Lam said he was even warned in a telephone call not to give a photo signed by Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi to the widow of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel laureate who died from cancer last month.
Lam had previously said on Facebook the football star had sent him the photo for Liu, who was reportedly a fan. 

As it arrived after Liu's death, Lam had said he would try to send it to his wife, Liu Xia.
It was not immediately clear how they knew of his plans to give her the signed Messi photo.
Pro-democracy politicians, academics and political activists worry that Hong Kong is becoming more like mainland Chinese cities, where the internal security services join forces with police to crush dissent.
Xi Jinping swore in Hong Kong's new leader Carrie Lam last month with a stark warning that Beijing will not tolerate any challenge to its authority in the city as it marked the 20th anniversary of its return from Britain to China.