Defecting Chinese Spy Reveals Regime’s Extensive Influence Operations

BY FRANK FANG

Wang Liqiang, a former Chinese spy, has defected to Australia and offered to provide information about his espionage work to the Australian government. 

Recent revelations by a man claiming to be a Chinese spy have made international headlines, blowing the lid off the regime’s espionage operations in Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Wang “William” Liqiang sought asylum in Australia and offered the country’s top intelligence agency a trove of information on how the communist Chinese regime funds and directs operations to sabotage the democratic movement in Hong Kong, meddle in Taiwanese elections, and infiltrate Australian political circles, according to a series of reports from Nov. 22 by Nine Network, an Australian media group.
His claims support longstanding concerns about Beijing’s attempts to subvert and undermine its opponents abroad.
In an earlier interview with the The Epoch Times, the 27-year-old said he decided to defect after becoming disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) malign ambitions.
“As I grew older and my worldview changed, I gradually realized the damage that the CCP’s authoritarianism was doing to democracy and human rights around the around,” Wang said.
“My opposition to the Party and communism became ever-clearer, so I made plans to leave this organization.”
Wang’s going public marks the first time a Chinese spy has blown his or her cover.

Recruitment
In a detailed statement provided to The Epoch Times, Wang describes how he came to work as a spy for the Chinese regime.
Wang hails from Fujian, the southeast Chinese province across the strait from democratic Taiwan. The son of a local Communist Party official, Wang had a middle-class upbringing and majored in oil painting at the Anhui University of Finance and Economics. 

Photos from Wang’s time in school show awards he won for his artwork.
At the end of his education, a senior university official suggested that Wang should work at China Innovation Investment Limited (CIIL), a Hong Kong-based company specializing in technology, finance, and media. 

In 2014, Wang began working with the firm.
While CIIL presents itself as an investment firm focusing on listed and unlisted Chinese defense assets, Wang soon discovered that it was a major front for the Party’s overseas espionage, serving multiple Chinese security organs and CCP officials.
According to Nine Network, Wang was in the good graces of CIIL CEO Xiang Xin and entered the “inner sanctum” of the company by giving Xiang’s wife painting lessons. 

That gave him wide access to information about both ongoing and past cases of Chinese intelligence operations, much of it connected to the Party’s acquisition of military technology.
Wang said Xiang and his wife, Kung Ching, were both Chinese agents. 

He said Xiang had changed his name from Xiang Nianxin to Xiang Xin before being sent by Chinese military officials to Hong Kong to acquire CIIL and investment company China Trends Holdings Limited.
On Nov. 24, Xiang and Kung were stopped by Taiwanese authorities at Taipei’s main airport and asked to cooperate in an investigation of suspected violations of the country’s National Security Act.
They both deny knowing Wang.

Hong Kong 
Both CIIL and China Trends Holdings were controlled by the Chinese military, specifically the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department.
Both CIIL and China Trends Holdings have issued statements rejecting Wang’s claims, denying any involvement in espionage activities.
Xiang would provide intelligence reports to the PLA General Staff Department about individuals in Hong Kong who may have made comments critical of the Chinese regime or on other topics deemed sensitive by the Party.
Xiang’s PLA handler also directed him to collect information on activists and Falun Gong adherents in the city.
Adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice have been persecuted by the regime since 1999, and have been subject to arbitrary detention, forced labor, brainwashing, and torture.
The two companies targeted students in the city. 

They set up an education foundation in Hong Kong to develop agents and promote Beijing’s policies to students in Hong Kong. 

The foundation received 500 million yuan (about $71 million) annually from the Chinese regime to carry out its operations.
Wang said he recruited mainland Chinese students to gather information about individuals and groups deemed a threat to the regime.
“I promoted the Chinese regime’s policies … to these students and had them collect intelligence on the Hong Kong independence [movement] and views opposing the regime.”
Most of the recruited Chinese students came from two Chinese universities: Nanjing University of Science and Technology in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, and Shantou University in southern China’s Guangdong Province.
The Nanjing University of Science and Technology and other Chinese universities have alumni associations in Hong Kong, many of which have members who are Chinese agents.
Wang was involved in an operation that led to the abduction of five Hong Kong booksellers in 2015. 

The booksellers later reappeared in detention in mainland China and participated in forced televised confessions.
Wang said the operation was organized by people inside CIIL in coordination with the PLA.
He said he was shocked that the regime was able to pull off the kidnappings.
“I didn’t think it was possible for the Chinese regime to arrest someone in Hong Kong because of ‘one country, two systems,’” Wang said, referring to the framework under which the regime pledged to afford the city a high level of autonomy and freedoms.

Taiwan
Speaking to Vision Times, Wang said that the majority of infiltration activities in Taiwan were carried out by Xiang’s wife, Kung Ching.
The regime sees the self-ruled island as a renegade province and has never ruled out using military force to reunite it with the mainland. 

In recent years, it has stepped up efforts to infiltrate the media and influence elections in Taiwan.
Wang said he took part in the online campaign to attack Taiwan’s ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) prior to the general elections in November 2018, in an effort to support the opposition party, the Kuomingtang (KMT), which has a Beijing-friendly stance.
He said that their group had more than 200,000 social media accounts, and many other fan pages to support their effort.
CIIL spent 1.5 billion yuan (about $213 million) on Taiwan’s media outlets alone to help in their efforts to influence the 2018 elections, he said.
Wang said they organized Chinese and Hong Kong students studying in Taiwan and Chinese tourists to aid in promoting pro-Beijing candidates running for the 2018 elections.
Overseas Chinese donations also went to pro-Beijing candidates, said Wang. 

More than 20 million yuan (about $2.8 million) went to Han Kuo-yu, who won a local election to become the mayor of the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.
Han is now running for president as the KMT candidate.
For the 2018 elections, the DPP suffered a major defeat, losing seven of its regional seats to the KMT. 

The KMT now controls 15 cities and counties, compared to six held by the DPP.
Wang described the 2018 elections as a victory for the Chinese regime.
Wang said many of Taiwan’s elite were in their pocket, including the head of a local daily newspaper, the head of a university, the general manager of a cultural center, several politicians, and gang leaders. 

These people were each paid 2 million to 5 million yuan ($284,155 to $710,388) annually to assist Wang and his group in their infiltration efforts.
In the upcoming 2020 presidential election, Wang said Beijing’s goal is to unseat president Tsai Ing-wen’s reelection bid.
He said that Kung wanted him to go to Taiwan on May 28 to assist her in influence operations targeting Taiwan’s media and the internet. 

But he had a change of heart.
“I saw what’s happening in Hong Kong. And I didn’t want to personally turn Taiwan into Hong Kong. So I decided to quit,” Wang told Vision Times, referring to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong against Beijing’s encroachment in the city.
So on April 23, Wang left his post in Hong Kong to visit his wife and baby son in Sydney, having been granted approval by Kung.
He is now staying at a secret location as he cooperates with the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, the country’s top intelligence agency.
Being in Australia, however, doesn’t guarantee safety, because Beijing has spy cells in the country who could abduct him and his family and send them back to China, Wang said.
Despite the risks, Wang stands by his decision to defect.
“I thought and rethought it time and time again.”
“I wondered if this decision would be a good thing or a bad thing for my life. I couldn’t tell you definitively, but I firmly believe that if I had stayed with [the CCP], I would come to no good end.”

China Military Is Expanding Reach Into Arctic Region

• Chinese icebreakers, research stations support military deployment
• Pentagon annual report also highlights Chinese influence operations

By Anthony Capaccio

The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, leaves Shanghai port for an Arctic expedition, July 2018. 

China is accelerating activities in the Arctic as part of its “Polar Silk Road” and trying to promote itself as a “near-Arctic state,” the U.S. Defense Department said.
A growing fleet of icebreakers and civilian research stations in Iceland and Norway could support a strengthened People’s Liberation Army presence in the polar region, the Pentagon said Thursday in its annual report on China’s military. 

The department cited the potential deployment of nuclear-armed China submarines to the region as one area of U.S. concern.
The report described a Chinese military that was rapidly expanding its reach and capabilities as part of Xi Jinping’s push to complete a modernization drive by 2035 and build a “world-class” force 2049. 

That included efforts to establish an aircraft carrier fleet, with the country’s first domestically built vessel expected to join the PLA Navy this year, and the successful test of a hypersonic glide vehicle in August.
China continued to improve its ability to conduct complex joint operations to counter what its leaders view as an increasingly confrontational approach by the U.S., the report said. 

Beijing focused efforts to acquire sensitive, U.S. dual-use, or military grade equipment including dynamic-random-access memory, aviation technologies and antisubmarine warfare technologies.

Spratly Missiles
China placed anti-ship cruise missiles and long-range surface-to-air missiles on the disputed Spratly Islands in South China Sea, the report said, despite Xi’s 2015 statement saying the country “does not intend to pursue militarization” of the vital sea lane. 

The U.S. withdrew China’s invitation to large-scale international naval exercises in response to the deployment last year.

Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea.
Arms sales supporting China’s broader foreign policy goals continued to increase, including sales of armed-unmanned-aerial vehicles and precision-strike weapons, the report said. 

Cai Hong series drones have been sold to “Burma, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates” because China “faces little competition for these sales,” it said.
Still, wary of provoking the U.S., its allies or regional governments, Chinese leaders “employ tactics short of armed conflict to pursue China’s strategic objectives through activities calculated to fall below the threshold of providing armed conflict,” the report said. Beijing continues to use “persuasion and coercion” to limit the growth of pro-independence sentiment on self-rule island of Taiwan, the report said.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported Friday that the U.S. Navy has conducted 92 transits through the strategic Taiwan Strait since 2007 to assert free-navigation rights. There have been four such operations so far this year, suggesting the Navy was on pace to exceed its annual average of about seven transits.

Chinese Subversion

China’s fingerprints are everywhere
By David Ignatius

A little-noticed passage in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy released last month previewed a new push to combat Chinese influence operations that affect American universities, think tanks, movie studios and news organizations.
The investigations by Congress and the FBI into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign won’t be affected by the added focus on China, officials say. 

Instead, the aim is to highlight Chinese activities that often get a free pass but have a toxic long-term effect because of China’s growing wealth and power.
A National Security Council interagency group is coordinating the administration’s study of Chinese activities that are “outside traditional espionage, in the gray area of covert influence operations,” a senior administration official said. 

 The rationale, noted in the 55-page strategy document, is that “America’s competitors weaponize information to attack the values and institutions that underpin free societies, while shielding themselves from outside information.”
In targeting Chinese operations, the administration is walking a delicate line between helping American academics, think-tank experts and journalists resist pressure and fomenting mass public anxiety about Beijing’s activities. 

Officials say they want to help American institutions push back against intimidation from a Chinese Communist Party that is rich, self-confident and seductive in a way that Russia has never been.
The administration official said in an interview Tuesday that the target “is not Chinese soft power — the legitimate exchange of people and ideas, which is something we welcome. What we’re talking about are coercive and covert activities designed to influence elections, officials, policies, company decisions and public opinion.”
Kurt Campbell, who oversaw Asia policy during the Obama administration and now runs an Asia consulting group, offered a measured endorsement: “The NSC-led inquiry about Chinese influence operations, if conducted dispassionately, could be useful. We focus mostly on Russian influence operations. But the Chinese have a much more subtle and complex agenda here.”
A catalyst for the Trump administration’s probe was an investigation in Australia, which revealed what that country’s security chief called “unprecedented” Chinese meddling that could damage Australia’s sovereignty. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed new controls in December.
The administration official offered examples of how American institutions can be pressured by China:
● Universities host more than 350,000 Chinese, who make up nearly a third of all foreign students here. 

Beijing encourages students to join local branches of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. 

Sometimes students get squeezed. 

The senior official cites the case of a Chinese student from a dissident family who was warned by a friend not to share personal details — because the friend would report them to Chinese intelligence.
Students and university officials who resist Beijing can pay a price. 

A Chinese graduating senior at the University of Maryland last year was shamed by social media into apologizing for a comment praising free speech. 

At the University of California at San Diego, an invitation to the Dalai Lama brought a protest from the local students’ association and warnings that UCSD might not receive more Chinese students and that its graduates’ degrees might not be recognized back home.
● Think tanks are eager to study China, but often the money to support research comes from business executives with close relations with Beijing. 

That can lead to pro-China bias. 

In conversations with think-tank leaders, the senior official said, he has stressed “the need for think tanks to cast a brighter light in this area. We think sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
● Hollywood studios face an especially delicate problem, because the Chinese box office is so important to their bottom line. 

Ticket sales in China rose from $1.5 billion in 2010 to $8.6 billion last year, second only to America’s. 

Inevitably, U.S. studios fear offending Chinese official "sensibilities".
● News organizations face pressure, too. 

China restricts visas for journalists or publications it sees as too "aggressive". 

After Bloomberg News published revelations in 2012 about the family wealth of Chinese political leaders, Beijing temporarily blocked sales of Bloomberg’s financial data terminals in China, a potentially crippling move.
China’s glittering modern facade often convinces outsiders that it’s a country just like those in the West. 

Not so, says Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst who now studies Chinese influence activities for the Jamestown Foundation. 

When American thought leaders interact with Chinese representatives, it’s not a free-flowing “conduit,” he says, but a controlled circuit.
America has never faced a rival quite like China, which presents such a compelling, well-financed challenge to democratic values. 

America certainly doesn’t want a new “Red Scare,” but maybe a wake-up call.

Academic Prostitution, Harvard Style

China’s $360 million gift to Harvard
By Bill Gertz

A rower paddles down the Charles River near the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, March 7, 2017. 

China is providing Harvard University with $360 million that a former military intelligence analyst says appears to be part of an effort to influence one of America’s most important educational institutions.
Anders Corr, a former government analyst who specializes in foreign influence operations, stated in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence that a Chinese military-linked company, JT Capital, gave $10 million to Harvard in 2014, the same year the family of Ronnie Chan, a Hong Kong real estate mogul with ties to China, announced it is giving $350 million to the university. 

Both donations were “relatively opaque” and raise questions about the purpose of the funds, he said.
Mr. Corr, who received an international relations doctorate from Harvard in 2008, said the Chinese donations appear to be an attempt to introduce biases among the university’s professors in a bid to influence U.S. policy or public opinion in China’s favor.
“Allowing such donations does not appear to be in U.S. national security interests, and it does not appear to be necessary for Harvard’s research and teaching (it already has an endowment of $36.7 billion),” he said. 

“Perhaps there should be legislation against Chinese-linked money in U.S. politics, including think tanks and universities.”
Harvard professors also give paid speeches in China, are paid for publishing work in China and enjoy all-expenses-paid travel to China, Mr. Corr stated in his letter.
“These are all potential avenues of influence upon professors, who do not usually broadcast these pecuniary benefits as they could diminish the perception of their impartiality,” he said.
The U.S. government gave Harvard $600 million in 2016, and over the years has provided billions of dollars for research and education, he noted.
Mr. Corr then asked the vice president, who met recently with Harvard President Drew Faust, to look into whether the China-linked donations violate U.S. foreign agents’ registration laws, and whether Harvard may be providing valuable U.S. technology to China in exchange. 

The $350 million donation also should be examined by the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS.
“Harvard is not unique in being a soft but influential voice on China that has a conflict of interest because of China-linked pecuniary interests,” Mr. Corr stated.
“The way in which China-linked pecuniary interests percolate through elite-level U.S. policy discussions on China on both sides of the aisle, and in supposedly bipartisan think tanks and universities, should be a concern to all U.S. citizens who depend on places like Harvard for unbiased political analysis.”
Mr. Corr said that given the substantial government support for Harvard, American taxpayers deserve greater transparency.
“Harvard is but one example, I think, of a much bigger problem of bias in U.S.-China policy analysis,” he said. 

“I hope the problem can be addressed by the enforcement of existing law, new law or at least someone with sufficient stature to improve transparency of China-linked donations and get some answers.”

A spokesman for Mr. Pence said the vice president was traveling and had no comment.

Report on China’s religious abuses
The State Department this week outlined the death, torture and abuse of religious adherents in China as part of an annual report on religious freedom.
“Throughout the country, there continued to be reports of deaths, in detention and otherwise, of religious adherents and that the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” the report states.
The report states that among China’s 1.4 billion people, there are an estimated 657 million believers — far more than the official Chinese government estimate of 200 million. 

The faith community includes 250 million Buddhists, 70 million Christians, 25 million Muslims, 301 million observers of folk religions and 10 million observers of other faiths, including Taoism. Jews number around 2,500.
China’s constitution contains a provision ensuring “freedom of religious belief” for citizens. 

But in practice religious activities are suppressed through government controls on officially approved groups and harsh repression of unofficial groups.
The report notes that members of the ruling Communist Party of China and its People’s Liberation Army “are required to be atheists” and banned from practicing any religious faith. 

“Members who are found to belong to religious organizations are subject to expulsion, although these rules are not universally enforced,” the report said.
Chinese authorities continued the practice of bulldozing unofficial “house churches.” 

The government also continued its yearslong crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, estimated to number at least 70 million. 

The group reported that dozens of its members died in Chinese detention.
“A pastor of an unregistered church and his wife were reportedly buried alive while protesting the demolition of their church; the wife died while the pastor was able to escape,” the report said.
“There were also reports of the disappearance of a Catholic priest, and the death of a rights activist for Hui Muslim minorities and others that the government said was suicide.”