By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Manufacturing Holiness

Although our six-part investigation about Chinese spy operations had been a long time in the making, we decided to go ahead the day top officials from the U.S. Justice Department partly to send out a warning unveiled a slate of indictments against 13 Chinese nationals accused of spying on behalf of Beijing.

As for the subject we covered in Part Two, today, Chinese police stations in the Netherlands were ordered to close immediately, and the British government announced today it would step up work to prevent “transnational repression” as police investigate reports of undeclared Chinese “police stations” around the country. 

"Because no permission was sought from the Netherlands" for the stations, "the ministry informed the (Chinese) ambassador that the stations must close immediately," Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said on Twitter. The first Chinese office was opened in June 2018 in Amsterdam by the Lishui region police force, while Fuzhou. operates another in Rotterdam.

In Part Three, we described how the Ministery Of State Security (MSS) could lure in foreign friends from the highest levels. And in Part Four, we described the circumstances that allowed past MSS spy operations to thrive.

Today 2 October, Xi Jinping's tenure at the helm of the CCP has coincided with remarkable economic, social, and political developments in China. Boasting the world's second-largest economy, China will likely soon surpass the United States in economic development and output.

With this rejuvenated authority, the CCP advocates a political agenda characterized by overt nationalism. This nationalism promotes a modern and state-centric constructivist narrative that predicates China's global ambitions upon support for this ideology. China's modern nationalist political narrative focuses on China's degradation and difficulties during its recent past and present reality.

At the same time, China's image abroad has declined significantly in the past several years, a sharp reversal from its relative popularity, for example, in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

Today, we will go into an unusual episode of how the Chinese spy agency Ministery Of State Security (MSS) foraged into using a Buddhist Temple. Its statue has three aspects: one side faces inland, and the other two face the South China Sea.

 

One Tempel For All

Guan yin, originally a male (Avalokiteśvara) bodhisattva, is Buddhists' great uniter. Unlike other higher beings worshipped in China, Guan yin is a feature of the Theravada traditions of Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar. When the Hainan statue was unveiled in 2005 after six years of construction, more than a hundred senior monks from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau gathered in resplendent robes to celebrate its completion. 

 

The Shanghai Connection

Ji Sufu stood proudly before Guanyin, out of place in his stark white dress shirt and black pants.

Ji had been at the heart of the scheme since its inception in the 1990s. 

But why was Ji, a nondescript businessman from Shanghai with little apparent interest in Buddhism, conducting this orchestra? He was secretly working for the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), one of the MSS's most aggressive and internationally active units. The Shanghai bureau is notorious for running long-term operations to infiltrate foreign governments and boasts substantial cyber espionage capabilities. In 2004, it pushed a Japanese diplomat to suicide after blackmailing him over his affair with a karaoke bar hostess. Not long after, it paid an American university student in Shanghai to apply for jobs in the CIA and State Department, which scared the US intelligence community off hiring people with significant experience in China. In recent years, it’s approached numerous US current and retired government officials, scholars, and journalists, successfully recruiting some and paying them to hand over sensitive information.1

From the beginning, corruption, mystery, and spies defined the Nanshan Guanyin project. The Party secretary had his connections to China’s security apparatus: a decade earlier, he ran the Ministry of Public Security, a counterpart to the MSS that carries out counterintelligence work. Before then, he was a leading official in Shanghai, perhaps explaining why the SSSB’s prints were all over the temple.

 

The Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB)

Today, the company that owns and runs the temple complex is filled with an odd assortment of Shanghainese men and women. Xu Yuesheng, general manager and Communist Party secretary of the company, also sits on the board of the SSSB charity that Nanshan Temple funds. Government records show he’s attended charity meetings inside the agency’s headquarters. Another document claims that he works for a technology company, Shanghai Tianhua Information Development Co., which also uses the bureau’s Ruining Road headquarters as its address.2 If someone turns up behind an intelligence agency’s closely guarded walls and works for one of its front companies, they’re probably an intelligence officer. 

Four other suspected SSSB agents sit among the company’s leaders in Hainan. Feng Fumin is one of them. He once headed the agency’s Political Department, a senior leadership role overseeing the smooth operation of the SSSB Party committee and domestic propaganda to improve the agency’s image. As one of the bureau’s most senior Communist Party officials, Feng would be trusted to maintain discipline while covertly dealing with religious organizations and companies.2

Despite the bureau’s leading role in the Nanshan Guanyin company, business records make it look like it only owns a meager 0.7 percent stake through one of its front companies. Two investment firms own the rest from Shanghai and Hong Kong. 

Both trace back to Wu Feifei, who started her business career as an executive in what remains one of the MSS’s main front companies, China National Sci-Tech Information Import and Export Corporation. Wu owns the corporation’s Shanghai branch and controls more than two dozen subsidiaries specializing in property development, investment, and Buddhist tourism.3 As for the Hong Kong company, Wu and SSSB officers such as Xu Yuesheng own most of it.4

All roads, it seems, lead to the SSSB, which reaps income from Guanyin and the Nanshan Temple. While the Nanshan Temple makes regular donations to the bureau through its charity, those are dwarfed by its large payments to the agency’s front companies. According to the Nanshan foundation’s financial reports, it paid out ¥174 million (A$37 million) to SSSB-controlled companies in 2019. In contrast, about ¥3 million (A$600,000) went to the temple. 

 

MSS’s Spy Monks

Master Yishun, the abbot of Nanshan Temple and head of its MSS-backed charity, is the face of a new breed of Chinese Buddhists. More in tune with the pronouncements of Xi Jinping than Buddha’s words, Yishun stands out with his unabashed flattery of the country’s communist leadership. After the 19th Party Congress in 2017, he bragged that he’d hand-copied Xi Jinping’s tedious speech three times. ‘I’m planning to write it out ten more times,’ he added in an address to Hainan’s peak Buddhist association, which he chairs. One needn’t speculate at his comparison to sacred sutras, which the faithful often transcribe as a kind of meditation, for Yinshun believes ‘the 19th Party Congress report is a contemporary Buddhist scripture’. Assuming he writes a rapid forty characters a minute, he must have set aside a full day for each copy of Xi Jinping’s doctrine.

If this is the new Xiist sect of Buddhism, Yishun is its high priest and international ambassador. Yishun concluded, after meditating on Xi Jinping Thought: ‘Buddhist groups must consciously protect General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core status, practicing the principles of knowing the Party and loving the Party, having the same mind and morals as the Party, and listening to the Party’s words and walking with the Party.’5 Yinshun has added a litany of political titles alongside his Buddhist honorifics. As a vice president of the China Buddhist Association, he is effectively a senior co-opted of the United Front Work Department, which controls the association. Yishun also chairs the official Buddhist associations of Shenzhen and Hainan province.

Most importantly, he’s a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s peak united front forum.6The role technically makes him a political advisor to China’s Party-state. In practice, he is merely a cog in its united front machine, faithfully working towards the Party’s goals – a cadre in monk’s robes. Buddhism made in China The MSS was also behind another bold Buddhist venture, Yinshun’s Nanhai Buddhist Academy. In 2017, Buddhist leaders from across Asia visited Hainan Island to celebrate the academy's opening, situated in the same complex as the Guanyin statue.

Guests gathered before a temporary stage in the construction site that was to become an institution of Buddhist learning. The shells of many of the complex’s buildings stood around the visitors, but it was hard to imagine the full splendor Yinshun planned for his school. Sheets of green mesh were strewn across the newly excavated hillside to keep the dust down. Over 6000 controlled explosions had already been deployed to carve out terraces and pathways for the academy. Mock-ups showed a stunning complex of modernist but unmistakably Chinese buildings, with secluded meditation halls and dormitories to house more than a thousand monks from faraway nations. A central promenade faced the sea, leading down the hillside before ending in a jetty where visitors would arrive by boat. More than 200 monks had already signed up for the academy’s degree program.7

Like the Guanyin and Yinun’s Nanshan Temple, this state-of-the-art academy belongs to the SSSB. Between 2019 and 2020, at least RMB66 million (A$14 million) of the academy’s funding has come from the temple charity controlled by the SSSB.8 To Indian observers, the announcement was an embarrassing reminder of their government’s failed bid for international Buddhist influence. Nanhai Academy compares to Nalanda, a famous medieval Indian Buddhist university that once received visitors from as far away as Korea 9. A few years earlier, the Indian government tried to resurrect Nalanda, drawing high-profile figures like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen as advisors. Yet the university opened with eleven teachers, fifteen students, and no campus. In the meantime, classes were held in a government-owned convention center while students stayed in a hotel.10 Construction carried on at a snail’s pace in India, while the Nanhai Academy’s main structures were already in place upon its unveiling in 2017.11 The symbolism of China beating its southern neighbor in the race to resurrect an ancient Indian Buddhist institution is painfully clear. 

As a further snub to India, the Nanhai Academy eschews Sanskrit, a canonical language of Buddhism. The Sanskrit lexicon has left a significant mark on modern Chinese because Chinese Buddhist sutras are believed to be translations of Sanskrit originals mostly. The academy instead offers programs in the Chinese, Tibetan, and Southeast Asian Pali traditions of Buddhism.12

China has a more specific reason for keeping Indian influence out of the Nanhai Academy. Nanhai means ‘South China Sea, where China has illegally occupied and militarised coral reefs, simultaneously angering and belittling countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, which also have claims to the waters.13 The nine-dash line, a vague yet ludicrously expansive border China claims over the South China Sea, represents a touchy dispute that the Party wants to keep the Indian government out of. As scholar Jichang Lulu writes, ‘The Academy’s international orientation does not conceal its PRC patriotic character,’ and Xi Jinping’s political agenda defines its activities. Its creation has coincided with the emergence of a bolder global Buddhist policy’ under General Secretary Xi Jinping.14 Through its international exchanges, the academy functions as a base for Buddhist influence efforts designed to sign up Buddhist leaders to the CCP’s strategic vision.15 The United Front Work Department, the agency in charge of religion in China, sits at the heart of China’s Buddhist influence program. Under Xi, it has formally subsumed the country’s religious affairs agency in a move designed to strengthen the Party’s control over religion.16 The department currently supervises an ungodly mix of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, communism, and political ambition. While it uses holy men to peddle the Party’s agenda abroad, it runs informant networks within Chinese temples, mosques, and churches, working with security agencies to stamp out foreign influence over religion in China.17 Officially, the Nanhai Academy is subordinate to Hainan’s UFWD. Its deputy dean is not a priest but a local united front system official.18

While the UFWD’s agenda is clear – to manage and spread China’s global Buddhist presence – precisely what MSS officers gain from their stake in the academy is tightly under wraps. Even Yinshun is unlikely to be informed of their operations through his temples and the academy. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine spies missing the opportunity to profile and recruit foreign Buddhist students across Asia. They would be stupid not to ride on Yinshun’s coattails, watching if not actively guiding his political influence operations throughout the region. 

Indeed, China’s Buddhist influence activities in the region are growing much more targeted and state-driven, according to Southeast Asia scholar Gregory Raymond.18 By training the next generation of monks and building personal relationships with influential abbots and temples in the region, Yinshun has declared that the Nanhai Academy will ‘create a sinicized Buddhist system’, reinventing Communist China as the sole global axis of Buddhism.19 Just as China seeks dominance over the South China Sea, Yishun explained that his ‘South China Sea Buddhism’ concept is one ‘with China’s Buddhism as its core, radiating out broadly’ across the region and exporting schools of ‘Made in China Buddhism’.20

China’s history of Buddhism, shared with much of the region, helps it claim shared values, or even a shared future, with other Asian nations.21 ‘South China Sea Buddhism establishes the cultural foundation for the South China Sea region’s community of common destiny,’ Yinshun wrote in a detailed report to the Chinese government.22

To this end, Yinshun convenes an annual gathering of world Buddhist leaders, including those from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, called the South China Sea Buddhism Roundtable.23 Designed to promote the Party’s political vision, the event focuses little on Buddhism except as it’s relevant to Party ambitions. In 2019, former Japanese prime minister Hatoyama Yukio, who Party influence agencies have repeatedly feted, issued the roundtable’s opening address, reportedly offering his full support for the Belt and Road Initiative.24 Yinshun’s speeches at the event are framed around Xi Jinping’s trademark foreign policy concept: building a ‘community of common destiny for mankind’ with China at its core.25 As China expert Nadège Rolland explains the clunky phrase ‘reflects Beijing’s aspirations for a future world order, different from the existing one and more in line with its interests and status.26

Yinshun seeks to implement the spirit of Xi Jinping’s ideology by ‘raising the discourse power of China’s religious sphere on the international stage. He claims that attendees to the roundtable have ‘confirmed the position that the South China Sea is China’s, and that China has already become the core of world Buddhism.’ In reality, the memorandum signed by attendees contains no such language. That’s not to say many wouldn’t wholeheartedly agree with Yinshun’s claim. Foreign delegates to the roundtable often issue praise of the Belt and Road Initiative and ‘Buddhism with Chinese characteristics’ or pledge their commitment to the ‘One China Principle.’

One Buddha, one China, and one thousand targets Yinshun primarily targets countries such as Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar with deeply Buddhist populations. In those lands, religious leaders often legitimize political leaders or speak out against them, such as when monks in Yangon refused to accept state military donations.

Mongolia’s Sainbuyangiin Nergüi is one of Yinshun’s closest foreign contacts. He is the abbot of a temple in the capital of Ulaanbaatar. He sends many of his monks to train in China Yinshun has appointed him a guest professor at the Nanhai Academy and invited him to the South China Sea roundtables. At the 2017 roundtable meeting, Nergüi spoke more of international relations and economics than religion, tying the event to politics in ways that might make even Yinshun blush. After emphasizing Mongolia’s adoration for the Belt and Road Initiative, he praised China as ‘the leader of world Buddhism.’

Nergüi sees Yishun and the Party as ushering in a new era of Buddhism, asking them to ‘further and more tightly unite the world’s Buddhist groups and formulate policies on the religion. He highlighted one of the policies in particular: ‘All lamas and countries that believe in Buddhism support the one-China policy,’ he said. ‘We only have one Buddha, and we support the one-China policy. Therefore, we attend this event.’ In other words, agreement with the Party’s policies is tantamount in importance to belief in Buddhism, and attendees to Yinshun’s events are hitching their religious credibility to the Party’s political beliefs. Detailed in the research of independent scholar Jichang Lulu, Nergüi’s case highlights how Buddhist influence quickly reaches the profane realms of politics and moneymaking. The abbot belongs to a large and well-connected family, and his siblings have flourished as local elites. During one of Yinshun’s visits to Mongolia, he was greeted by representatives of a major construction company headed by one of Nergüi’s brothers, who was an Ulaanbaatar city councilor until his conviction on embezzlement and abuse-of-powers charges in 2009. Not the most virtuous company for Yinshun to keep, but the potential for political influence opportunities is undeniable. Another brother, previously posted to China as a diplomat, has risen to the top of Mongolian politics. After serving as mayor of Ulaanbaatar, he was appointed deputy prime minister in 2021, taking the lead on Mongolia’s relations with China.

While these operations are most effective in Buddhist nations, Buddhism has a strong appeal and following in the Western world. And Chinese abbots have a unique ability to disarm foreign guests, despite China’s history of religious repression and the scandals rocking its Buddhist establishment, notably when the head of the national Buddhist Association resigned after sexual harassment allegations in 2018.

In particular, Yinshun has maintained ties to the United Kingdom; former prime minister Tony Blair delivered a video message to Yinshun’s 2020 South China Sea Roundtable. Yishun first traveled to the country in 2015, speaking at the House of Lords and touring Cambridge University. The Nanhai Academy has partnered with Cambridge to set up a joint digital Buddhist museum. Yishun couldn’t resist claiming a political victory for China here. After the museum project began, he unveiled a ‘Cambridge Research Institute for Belt and Road Studies in Hainan, even though Cambridge’s website does not refer to its existence.

Yishun has also visited Australia several times. On one trip, he met billionaire united front figure Huang Xiangmo, a prolific donor to Australian political parties and head of an organization advocating for China’s annexation of Taiwan. According to media reports, Huang’s visa was later canceled by Australia’s counterintelligence agency because they found him ‘amenable to conducting acts of foreign interference.

The MSS isn’t the only intelligence agency that works with Yinshun, nor the only one cultivating foreign religious groups. A front group run by Chinese military intelligence, the China Association for International Friendly Contact, has included the abbot in its international exchanges. For decades, this military intelligence front has maintained close ties to a Buddhist-inspired Japanese New Age religion called Agon Shū.

It’s not humor or faith that lies behind the SSSB’s embrace of Yishun and Hainan’s Buddhist community but cold calculus. From a relatively undeveloped place without any notable history of Buddhism, Shanghainese intelligence officers built Hainan Island into a leading platform for Buddhist influence efforts. The Guanyin colossus is a testament to the agency’s creativity, resourcefulness, and long-term planning. Buddhism is a window into how the MSS seeks to use religion to influence and infiltrate countries with different political environments to the United States. The case indicates that intelligence agencies covertly drive those who already raise eyebrows for their international influence efforts and united front work.

 

Reactions To China's Spy Operations

Australia was an unlikely first to cross the point of no return. The country relies heavily on trade with China, although US companies still lead in investments.27 Xi Jinping toured the country in 2014, and Australia’s political establishment boasted strong ties to Chinese officials and Party-linked businesspeople. Political interference and united front work were a distant and obscure vocabulary. That is until a series of contingent events in 2017 jolted the country into action. Early that year, backbench politicians rebelled against ratifying an extradition treaty with China.28 In June, investigative journalists produced the most detailed and revelatory reports the public had seen into CCP-backed interference in Australian politics.29 By the end of the year, the prime minister, armed with findings from a classified study into the Party’s covert influence operations, tabled new laws that gave security agencies powers to intervene in such activities.30 The government also began contemplating banning Huawei from the nation’s 5G network.31

This was much more than a readjustment of the Australia–China relationship. It was a tectonic realignment, the effects of which continue to play out—waking up to the threat of political interference called into question the Party’s intentions and goodwill. It also brought an understanding of the CCP and its ideology into the heart of discussions about China when their contemporary relevance had long been downplayed.32 Recognising the innocence with which much of the country previously engaged with China meant that the field was now open for a re-evaluation of the place of economic ties, research collaboration, education exports, and human rights in the China relationship. Nothing about waking up to this was easy or inevitable. China’s retaliation – economic coercion, arbitrary arrests of Australians, and ending high-level exchanges with the Australian government – only confirmed Australia’s growing reliance on China was fraught.33 This new paradigm doesn’t mean giving up on the benefits of exchanges with China. As John Garnaut, a key architect of Australia’s foreign interference strategy explained, It’s about sustaining the enormous benefits of engagement while managing the risks.

Australia is now seen as both a model for countering foreign interference and a canary in the coal mine, sending out warnings of the CCP’s coercion and covert activity. Slowly but surely, the misguided assumptions and narratives that informed decades of engagement with China are being discarded. The MSS operations that propped them up for so long are being unwound. Even in Australia, this process still has many years to go. The country’s capacity to shine a light on interference, enforce foreign interference laws, deter covert operations, and build the resourcing and expertise needed to inform those efforts are still being developed.

Though no other political system has ‘reset’ its relationship with China as suddenly as Australia, aggressive responses to the Party’s espionage are ramping up across the globe. In 2021, the CIA, still struggling to collect intelligence after the MSS dismantled its networks a decade earlier, announced the creation of a new mission center dedicated to China operations.34 Daring spy-catching operations have seen FBI agents go undercover to pose as MSS officers to meet with suspected spies.35 (The bureau has come a long way. More than two decades ago, it directed an employee who only spoke Cantonese, and not Mandarin, to impersonate an MSS officer.)36 Current and former US government employees have been charged with spying for China in recent years. Baimadajie Angwang, an officer of the New York Police Department, was charged in 2020 with acting as an agent of the United Front Work Department.37 US prosecutors have also accused more than a dozen MSS hackers of espionage, although it’s almost certain that none will ever face court.38

The United States is not alone as it clamps down on Chinese espionage. In 2021, governments worldwide teamed up to point the finger at the MSS for widespread hacks of Microsoft Exchange servers.39 All large nations hack each other, but the MSS ‘crossed a line, in the words of Australian cyber chief Rachel Noble, by letting cyber criminals move in behind it to steal and extort.40 Australian authorities have accused a Melbourne-based united front figure of working with the MSS to influence a sitting politician. Many other suspected foreign agents, including two Chinese academics, have had their visas canceled.41 The UK government has expelled three MSS officers pretending to be journalists.42 It officially named lawyer and political donor Christine Lee as an agent of influence for the United Front Work Department.43 German authorities have charged a political scientist with working for the Shanghai State Security Bureau.44 Japan, which still lacks laws against espionage and interference, publicly blamed the Chinese military for cyber attacks and announced the creation of new police units to counter technology theft and cyber espionage.45 In 2021, Estonia, a Baltic state normally under constant threat from Russia, convicted a spy for China.46 

Other PRC intelligence agents and covert influence plots have been exposed in France, Taiwan, New Zealand, Belgium, Poland, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Singapore, and Nepal.47 All that in a few years.

This list of counterintelligence actions is at once reassuring and unsettling. For every MS spy who’s caught or whose case is leaked to the media, dozens, if not hundreds, continue to operate. Few of these cases touch upon the CCP’s influence operations. But maybe that’s about to change.

 

Continued in Part Six

 

 

1. Mara Hvistendahl, ‘The friendly Mr Wu’, 1843 Magazine, 25 February 2020, www.economist.com/1843/2020/02/25/the-friendly-mr-wu; ‘Ron Rockwell Hanson felony complaint’, US Department of Justice, 2 June 2018, www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1068176/download; Office of Public Affairs, ‘Former State Department employee sentenced for conspiring with Chinese agents’, US Department of Justice, 9 July 2019, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-state-department-employee-sentenced-conspiring-chinese-agents; Nate Thayer, ‘How the Chinese recruit American journalists as spies’, Nate Thayer [blog], 1 July 2017, web.archive.org/web/20170703131210/http://www.nate-thayer.com/how-the-chinese-recruit-american-journalists-as-spies/; interview with an American scholar.

2. Feng Fumin (冯馥敏) was appointed to the SSSB Political Department role in 2002 and first headed its charity in 2012. ‘大事记 2002年8月’, 《上海党史与党建》, October 2002, http://www.doc88.com/p-2844358531556.html; 上海民政局, ‘准予上海新世纪社会发展基金会基金会变更登记决定书’, 上海社会团体管理局, 26 November 2012, archive.today/kjlKf. State security organs’ political departments, among other things, may oversee domestic propaganda efforts designed to improve the image of state security work and encourage cooperation from the general public.

3. Shanghai Shangke Enterprises (上海上科实业总公司) was originally a branch of China National Sci-Tech Information Import and Export Corporation (中国科技资料进出口总公司), which is still covertly owned by the MSS. The company ultimately owns nearly 54% of Sanya Nanshan Pumen Tourism Development (三亚南山普门旅游发展有限公司). In the late 1990s, Wu Feifei (吴菲菲) was the chairwoman of China National Sci-Tech Information Import and Export Corporation, which was registered to an address in Shanghai at the time. Its address has moved between cities, including Tianjin, for unclear reasons. ‘中国科技资料进出口总公司’, Kanzhun, no date; 中国工商企业咨询服务中心 (ed.), 《中国企业登记年鉴: 全国性公司特辑 1993》, 中国经济出版社, January 1994, p. 306; ‘三亚南山普门旅游发展有限公司’, QCC, no date. 

4. Hong Kong’s A.P. Plaza Investments Limited (亞太投資有限公司) ultimately owns 39.80% of Sanya Nanshan Pumen Tourism Development (三亚南山普门旅游发展有限公司). It includes Li Kam Fu aka Li Jinfu (李锦富) and Xu Yuesheng (徐越胜) as shareholders. Several other individuals with ties to Shanghai have been involved in the company, but their backgrounds are unclear. A.P. Plaza Investments Limited Annual Return, Hong Kong Companies Registry, 24 September 2014; ‘三亚南山普门旅游发展有限公司’, QCC, no date. 

5. Nick McKenzie, Power and Influence: The hard edge of China’s soft power [documentary], Four Corners, ABC, 5 June 2017, web.archive.org/web/20170927035228/https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/power-and-influence-promo/8579844. 

6. Chris Uhlmann, ‘Top-secret report uncovers high-level Chinese interference in Australian politics’, Nine News, 28 May 2018; Malcolm Turnbull, ‘Speech introducing the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017’, Malcolm Turnbull [website], 7 December 2017. 

7. Peter Hartcher, ‘Huawei? No way! Why Australia banned the world’s biggest telecoms firm’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2021, web.archive.org/web/20210521020450/https://www.smh.com.au/national/huawei-no-way-why-australia-banned-the-world-s-biggest-telecoms-firm-20210503-p57oc9.html. 

8. John Garnaut, ‘Engineers of the soul: What Australians need to know about ideology in Xi Jinping’s China’ [speech transcript], Asian Strategic and Economic Seminar Series, August 2017, via Sinocism, 17 January 2019. 

9. Kirsty Needham, ‘Australia says Yang Hengjun under “arbitrary detention” in China after espionage verdict postponed’, Reuters, 28 May 2021. 

10. John Garnaut, ‘Australia’s China reset’, Monthly, August 2018, web.archive.org/web/20180807180411/https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2018/august/1533045600/

john-garnaut/australia-s-china-reset.

11. John Garnaut, ‘Australia’s China reset’.

12. Peter Martin, ‘CIA zeros in on Beijing by creating China-focused mission center’, Bloomberg, 7 October 2021; Peter Martin, Jennifer Jacobs & Nick Wadhams, ‘China is evading US spies – and the White House is worried’, Bloomberg, 10 November 2021. See also Zachary Dorfman, ‘China used stolen data to expose CIA operatives in Africa and Europe’, Foreign Policy, 21 December 2020, web.archive.org/web/20201221112115/https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-exposed-cia-operatives-spy-networks/. 

13. See US Attorney’s Office ‘Former CIA officer arrested and charged with espionage’, US Department of Justice, 17 August 2020. 

14. David Wise, Tiger Trap: America’s secret spy war with China, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2011, p. 88. 

15. Office of Public Affairs ‘New York City Police Department officer charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China’, US Department of Justice, 21 September 2020. 

16. US Attorney’s Office, ‘Former CIA officer arrested and charged with espionage’; Office of Public Affairs, ‘Two Chinese hackers associated with the Ministry of State Security charged with global computer intrusion campaigns targeting intellectual property and confidential business information’, US Department of Justice, 20 December 2018; Office of Public Affairs, ‘US charges three Chinese hackers who work at internet security firm for hacking three corporations for commercial advantage’, US Department of Justice, 27 November 2017; see also National Security Division, ‘Information about the Department of Justice’s China Initiative and a compilation of China-related prosecutions since 2018’, US Department of Justice, 14 June 2021. 

17. Zolan Kanno-Youngs & David E. Sanger, ‘US accuses China of hacking Microsoft’, 19 July 2021. This came after an earlier coordinated attribution of cyber attacks to the Chinese government: Marise Payne, ‘Attribution of Chinese cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property theft’, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 21 December 2018. 

18. Daniel Hurst, ‘China “propped the doors open” for criminals in Microsoft hack, Australian spy agency boss says’, Guardian, 29 July 20.

19. In Australia, these include Liu Haha, Huang Xiangmo, and Chinese academics Chen Hong and Li Jianjun. Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop & Echo Hui, ‘Liberal Party donor Huifeng “Haha” Liu “engaged in acts of foreign interference”: ASIO’, ABC News, 12 March 2021; Byron Kaye, ‘Australia revokes visas of two Chinese scholars’, Reuters, 9 September 2020; Su-Lin Tan, Angus Grigg & Andrew Tillett, ‘Huang Xiangmo told Australian residency was cancelled after moving to Hong Kong’, Australian Financial Review, 6 February 2019.

20. Dan Sabbagh & Patrick Wintour, ‘UK quietly expelled Chinese spies who posed as journalists’, Guardian, 5 February 2021. 

21. Laura Hughes & Helen Warrell, ‘MI5 warns UK MPs against “political interference” by Chinese agent’, Financial Times, 14 January 20. 

22. ‘Germany charges man with spying for China’, Deutsche Welle, no date.

23. Yuichi Sakaguchi, ‘Japan lashes out against alleged Chinese military cyberattacks’, Nikkei Asia, 16 May 2021; Yusuke Takeuchi, ‘Japan to establish intel unit to counter economic espionage’, Nikkei Asia, 27 August 2020; Tomohiro Osaki, ‘Japan boosts checks on Chinese students amid fears of campus spying’, Japan Times, 15 October 2020. 

24. ‘Court sentences Estonian marine scientist to prison for spying for China’, ERR, 19 March 2021. 

25. 林俊宏 & 劉榮, ‘與共諜組織多次餐敘 前國防部副部長張哲平遭國安調查’, Mirror Media, 27 July 2021; Thomas Grove, ‘A spy case exposes China’s power play in Central Asia’, Wall Street Journal, 10 July 2019; ‘Nepali security authorities identify a Chinese intelligence agency official involved in anti-MCC propaganda’, Khabarhub, 12 November 2021; Ezzatullah Mehrdad, ‘Did China build a spy network in Kabul?’, Diplomat, 17 February 2021; Lynne O’Donnell, ‘Afghanistan wanted Chinese mining investment. It got a Chinese spy ring instead.’, Foreign Policy, 27 January 2021; Richard C. Paddock, ‘Singapore orders expulsion of American academic’, New York Times, 5 August 2017; Barbara Moens, ‘Belgium probes top EU think-tanker for links to China’, Politico, 18 September 2020; Alicja Ptak & Justyna Pawlak, ‘Polish trial begins in Huawei-linked China espionage case’, Reuters, 1 June 2021; Gillian Bonnett, ‘Couple denied NZ residence due to Chinese intelligence links’, Stuff, 30 October 2021; Nayanima Basu, ‘Sri Lanka ex-military intelligence head a “Chinese spy” who was “blocking” bombings probe’, Print, 6 May 2019; ‘Deux anciens espions condamnés à 8 et 12 ans de prison pour trahison au profit de la Chine’, Le Parisien, 10 July 2020. 

26. A significant and recent exception is the US’s indictment of five individuals accused of repressing or spying on dissidents in New York. US Attorney’s Office ‘Five individuals charged variously with stalking, harassing, and spying on US residents on behalf of the PRC secret police’, US Department of Justice, 16 March 2022. 

27. Rory Medcalf (ed.), ‘Chinese money and Australia’s security, National Security College, Australian National University, March 2017.

28. Stephen Dziedzic, ‘Australia-China extradition treaty pulled by Federal Government after backbench rebellion’, ABC News, 27 March 2017.

29. Nick McKenzie, Power and Influence: The hard edge of China’s soft power [documentary], Four Corners, ABC, 5 June 2017.

30. Chris Uhlmann, ‘Top-secret report uncovers high-level Chinese interference in Australian politics, Nine News, 28 May 2018; Malcolm Turnbull, ‘Speech introducing the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017’, Malcolm Turnbull, 7 December 2017.

31. Peter Hartcher, ‘Huawei? No way! Why Australia banned the world’s biggest telecoms firm’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2021.

32. John Garnaut, ‘Engineers of the soul: What Australians need to know about ideology in Xi Jinping’s China’ [speech transcript], Asian Strategic and Economic Seminar Series, August 2017, via Sinocism, 17 January 2019.

33. Kirsty Needham, ‘Australia says Yang Hengjun under “arbitrary detention” in China after espionage verdict postponed,’ Reuters, 28 May 2021.

34. Peter Martin, ‘CIA zeros in on Beijing by creating China-focused mission center’, Bloomberg, 7 October 2021; Peter Martin, Jennifer Jacobs & Nick Wadhams, ‘China is evading US spies – and the White House is worried’, Bloomberg, 10 November 2021; See also Zachary Dorfman, ‘China used stolen data to expose CIA operatives in Africa and Europe,’ Foreign Policy, 21 December 2020.

35. See US Attorney’s Office ‘Former CIA officer arrested and charged with espionage’, US Department of Justice, 17 August 2020.

36. David Wise, Tiger Trap: America’s secret spy war with China, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2011, p. 88.

37. Office of Public Affairs ‘New York City Police Department officer charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China’, US Department of Justice, 21 September 2020.

38. US Attorney’s Office, ‘Former CIA officer, arrested and charged with espionage’; Office of Public Affairs, ‘Two Chinese hackers associated with the Ministry of State Security charged with global computer intrusion campaigns targeting intellectual property and confidential business information, US Department of Justice, 20 December 2018; Office of Public Affairs, ‘US charges three Chinese hackers who work at internet security firm for hacking three corporations for commercial advantage’, US Department of Justice, 27 November 2017; see also National Security Division, ‘Information about the Department of Justice’s China Initiative and a compilation of China-related prosecutions since 2018’, US Department of Justice, 14 June 2021.

39. Zolan Kanno-Youngs & David E. Sanger, ‘US accuses China of hacking Microsoft’, 19 July 2021. This came after an earlier coordinated attribution of cyber attacks to the Chinese government: Marise Payne, ‘Attribution of Chinese cyber-enabled commercial, intellectual property theft’, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 21 December 2018.

40. Daniel Hurst, ‘China “propped the doors open” for criminals in Microsoft hack, Australian spy agency boss says,’ Guardian, 29 July 2021.

41. In Australia, these include Liu Haha, Huang Xiangmo, and Chinese academics Chen Hong and Li Jianjun. Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop & Echo Hui, ‘Liberal Party donor Huifeng “Haha” Liu “engaged in acts of foreign interference”: ASIO’, ABC News, 12 March 2021; Byron Kaye, ‘Australia revokes visas of two Chinese scholars,’ Reuters, 9 September 2020; Su-Lin Tan, Angus Grigg & Andrew Tillett, ‘Huang Xiangmo told Australian residency was cancelled after moving to Hong Kong’, Australian Financial Review, 6 February 2019.

42. Dan Sabbagh & Patrick Wintour, ‘UK quietly expelled Chinese spies who posed as journalists’, Guardian, 5 February 2021.

43. Laura Hughes & Helen Warrell, ‘MI5 warns UK MPs against “political interference” by Chinese agent’, Financial Times, 14 January 2022.

44. ‘Germany charges man with spying for China,’ Deutsche Welle.

45. Yuichi Sakaguchi, ‘Japan lashes out against alleged Chinese military cyberattacks,’ Nikkei Asia, 16 May 2021; Yusuke Takeuchi, ‘Japan to establish intel unit to counter economic espionage,’ Nikkei Asia, 27 August 2020; Tomohiro Osaki, ‘Japan boosts checks on Chinese students amid fears of campus spying’, Japan Times, 15 October 2020.

46. ‘Court sentences Estonian marine scientist to prison for spying for China,' ERR, 19 March 2021.

47. Thomas Grove, ‘A spy case exposes China’s power play in Central Asia,’ Wall Street Journal, 10 July 2019; ‘Nepali security authorities identify a Chinese intelligence agency official involved in anti-MCC propaganda’, Khabarhub, 12 November 2021, ‘Did China build a spy network in Kabul?’, Diplomat, 17 February 2021; Lynne O’Donnell, ‘Afghanistan wanted Chinese mining investment. It got a Chinese spy ring instead.’ Foreign Policy, 27 January 2021, Richard C. Paddock, ‘Singapore orders expulsion of American academic’, New York Times, 5 August 2017; Barbara Moens, ‘Belgium probes top EU think-tanker for links to China,’ Politico, 18 September 2020; Alicja Ptak & Justyna Pawlak, ‘Polish trial begins in Huawei-linked China espionage case,’ Reuters, 1 June 2021; Gillian Bonnett, ‘Couple denied NZ residence due to Chinese intelligence links’, Stuff, 30 October 2021; Nayanima Basu, ‘Sri Lanka ex-military intelligence head a “Chinese spy” who was “blocking” bombings probe’, Print, 6 May 2019; ‘Deux anciens espions condamnés à 8 et 12 ans de prison pour trahison au profit de la Chine’, Le Parisien, 10 July 2020.

 

 

For updates click hompage here