Published.
March 23, 2020 05: 53:13
In the picture from 1992, Yang Hengjun’s mouth is tilted into a barely-there tip of a smile, which hangs below smiling eyes and a major pair of eyeglasses.
Bottom line:
- Australian person Yang Hengjun worked for China’s preeminent spy service for 14 years
- His detention by Beijing is most likely connected to his decision to turn his back on the Chinese State
- He is expected to be officially charged with espionage this month
He was apparently working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the southern province of Hainan, and the picture reveals him using a boxy moss green police-style uniform.
There’s just one small problem: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t have a uniform and the clothes Yang is wearing, according to a Beijing-based security analyst, belong to China’s most powerful and feared spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS).
” The MSS is a sprawling security intelligence service with large range powers,” stated Clive Hamilton, co-author of an approaching book about international Chinese impact operations, Hidden Hand.
” Its equivalent in Australia would be a mix of ASIO, the Australian Federal Authorities, plus ASIS– Australia’s abroad intelligence organisation– all rolled into one, but with a lot more power and less subject to the restraints of the guideline of law.”
Today, the ABC can reveal that the Australian resident did certainly work as a Chinese spy for 14 years.
Nevertheless, according to pals and Australian officials Yang later on definitively turned his back on the Chinese state to end up being a democracy activist and author.
That may be why, in January last year, he was apprehended in southern China, and has because been held by the Chinese Government over ill-defined espionage accusations, for more than 400 days.
” Yang Hengjun is a complicated individual,” stated previous Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who defected to Australia in 2005 over growing disquiet about his role in monitoring Chinese dissidents here.
Chen stated he satisfied Yang numerous times in Australia: “My judgement is that he engaged in low-level intelligence work, and then gradually broke away from the system.”
Yang, an Australian person and online democracy activist, was detained in Guangzhou in January in 2015 and consequently officially arrested over espionage accusations.
His spouse Yuan Xiaoliang was also apprehended briefly at Guangzhou airport and subsequently questioned by China’s secret cops.
ABC News can expose she has been asked about her spouse’s connection with Western intelligence firms and might herself deal with charges of threatening nationwide security.
China has not offered any evidence to support an assertion Yang was working for Western intelligence, and in August Australia’s Foreign Minister took the unusual step of publicly stating Yang was not working for Australian intelligence firms
” There is no basis for any claims Dr Yang was spying for the Australian Federal Government,” Foreign Minister Marise Payne stated in August.
The ABC has spoken to two Australian Federal government authorities, along with a person close to China’s Ministry of Public Security and a friend of the detained author.
All consented to talk about Yang’s case just on condition of privacy, given the delicate nature of the subject.
All 4 sources told the ABC that