Sydney—A Chinese spy has defected to Australia with a trove of intelligence on China’s political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, according to a media report Saturday.
The Nine network newspapers said the defector, named as Wang “William” Liqiang, had given Australia’s counter-espionage agency the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong and provided details of how they funded and conducted operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia.
Wang said he was personally involved in infiltration and disruption operations in all three territories, according to the report, published in Nine’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers.
Wang “revealed in granular detail” how Beijing covertly controls listed companies to fund intelligence operations, including the surveillance and profiling of dissidents and the co-opting of media organizations, the report stated.
Wang is currently living in Sydney with his wife and infant son on a tourist visa and has requested political asylum, it said.
Wang said in an interview to be aired Sunday night on Nine’s TV news program 60 Minutes that he would be executed if he returned to China.
“Once I go back, I will be dead,” a youthful and bespectacled Wang said through a translator in a clip from 60 Minutes shown on Nine’s websites Saturday.
Wang was also shown holding his son and walking with his wife along Sydney harbor beside the popular Luna Park amusement center.
According to the news organization, Wang gave a sworn statement to the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in October saying: “I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities.”
This allegedly included infiltrating Taiwan under an assumed identity and with a South Korean passport to run local operatives in efforts to meddle in 2018 municipal elections and presidential polls due next year.
He said the operation used local media executives to influence the election campaigns and defeat candidates seen as hostile to Beijing.
He also claimed to have coordinated a “cyber army” to shift political opinion, similar to Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
“Our work on Taiwan was the most important work of ours – the infiltration into media, temples and grassroots organizations,” he was quoted as saying.
Wang also said he personally helped organize the October 2015 kidnapping of Lee Bo, owner of the Causeway Bay Bookshop, which Beijing said distributed dissident materials.