Arthur Liu, father of Olympic figure skater Alyssa Liu and a veteran California dissident, wasn’t surprised when he got a call from the FBI.
“I was told that the Chinese government had sent spies to the San Francisco Bay Area to obtain information about my and my daughter’s passport,” the Chinese man, who is also an activist against the Beijing government, told the BBC.
“I wouldn’t say I was shocked, but I thought ‘wow, they’re taking this too seriously’.”
suspicious call
At first, Liu did not connect the dots after receiving a “suspicious” call from a man claiming to be from the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. On the call, he said he was conducting “a preparatory review” for the trip to the Winter Olympics in February 2022.
“I didn’t really realize it could be someone who wasn’t from the Olympic Committee,” Liu recalled. “I just decided to do the right thing and not give any information. That’s not how we normally submit our passports.”
The voice on the other end of the line, US officials believe, was Anthony Ziburis, a former prison guard and Florida bodyguard.
His mission was to spy on and discredit Chinese dissidents for Beijing’s intelligence services.
Among the dissidents spied on are allegedly two US citizens, Liu and Yan Xiong, a US Army chaplain and congressional candidate who was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
In March, Ziburis was accused by the US Department of Justice of spying for the Chinese government. But he is far from the only one.
So far in the year 2022, US agents have accused at least 12 people, including several US citizens, of harassing and spying for China.
The MI5 and FBI Warning
On July 8, two other people were also accused of participating in the same scheme that targeted Liu.
Liu’s case comes at a time of tension in both the US and the UK due to the rise of Chinese spying activities across the world.
In an unprecedented public appearance last week at the MI5 complex in London, the leaders of the US and UK security services warned of a vast spying and hacking program developed by China that could be greater than all programs managed by other developed countries combined.
These schemes are believed to be part of a larger, growing and multifaceted effort to give China an edge over its rivals and silence or suppress threats to the Chinese Communist Party government.
The strategy includes all sorts of tactics, from using hackers to sending spies to victims’ doors.
China’s ‘five poisons’
Former US intelligence agents say the most likely targets are those with connections to what the Chinese government identifies as the “five poisons” that threaten it.
They are: Tibetan and Uighur separatists (Muslims who predominantly inhabit the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwest China), the Falung Gong spiritual movement, independence activists in Taiwan and, as is the case with Liu, members of the pro-democracy movement. in China.
Alarmingly, these efforts are expected to increase amid the worsening Sino-US relations. And not even American citizens should be spared.
For Liu, who fled China via Hong Kong after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, the possibility of being spied on was always present.
A previous attempt ended when he unwittingly befriended a would-be agent. It was a student, introduced to him by a contact from the local Chinese diaspora network, whom he helped find housing in the US.
“A year or two later, he told me that he had been asked to spy on me. It was a condition for him to come [para os Estados Unidos]”, said Liu. “But then he gave up doing that.”
Human and computer espionage
Spying on Chinese citizens living abroad takes many forms: from attempts to hack their emails and devices to placing human agents in their social circles or expatriate organizations.
Electronic methods are often used to “facilitate” human espionage.
“You can spy on someone online and get an idea of ​​their contacts,” said Christopher Johnson, a former chief China analyst at the CIA. “So maybe you get close to these people. One thing leads to another.”
Beijing attacks dissidents like Liu because it believes they are part of a “global narrative battle” between China and the West, Johnson added.
He said those who publicly speak out against the regime could undermine China’s efforts to portray itself positively to the rest of the world.
That discussion has gained “more importance in the last couple of years,” he said.
one side of the story
“They use an outdated Marxist term, ‘power of speech’. It’s about the idea that they should tell China’s story themselves, through their own propaganda.”
The Chinese government did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
When Ziburis was indicted in March, Beijing Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the United States of “defaming” China.
However, current and former US intelligence officials have repeatedly warned of a major Chinese espionage campaign on American soil.
In a speech earlier this year, FBI Director John Wray said Chinese spy operations in the United States are “more brazen” than ever before.
According to Christopher Johnson, this reality is particularly true because the government of Joe Biden uses the rivalry between the United States and China as part of a global struggle between democracies and autocracies.
One case every 12 hours
According to the FBI, the agency opens a new China-related counterintelligence case every 12 hours. By February, more than 2,000 cases had been initiated.
Despite this, Johnson called US efforts to stop Chinese spying “disheartening”.
“They are willing to try a lot harder than we are to try to stop them,” he said.
The FBI estimates that there are “hundreds” of dissidents in the US that China hopes to target as part of an increasingly aggressive campaign of personal and political retaliation.
“Most of the targets are permanent residents or naturalized citizens – people with important rights and protections under US law,” said Director Wray.
‘I do not care’
Liu, for his part, said he did not believe that efforts to spy on him would stop.
The most recent attempt, however, had an additional complication.
At the time of the FBI call, his daughter Alyssa Liu was likely to travel to Beijing. The skater had made posts on her social media criticizing China’s treatment of the Uighur ethnic minority.
Liu acknowledged that he was “extremely concerned” for her safety, but chose not to tell her about the spying attempts at that time.
“I didn’t want her to go to China with a heavy load on her shoulders,” said the father. “I wanted him to go and enjoy the Olympic experience.”
A year later, he says he won’t be surprised if the FBI gets in touch again, although he hopes “not having to do that again.”
“I learned to behave like a normal person. [o governo chinês] they can do what they want, I can’t stop them. I don’t care,” he said.
“I will continue to speak out against certain behavior and any type of human rights violation. Nothing will stop me from doing so.”
This text was originally published here.
