HAn Australian writer detained in China on charges of espionage spent a decade working as a Chinese spy, including in Hong Kong and the United States, a close friend claims.
Yang Hengjun was detained in January 2019 and held in various forms of secretive and punitive detention until he was formally charged this month for alleged espionage on behalf of another country. The early stages of trial are under way.
But according to a close friend, the contents of a private letter Yang wrote in May 2011 confirms that his disappearance in March of that year was – as widely suspected at the time – a detention at the hands of secret police. It provides confirmation and new details of Yang’s career with the Ministry of State Security.
The friend, Australian-based academic Chongyi Feng, said Yang wrote that he told his interrogators he had been an MSS officer, a department which outranked theirs.
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The Guardian has not been able to independently verify the letter, the details of which were first reported by Reuters, but in passages provided by Feng, Yang recounted telling his interrogators he refused to answer sensitive questions and they should call MSS to check his claim.
Feng says Yang told them he was employed by the national security department in Hainan in 1989, and was posted as an undercover officer to Hong Kong in 1992 where he posed as a travel agent, and to the US in 1997 posing as a research fellow.
“I used to be a cadre of the Ministry of National Security. You suddenly kidnapped me; you should at least notify them,” Yang recounted telling the officers.
In another passage relayed by Feng, Yang said he told them: “Even if I am not working in the national security system, you and I know that what I was doing at the time is absolutely the top secret of the state … Note that this doesn’t involve my personal issues. I don’t care, but it may involve state secrets, It involves China-US relations. You have to contact the national security system. Why don’t you still? God, it’s on China’s land. What the hell are you doing?”
Yang apparently claimed he told the public security officers he was no longer a member of the MSS as his thinking had changed and he was now a pro-democracy blogger, but he had nothing to do with the Jasmine Revolution – the shortlived protests in Beijing of which he was accused of being involved.
Feng said Yang resigned from the MSS around 1999-00 to follow his wife and son to Australia and because he was “fed up” with the MSS. There he reinvented himself as an author of spy novels based on his and his colleagues’ experience, and as a pro-democracy blogger.
It was this latter work which drew him back to China in 2011, where Yang was arrested. The three-day disappearance was widely publicised, but on his return he told media and supporters he had been sick and his phone battery had died. Feng told the Guardian that the lie, which was believed by few people at the time anyway, had been a condition of Yang’s release.
Yang’s past as a Chinese agent has long been the subject of discussion, particularly among the dissident community. Feng said part of the reason in revealing Yang’s letter was to rebut “misinformation” that he still was one.
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“He’s punished for his democratic activism, for his writings,” Feng said. “But the Chinese [arrest] him for the crime of espionage, just as those dissidents are [arrested] for economic crimes like embezzlement, corruption. Some of those commentators have bought into the Chinese version of the story, and that’s unfortunate.”
Chinese authorities have not said which country Yang has supposedly conducted espionage on behalf of. The Australian government has repeatedly said there is no basis to any allegation he has spied for it.
Chinese authorities have held Yang in most forms of detention-without-charge allowed under its opaque justice system. He was first held for six months under the highly secretive residential surveillance, and his case was granted extensions by the court before he was eventually charged earlier this month.
Yang wrote to Feng with the understanding that should he be arrested by the secret police again, Feng would release it to publicise his disappearance. However, Yang’s arrest in 2019 was quickly announced by Chinese authorities so Feng has held on to it until now.
“It’s my hope this will help [his case],” he said. “The worst has already taken place when they decided to apply [serious espionage charges] against Yang. That is the worst scenario we expect.
“He’s deteriorated very fast. That’s why I talk about his situation. If he is brought to trial, Yang can see the light and face the case at court rather than this endless interrogation behind closed doors. It’s unbearable torture.”
In March a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Yang was “suspected of engaging in criminal activities endangering the national security of the People’s Republic of China”.
“Relevant Chinese authorities are handling the case in strict accordance with the law,” he said. “In this process, Yang [Hengjun’s] legal rights are fully protected.”
Yang has always maintained his innocence. In a message to family and supporters in September he said: “I am innocent and will fight to the end”, promising to “do my best”, and to “never confess to something I haven’t done”.
“They can abuse me, I have had no access to legal representation — this is political persecution.”
Additional reporting by Lillian Yang
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