[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 56 (Thursday, April 2, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E857-E858]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       CHINESE DEFECTOR CONFIRMS SYSTEMATIC GOVERNMENT REPRESSION

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                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 2, 2009

  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my 
colleagues the following article which appeared in the March 19 edition 
of The Washington Times. Li Fengzhi, a former intelligence officer at 
the Ministry of State Security, revealed that the agency is tasked with 
repressing religious and political dissent among the Chinese civilian 
population and bolstering the rule of the Chinese Communist Party in 
addition to gathering secrets from overseas. I urge my colleagues to 
carefully read Mr. Li's chilling account of the Communist Party's 
systematic repression of religious and political dissidents.

               [From the Washington Times, Mar. 19, 2009]

                   Chinese Spy Who Defected Tells All

                        (By Bill Gertz Contact)

       A veteran Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the 
     United States says that his country's civilian spy service 
     spends most of its time trying to steal secrets overseas but 
     also works to bolster Beijing's Communist Party rule by 
     repressing religious and political dissent internally.
       ``In some sense you can say that intelligence work between 
     two countries is just like war but without the fire,'' Li 
     Fengzhi told The Washington Times in an interview aided by an 
     interpreter.
       Mr. Li worked for years as an Ministry of State Security 
     intelligence officer inside

[[Page E858]]

     China before defecting to the United States, where is he 
     awaiting a response to his request for political asylum. He 
     gave a rare, detailed interview to The Times on Sunday 
     regarding the activities of the MSS, China's Communist-
     controlled civilian spy agency.
       His prior work as a Chinese spy was confirmed to The Times 
     by a Western government source familiar with his defection. 
     The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the 
     sensitivity of Mr. Li's case.
       Mr. Li told The Times that the MSS focuses on both 
     counterintelligence--working against foreign intelligence 
     agencies--and the collection of secrets and technology.
       The MSS, however, is unique from other nations' 
     intelligence services in that it is patterned after the 
     former Soviet Union's KGB political police. Its most 
     important mission is ``to control the Chinese people to 
     maintain the rule of the Communist Party,'' he added.
       Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in 
     Washington, did not address Mr. Li's comments directly but 
     repeated past Chinese government statements regarding its 
     intelligence activities.
       ``Allegations of China conducting spying activities against 
     the United States are groundless and unwarranted,'' he said 
     Wednesday. ``China never engages itself in activities that 
     will harm other countries' national interests.''
       Mr. Wang said communist rule in China produced historic 
     economic and social progress and that China has contributed 
     to a more secure world. ``This is a fact no one can deny,'' 
     Mr. Wang said.
       On those who leave the party, Mr. Wang said ``there are 
     also a handful of people who betray their faith and leave the 
     party, whose acts as well as some people's political lies 
     will never shadow the great feats of the party.''
       Mr. Li said he left China's intelligence services to 
     protest the agency's role in government repression of 
     political dissidents and religious groups that are outside of 
     the ruling communist system.
       The MSS, mainly a foreign intelligence service, is 
     ``deeply'' involved in domestic repression of nonofficial 
     Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong religious 
     group, Mr. Li said.
       ``The Ministry of State Security is actually not doing 
     things for the security of the country, but rather they spend 
     a lot of effort to control the people, the dissidents, the 
     lower-class Chinese people, and make these people suffer and 
     also make their life miserable,'' he said.
       In the interview, he also said:
       China's spy agency is focused on sending spies to 
     infiltrate the U.S. intelligence community, and also on 
     collecting secrets and technology from the United States. 
     ``China spends a tremendous effort to send out spies to 
     important countries like the U.S. to collect information,'' 
     Mr. Li said.
       China is censoring the Internet to prevent the population 
     from knowing about what occurs outside the country.
       An internal MSS manual that is kept secret from most 
     officers outlines the primary role of the service as the 
     promotion of Communist Party's interests.
       Ongoing cooperation between the CIA and FBI and the MSS in 
     countering international terrorism can be constructive, but 
     U.S. agencies need to be cautious because the MSS is mainly 
     an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, and does not 
     directly serve the interests of the Chinese nation or people, 
     he said.
       Mr. Li said he worked in the MSS department in charge of 
     gathering economic, political and technical information in 
     Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Some of the work involved 
     targeting and recruiting foreign nationals who visit China.
       He was born in 1968 in northern China and was first 
     recruited into a provincial Chinese intelligence service 
     before being promoted to the MSS in Beijing after several 
     years.
       Two groups in China that are a main focus of the MSS are 
     unofficial Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong 
     religious group, he said.
       The MSS also has targeted pro-democracy activists, like 
     those who were involved in the mass demonstrations in 
     Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, he said.
       The MSS is China's main civilian spy service that is viewed 
     by U.S. intelligence officials as one of the world's most 
     active in stealing secrets and running foreign spies. The 
     military counterpart, the Second Department of the People's 
     Liberation Army, or 2PLA, is focused on stealing foreign 
     technology, much of it for weapons and military systems.
       Together, the Chinese services are estimated to have 
     several thousand trained operatives working around the world, 
     most posing as diplomats, journalists, business 
     representatives and academics. Thousands of other Chinese 
     nationals also function as semiprofessional information 
     gatherers.
       Former FBI Special Agent I.C. Smith, a specialist in 
     Chinese counterintelligence, confirmed that the MSS focuses 
     its activities on penetrating U.S. intelligence and 
     government agencies.
       ``The goal of every intelligence agency is to get someone 
     inside, and in the case of Chinese, they use not just 
     intelligence people but academics and everybody else,'' Mr. 
     Smith said in an interview.
       Mr. Li said his access to information that was banned for 
     the general public helped him to turn against the system, 
     including internal reports on party ideology and information 
     on American values of freedom and democracy.
       Mr. Li said that as a doctoral candidate, the MSS sent him 
     to study at an American university, an experience that 
     influenced in his decision to defect. In 2004, after he 
     defected, he was declared an enemy of the state by the MSS in 
     at least two notices sent to security offices in China.
       According to U.S. counterintelligence officials, China, 
     unlike the Soviet Union, has had only a small number of 
     defections of intelligence officers like Mr. Li over the past 
     30 years.
       Another spy who defected was a Chinese intelligence officer 
     known publicly by the code-name ``Planesman,'' who gave the 
     FBI data that led to 1985 arrest of CIA interpreter Larry Wu-
     Tai Chin.
       Another intelligence defector was Sr. Col. Yu Jungping, a 
     military intelligence officer once posted to the Chinese 
     Embassy in Washington who came over in the 1990s.
       Mr. Li was in Washington to participate in a conference 
     sponsored by the Falun Gong, a Buddhist-oriented group that 
     advocates the replacement of the Chinese communist 
     government. Mr. Li said he announced his formal withdrawal 
     from the Communist Party at the conference, along with that 
     of his father, who is also in the United States.
       Mr. Li said he is neither a Christian nor Falun Gong 
     member, but that his interest in religion and fear of being 
     persecuted by the MSS contributed to his decision to defect.
       Mr. Li said he thinks there are significant numbers of pro-
     democracy MSS officers inside the service, including those at 
     high levels, who do not support the party and are ``even 
     anti-Communsit Party'' but fear taking any action.
       ``But I sincerely hope these people can play a special role 
     in getting rid of the Communist Party,'' Mr. Li said.
       The former intelligence officer, whose family left China 
     with him, said it took him several years to change his views. 
     ``After a few years of my personal experience inside the 
     system, I really knew that the Communist Party is very bad,'' 
     he said.
       ``My true ideal, actually, in this Chinese security 
     department is really to do something for the Chinese people 
     and the nation. But I really hated doing things just for the 
     interest of the Communist Party and a lot of times those 
     things that are in the interest of the Communist Party are 
     doing harm to the Chinese people.''

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