Chinese-born Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who is detained in Beijing on charges of espionage, claimed to have spied on China's behalf for over a decade, Reuters reported Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2020) Chinese-born Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who is detained in Beijing on charges of espionage, claimed to have spied on China's behalf for over a decade, Reuters reported Wednesday.
According to a confidential letter sent to his former teacher Feng Chongyi, seen by Reuters, Yang said he worked for China's Ministry of State Security for a decade from 1989 on stints in Hong Kong and Washington.
Detained in January 2019 but formally charged for spying for an unnamed country earlier this month, Yang said in the letter that the confession of his past was meant to preempt potential misinformation at his trial, according to Reuters.
Yang rose to relative prominence as a dissident pro-democracy political commentator and blogger but has been known to have been on Beijing's payroll in the past. Rumors of his intelligence past had been a mainstay in his public persona, given that he has published a number of spy novels about a Chinese secret agent.
Yang attested to working in Hong Kong under the cover of a travel agent when it was still a UK colony in the 1990s, and then as a think-tank researcher in Washington DC.
Yang has become the latest point of contention between China and Australia, whose relationship is currently at a historical low. The two countries have been engaged in an escalating trade spat that threatens their mutual free trade agreement while Scott Morrison's conservative government has been leading the charge in calling for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus and the behavior of authorities in the early stages of the outbreak.
