A man who said he was a Chinese spy appealed on Thursday to the US to stand up to Beijing, charging it was running a vast intelligence operation at home and abroad to suppress dissent.
Li Fengzhi (李鳳智) visited the US Congress to talk to lawmakers and appeal for asylum. His supporters said it was the first time a Chinese intelligence officer had defected.
A visibly nervous Li told a news conference that he served for years inside China for the Ministry of State Security, but had grown “furious” that his job entailed spying on dissidents, spiritual groups and aggrieved poor people.
PHOTO: AFP
“China’s government not only uses lies and violence to suppress people seeking basic human rights, but also does all it can to hide the truth from the international community,” Li said.
Li said that despite China’s rapid economic growth, “a government that disrespects and suppresses its people cannot be stable.”
“When the West engages with China, if it only focuses on temporary economic and political benefits but keeps silent on human rights issues, it is tantamount to reciting from the book of the Communist Party’s tyranny,” Li said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised a furor among advocacy groups last month when she said that US concerns on human rights would not hold back cooperation with China on other issues.
Li, a bespectacled man in his early 40s, gave few details about his own past, saying he feared for family members in China. His supporters said he slept for only one hour the night before his news conference.
China’s Ministry for State Security operated a worldwide network to steal secrets, Li said.
The Communist Party “uses huge expenditure of funds to suppress ordinary citizens and even extend their dark hands overseas,” Li said.
He said that only senior officials in Beijing knew the exact extent of China’s spy network.
Li said he defected “several” years ago to the US, but did not speak publicly until this month.
Li received a welcome in Washington from one of Beijing’s most outspoken critics in the US Congress, Dana Rohrabacher.
Li “was a henchman for the dictatorship, the gangsters,” Rohrabacher said. “No one who is in that position should think they have no alternative. We now have an example before us of someone who knew that yes, there was an alternative — and that is to walk away.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS