Tsai authority exploits ‘China spy’ farce

▶ KMT deputy blasts Australian intelligence agency for cooking espionage story

The Tsai Ing-wen administration attempted to manipulate the Chinese spy farce to affect the Taiwan regional 2020 election, Deputy Secretary-General of the Nationalist Party of China (or Kuomintang) Tsai ChengYuan said in an exclusive interview with the Global Times on Sunday amid the Western media’s continuous hyping of the Wang Liqiang spy story.

On November 23, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Wang had “defected” to Australia and was ordered to “shift his attention from a covert operation to undermine Hong Kong’s democracy movement and focus instead on meddling in Taiwan’s 2020 elections.”

Shanghai police said on Sina Weibo the same day that the self-proclaimed “Chinese spy” Wang, who has applied for political asylum in Australia, is in fact an ex-con wanted for involvement in a fraud case involving 4.6 million yuan ($653,000). He was previously sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2016 for fraud.

Australian TV program 60 Minutes Australia on November 24 released a 60-minute video in which Wang claimed he had been involved in espionage activities for China and Federal MP Andrew Hastie, the head of the nation’s parliamentary intelligence committee, another interviewee, said Wang deserves Australia’s protection.

Tsai Cheng-Yuan, also a legislator in the island of Taiwan, said that Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen attempted to cheat local voters with the story by claiming that “the mainland sent many spies to Taiwan” to provoke anti-mainland sentiment in order to boost her election chances, noting that Tsai Ing-wen now has to clear up the mess as the story has been proven to be fake.

Tsai Cheng-Yuan posted an open letter to Wang on Facebook on Sunday early morning, in which Tsai publicized Wang’s background, fraudulent activities and his application for political asylum in Australia.

Tsai Cheng-Yuan said he learnt about some of Wang’s background from his schoolmates and teachers from the painting department of the Anhui University of Finance and Economics, where Wang attended.

A video sent by a Chinese court exclusively to the Global Times on Wednesday showed that Wang confessed to fraud involving 120,000 yuan ($17,000) in 2016, admitting he had “a weak legal awareness.”

After evidence published by China to fight against the untenable accusations by Western media, the Australian media finally seemed to be questioning Wang’s trick.

The Australian Telegraph

Daily, Sky News and News Corp Australia both carried the words Chinese “spy farce” in their recent reports, saying agencies were “highly dubious” of Wang’s espionage claims.

However, analysts said the farce would not end Western media’s defaming of China.

Western media care less about the credibility of the story, and instead just want some material as ammunition to demonize China in disregard of the facts, a professor who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Sunday.

Despite the Western media coming a cropper in their selfstaged farce, they will continue to defame China shamelessly, the professor said.