China says detained US spy lured officials in ‘honey traps’

BEIJING: Beijing said Monday that a US citizen jailed for life for espionage lured Chinese officials into bugged hotels and used ‘honey traps’ to blackmail them into spying for Washington.

Hong Kong-born John Shingwan Leung, 78, was sentenced in May to life in prison for spying.

In a post on social media, Beijing’s Ministry of State Security — one of the country’s top intelligence gathering bodies — claimed he had been recruited by the United States in the 1980s, kicking off a “30-year career in spying”.

The ministry said US officials constructed an elaborate backstory for him, framing him as a philanthropist and pushing him to spy on the Chinese diaspora and entrap Chinese officials visiting the United States.

“Leung carried out espionage activities against our country on a large scale,” the ministry said on Weibo.

“If (he) learned about Chinese personnel’s plan to go to the United States to carry out official business, he would report them to the US intelligence agencies,” it said.

“He would, following the US side’s order, bring them to restaurants or hotels where the US intelligence agencies have installed monitoring equipment in advance,” it added.

He would then work “to extract information and even set up honey traps in an attempt to coerce and recruit our personnel”, the ministry said — referring to the use of sexual blackmail in espionage.

Chinese law metes out harsh punishment for those it accuses of spying, from life in prison to execution in extreme cases.

President Xi Jinping has stepped up a campaign against alleged undercover activities in recent months, with a new law passed in July dramatically expanding the definition of spying.