A THREAT ONLY TO THEMSELVES:

Chinese spy who defected tells all: Says mission is to 'control' (Bill Gertz, 3/19/09, Washington Times)

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 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.

PETER LOCKLEY/THE WASHINGTON TIMES Li Fengzhi, who worked for years as a Ministry of State Security intelligence officer inside China, is in the U.S. awaiting political asylum.

• 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.

Like the USSR, China has to steal what it can't innovate and use its power to control its own population, not to fight us.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2009 7:17 AM