Has a Senior Chinese Intelligence Officer Defected to America?

Update note: Shortly before this article was published, on 18 June 2021, Dong Jingwei appeared in public at an official meeting in Beijing; the claim that he had defected to the US was thus not confirmed. The article should be read as an assessment of the claims circulating at the time and of defection methods in the intelligence world.

In recent days, reports especially in the British media have claimed that Dong Jingwei, deputy head of the Chinese intelligence service, has fled to the United States with his daughter. According to the reports, the 57-year-old intelligence officer fled in February first to Hong Kong and then to America. If this claim is confirmed, Dong Jingwei will be the highest-ranking Chinese to have switched sides in the intelligence wars between America and China. Because the intelligence officer, promoted shortly before he fled, was most recently head of China’s counter-intelligence unit.

The publication of the veteran intelligence officer’s name in some China- and Hong Kong-based media outlets and his being targeted in some Chinese newspapers strengthened the claims about him. A statement supporting these claims also came from another, unnamed Chinese who defected to America years ago. According to this, China has been trying for months to get its defected agent back. It is even said that a high-level meeting was held with the US Secretary of State in Alaska in March 2021, but Secretary Blinken could not be persuaded. 

In the intelligence world, defection sometimes happens like this: A state official with critical information must give some information to prove the sincerity of his wish to take refuge in another country and to show his value. With this deception tactic, also called “chicken feed” in the intelligence literature, an official with access to critical information leaks some real information in a controlled way in order to infiltrate or join the target country’s system, and “appears” to have begun serving that country. In fact he is still working for his own country. Indeed, there are intelligence experts who read the case of Edward Snowden, who took refuge in Russia years ago, in this way.

Comments of this kind are also being made about the developments surrounding the name of Dong Jingwei, one of the senior figures of Chinese intelligence. At the same time it is said that the information and evidence he holds on the relationship between the Wuhan laboratories and the coronavirus were Dong Jingwei’s entry ticket to America.

As is known, when the coronavirus emerged, many claimed that it was a virus created in a laboratory. Although the Trump administration constantly blamed China, it could not present any evidence to the public and lost credibility. Now the Biden administration is thought to be approaching the issue more seriously. Among the reports in the American press is that Joe Biden has instructed the intelligence services to investigate the Wuhan Laboratory-coronavirus relationship in greater detail.

It is known that China fears the Wuhan laboratory being opened to inspection as a result of a possible international investigation. The Chinese intelligence officer said to have left his country is said to have passed on to the US information that China was trying to destroy evidence of biological warfare at the Wuhan Laboratory.

According to Chinese sources, Dong Jingwei is an intelligence chief who has drawn attention to, and attached importance to, foreign agents in the ranks of the state. The possibility is also being discussed that such a senior intelligence officer was targeted so that his career would be damaged and he would fall from favour, and that baseless claims about him may therefore have been spread.  

The claims on the subject rest mainly on the claims of American think tanks and retired American intelligence officials. Although the claims are very important news, unless the official authorities make a statement, it seems they will remain for now no more than an exciting rumour. Besides, there are those who think an official statement on the matter will never come. But it is also a known fact that the Biden administration is seriously considering the theories that the coronavirus was created in laboratory conditions or may have passed from animals to humans. The Chinese government, at the centre of these claims, has not yet made a new statement.

It seems that China is to be cornered one way or another. If America finds the slightest evidence on the China-coronavirus relationship, long discussed by world public opinion, it will certainly exploit it to the full.

If the claims that the senior Chinese intelligence officer fled his country are confirmed, it will be inevitable to seek answers to these questions: Was the virus really spread from China for the purpose of biological warfare? Or is China a target chosen in a larger scenario? Will the information the defected senior intelligence officer provides strengthen America’s hand against China? Will new evidence against China be obtained? So many views have been written on the answers to these questions that, in an environment where claims and conspiracy theories make what is happening invisible, a little more time is needed for the realities to come to light.