April 15 this year marks the ninth National Security Education Day. The WeChat official account of the Ministry of State Security recently launched a blockbuster topic, summarizing and reviewing the 10 major espionage cases cracked by state security organs in the 10 years since the overall national security concept was proposed, especially since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
These 10 espionage cases include Kovrig Kai, Michael, Liang Chengyun, Hou, Kaisheng Rongying Company, etc. Through these 10 typical cases, we have doxxed all kinds of despicable methods used by foreign espionage and intelligence agencies to infiltrate, steal secrets, and plot rebellion, and firmly establish the people's awareness of anti-espionage.
The staff of the scientific research unit took the initiative to sell the core secrets
Twenty-nine people from the original unit were sentenced, and his wife was sentenced to five years in prison
According to the report, one day, the public website of a certain country's spy and intelligence agency received a message from China about defection, and there was also a shortwave password. The spy agency quickly confirmed that the shortwave code was indeed an advanced password used by the Chinese military. This mysterious refuge is none other than Huang Yu, a staff member of a classified scientific research unit in China.
It turned out that because he was notified to be on standby in the elimination of the last position in the unit reform, Huang Yu thought that the leader was crowding him out, and out of resentment, he decided to sell the core secrets he held to take revenge on the unit, and at the same time grab huge benefits.
Huang Yu used state secret information as a "letter of surrender" and was accepted by foreign espionage and intelligence agencies. Huang Yu, who received training as a foreign spy in Hong Kong and Bangkok, completely fell and began to sell the core secrets that he had illegally retained during his work in the unit. To make matters worse, he also deceived his wife, who worked in the same company, into copying classified materials in exchange for more pay.
In this way, the information secrets of the mainland's party and government organs, the military, and the financial and telecommunications industries related to confidential communications and information security have fallen into the hands of foreign parties, bringing serious harm to national security. The state security organs took criminal coercive measures against Huang Yu in accordance with the law. After investigation, the number of classified documents and materials betrayed by Huang Yu included the design ideas, technical parameters, secret algorithms, source programs, source code, and other core secrets of many confidential communication equipment systems.
In May 2016, Huang Yu was executed.
The Paper reporter noticed that regarding the Huang Yu espionage case, the official media had mentioned it many times before, and the relevant information about the case was released one after another. For example, in 2017, the Guangzhou media New Express introduced the case with the title of "Selling Secrets for Retaliation Units and Finally Sentenced to Death".
According to a report by the New Express, in July 1997, 23-year-old Huang Yu entered a confidential scientific research institute to work. His ability is mediocre, coupled with his poor work attitude, he has changed 3 departments in 5 years, but his performance has always lagged behind. According to the provisions of the elimination system at the end of the unit, Huang Yu will be dismissed. His unit undertook the research and development of relevant cryptography in mainland China, which has a high degree of confidentiality. In order to take revenge on the unit, Huang Yu actually betrayed the state secrets he had kept privately to foreign spy agencies.
One day in 2002, Huang Yu sent the following message to the spy agency on the Internet: Military short-wave security aircraft, relevant technical parameters and working principle...... Soon, he received a reply from a foreign spy agency. According to the other party's request, Huang Yu went to the lobby of a hotel in a certain country in Southeast Asia on time and copied three electronic documents about the military security machine stored in a USB flash drive to the other party. When they met again, the other party said that the information provided by Huang Yu was very valuable, and he hoped to cooperate further, with a monthly salary of $5,000 and a bonus of $10,000 on the spot. Since then, Huang Yu has met with them a total of 21 times, obtaining about $700,000 in espionage funds.
Huang Yu knew that his value lay in constantly providing secret information to foreign spy agencies, but the stockpiling when he left his post in 2004 was basically gone, so he started the idea of his wife Tang.
Tang is the data manager of another secret-related unit, so he often has access to classified materials. Huang Yu pretended to care about her and reminded her to back up her data frequently in case it was lost. So Tang engraved the confidential information and took it home. Finally one day, Huang Yu took advantage of his wife's absence to copy the disc.
Soon, Huang Yu pulled his brother-in-law Tan into the water again. Tan and Huang Yu work in the same unit as the chief engineer, and he is used to copying the company's data to a laptop to take home for backup. One day, Tan's computer at home was broken, and Huang Yu was asked to help him repair it, and Huang Yu took advantage of his brother-in-law's unpreparedness to secretly copy the confidential documents in the computer with a spy USB flash drive.
In addition, Huang Yu also used his relationship in his former unit to steal information from his colleagues' computers, inquired about the news of the scientific research institute from his friend Zheng and others, and used him to steal the internal publications of the scientific research institute, and all these materials were finally sold by Huang Yu to foreign spy agencies. According to the statistics of the national security department, in the past 10 years, Huang Yu has provided more than 150,000 documents to foreign spy agencies, including 90 top-secret state secrets, 292 secret-level state secrets, and 1,674 secret-level state secrets.
In 2011, after the state security organs had relevant evidence, they arrested Huang Yu. Huang Yu confessed to the crime, and was finally sentenced to death for espionage, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated espionage funds.
The Huang Yu espionage case has exposed loopholes in the secrecy system, measures, ideological construction, and many other aspects of the mainland's secret-related units. After the case was cracked, 29 people from the unit where he used to work were punished to varying degrees, and Huang Yu's wife, Tang, and brother-in-law, Tan, were also sentenced to 5 years and 3 years in prison respectively for negligently leaking state secrets.
He was rebelled during his stay abroad
He also had illegitimate children with foreign government officials
Zhang Xiangbin, a former foreign language translator of a national ministry, was once sent to a country for permanent residence. During his stay abroad, he got acquainted with the personnel of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who not only helped Zhang Xiangbin improve his foreign language translation skills, but also took the initiative to solve his difficulties in work and life. In fact, the other party is a member of the country's espionage and intelligence agencies, and Zhang Xiangbin has fallen into a carefully woven trap.
During the relationship, Zhang Xiangbin became "grateful" and "dependent" on him. After the two sides gradually switched from official contacts to secret contacts, the other party tempted him to provide information with a high reward. In the years that followed, Zhang Xiangbin ignored national interests and work discipline, acted as a spy for foreign governments, and developed a lover with a female government official in that country, giving birth to two illegitimate children. This became a powerful lever for the spy and intelligence agencies to control him.
Later, because he was afraid of the East Window incident, Zhang Xiangbin resigned. Before resigning, he collected a large amount of documents and materials from the unit's computer and intranet, and even disassembled the computer host to copy the documents and illegally carried them abroad. After investigation by the state security organs, Zhang Xiangbin secretly stored 5,200 documents and materials, of which 59 were marked as top secret, 848 were classified as secret, and 541 were classified as secret.
In February 2019, Zhang Xiangbin was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for espionage and illegally obtaining state secrets.
Taiwan spies took advantage of the status of the director of the research institute
Collect and extract intelligence on the mainland
Zheng Yuqin is a native of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. During his studies, he became interested in information science, and during his doctoral studies at Charles University in the Czech Republic, he got acquainted with the personnel of Taiwan's "National Security Bureau" and took the initiative to send his own research articles on intelligence agencies to the other party.
After returning to Taiwan, Zheng Yuqin became acquainted with the personnel of the Military Intelligence Agency. In order to accomplish the tasks set forth by the other side, Zheng Yuqin went to the mainland many times to collect intelligence and to look for personnel for Taiwan's espionage and intelligence organs who could instigate rebellion.
He deliberately marked the contact information of Taiwan's military intelligence personnel as a "tax refund center" and signed for espionage funds under a pseudonym. At the suggestion of Zheng Yuqin, Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau also set up the "Sino-European Institute of Political Economy" in the Czech Republic, with Zheng Yuqin as the person in charge in order to collect intelligence. He made great use of his title as "director" and his status as a professor at Charles University to participate in international conferences, collect and understand the country's views on major issues in China's politics, national defense, science and technology, and military industry, and establish contacts with participating scholars from the mainland of the motherland to obtain intelligence.
As of the time of the case, Taiwan spies had distributed a total of NT$2.76 million in espionage funds to Zheng Yuqin. In April 2019, Zheng Yuqin was arrested by state security authorities on suspicion of espionage when he entered the mainland, and in February 2022 he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
If you discover any suspicious situation that endangers national security, you should immediately call the 12339 national security organ hotline for reporting and accepting reports, or report it by logging in to the national security organs' reporting and acceptance platform.
Source: The Paper