Chinese Defector Mystery Deepens: Beijing’s sketchy report of Dong Jingwei’s appearance at a spy-catcher seminar adds suspicion that top counterintelligence official fled to U.S.—by @matthew_brazil & @SpyTalker for @talk_spy spytalk.co/p/chinese-defe… #espionage #China #spies
Rumors that China's top spy catcher had defected to the US reached a fever pitch over the weekend, propelled largely by unfounded reports in anticommunist and pro-Trump circles that Dong had evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Wuhan lab leak, not from an animal.
China’s officially sanctioned media reported June 18 that Dong had appeared at a MSS seminar where he “urged the country’s intelligence officers” to crack down on enemy spies. But there were no photos or videos of him, nor was the place and time of the seminar reported.
Fmr USG China expert Nicholas Eftimiades says it’s telling that “Beijing has made no flat denial and hasn't produced Dong publicly, so there's no clear indication of what's happening.” But China's social media commentary leads him to suspect the defection reports may be false.
'If Dong really did defect, the CCP would squelch public discussion,' Eftimiades told SpyTalk. While its report of Dong attending the spy-catchers’ conference 'doesn't seem to ring true,' there’s also 'no sign of face-saving' in advance of the CCP's July 1 centenary.
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