Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at the prestigious Beijing Universty, announced publicly that he was seeking political asylum in Australia. Yuan was also President of the Law Society and President of the Law School in Guizhou Province where he was exiled for 10 years.

Yuan defected in Australia in July 2004 but has not been granted asylum. Last week, he publicly announced his bid for political asylum.

Professor Yuan supported the allegation made by senior Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who defected earlier, that over 1000 Chinese spies operate in Australia.

Yuan further claims that Beijing uses the spies to suppress dissidents and to turn Australia into a “political colony”, where “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influences Australian politics with its ideology, shifting the country gradually from its principles of freedom and democracy.”

Answering criticism that he sought political asylum for economic gains, Professor Yuan told reporters “I have written four books (exposing the CCP). I have no regret even if I would die immediately but I will use my remaining time to work for the collapse of the Communist regime.”

Yuan’s defection became public following the asylum bids by diplomat Mr. Chen Yonglin, a former first secretary at China’s Sidney Consulate, Mr. Hao Fengjun, an police officer who served at the Gestapo-like 610 office in China’s northern city of Tianjin, and a third anonymous police officer.

A striking common feature of the earlier three defections is that all three people were assigned to work on the suppression of Falun Gong spiritual practice in China and abroad, and all three became disillusioned with their tasks and decided to defect.

Falun Gong is a Chinese traditional practice, which combines meditation exercises and personal spiritual cultivation centering on the values of truth, compassion and tolerance. The group with tens of millions of adherents has been suppressed by the communist regime in China as a threat to its rule.

The defections in Australia triggered intense debates and revelations of Chinese spying practice in Western countries, including the methods of spy recruitment.

Mr Chen Yong, of Melbourne told The Epoch Times that he himself had been pressed by the Communist regime in China to engage in spying activities abroad.

Back in 1991, he was approached by the public security agents just before he was about to set off for a business trip to Australia, Thailand and Hong Kong together with his colleagues at the international trade department of Dalian city. He and other delegates had to go through “study sessions, meetings and briefings” run by the agents and were instructed to collect information “beneficial to the Party and the country”.

Chen told The Epoch Times that both the Public Security Department and the State Security Department of Dalian City have planted security agents in Australia.

One of the four defectors, Hao Fengjun, also made allegations that the number of spies in Canada is similar to that in Australia. His remarks generate serious concerns among Canadian politicians and concerned groups.

A resident in the Eastern Canadian city of Montreal, Ms Zhu Ying, told reporters that she was detained in China and pressured to spy for the communist regime when she recently visited her mother in that country. The state security agents held her for 33 days and tried to persuade her to spy on Falun Gong adherents in Canada and to provide details about people on her personal telephone book.

“When I refused, they told me that they know everything about each and every Falun Gong practitioner in Montreal,” she said.

The recruitment of spies among visitors to China appears to be widely practiced.

A UK-based Chinese woman who does not wish to be identified told the reporter that she, too, was pressured to spy for the Chinese state security services when she visited her mother in Northern China. “I felt dirty but powerless to say no because my mother could be affected if I do,” she said.

The UK security service MI5 showed its concern about this particular mode of spy recruitment when it issued a new advisory last week on the threat from foreign intelligence agencies to UK nationals traveling abroad.

The advisory specifically identified the risk of businessmen or academics being targeted for recruitment into foreign secret services. It indicated that unusually warm “red-carpet” treatment could be the first step of the recruitment tactics used by foreign agents.

Any "compromising behavior" which may break the local laws relating to sexual or other actions could make the visitor vulnerable to pressure from agents to comply, the advisory says.

The Communist regime’s spying efforts have been kept up not only by a vast spy network but also by a lucrative reward structure.

Hao, who handled numerous intelligence reports from Australia, Canada and the US when he was serving in the 610 office in Tianjin, China’s third largest city, told the Epoch Times that everyday bonuses are regarded by the officers as “small money” but overseas intelligence are regarded as “big deals”.

“When collecting intelligence, not only can one obtain funding but once the intelligence is adopted, the office would receive additional reward. Overseas intelligence is worth the most money, with rewards ranging from 3000 yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan (£1 = 15 yuan).

“Because of the lucrative rewards, 610 offices at all levels pay great attention to developing their own intelligence agents abroad and adopt one-to-one command and communication lines with the agents who are referred to by their assigned code numbers,” said Hao.

“In a single year, over one thousand items of overseas intelligence about the Falun Gong alone was reported by agents from the single city of Tianjin,” he said.

Hao described that a piece of intelligence about an individual Falun Gong practitioner in Australia, Li Ying, was adopted and rewarded with 10,000 yuan. The agent abroad would receive his bonus via his one-to-one contact in the form of an end-of-year “red envelope”.

The remits of operation for the spies are by no means restricted to the control of dissidents abroad.

In 2003, Katrina Leung, a prominent Los Angeles socialite and fundraiser for the Republican Party was put on trial in the US for illegally possessing national security documents. Leung reportedly had a long term affair with an FBI agent and took classified documents from the latter’s briefcase when he visited her.

Although the case was later dismissed because “prosecution misconduct” of denying Leung access to her former FBI lover, the dismissal was based on a legal technicality rather than evidence contradicting the charges brought against the double agent.

The sophistication of China’s effort to introduce agents in the West was further revealed in November 2003 when Ms Gao Zhan, a Chinese scholar who the US helped free from a Chinese prison, pleaded guilty in an American court to sending prohibited hi-tech equipment to China, which could be used in weapons systems. It was widely believed that her brief imprisonment in China was in fact a cover for her true identity.

In the past few years, the Communist regime has broadened its spying and control to the cyber space and made increasing use of commercial tactics to get Western companies assist its stranglehold on this medium of free speech. In the latest twist, Microsoft’s MSN Spaces on the company’s China website has been found last week to prohibit keywords such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison told the country’s parliament last week that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) would interview defecting Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin. "Certainly it would be naive to think these (spy) allegations are not being looked at closely by the relevant (intelligence) authorities," said Ellison.