A Chinese defector in Belgium has exposed a long-running, widespread Chinese Communist Party (CCP) industrial spy network operating in Europe.
The latest in a growing list of officials defecting from China to Western countries was a member of a Chinese student association in Leuven, Belgium, according to Claude Moniquet, CEO of European Strategic Intelligence Security Center (ESISC), in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Like recent defectors in Australia and Canada, the defector in Belgium has yet to be given political asylum, so his exact identity has not been made public.
Moniquet noted that industries that are targets of Chinese spies in Europe “are all industries with a high level of research and development and with high added value,” those with key industrial secrets.
“They need to steal these economic and scientific secrets to go faster in their economic development,” Moniquet said.
He cited pharmaceutical, high tech, telecommunications, space, aviation and medical industries as particular targets.
The network of spies operating from Belgium is certainly active also in The Netherlands and France, and possibly also in the U.K. and Germany, said Moniquet. The students, who may either be military personnel in disguise as students, or “just normal average Chinese students, put under high pressure by Beijing” to spy, make wide-ranging connections and take positions in various companies throughout Northern Europe.
Economic Interests Keep Western Government Silent
Politicians in Europe have known about this particular network of spies in Belgium for about two years, but have kept silent in order not to jeopardize trade relations with China.
“The intelligence and security services in Europe are under high pressure from the politicians because the politicians don’t want any trouble with China,” said Moniquet. The politicians know that “China is stealing the secrets and spying on the dissidents in Europe, but they have the possibility to sell what they want to sell to China.”
“It is very short-term thinking,” said Moniquet. “If you think, ‘That’s OK, Beijing could spy, but we will sell them what we want’--it will be true for a few years, but in 10 years, in 15 years, in 20 years--it will be over, because they will have everything they need. They won’t have to buy European products.
“So clearly this is not the way to build a real common-interest relationship with China.”
Independent Verification from Various Nations
In Australia, diplomat Chen Yonglin and policeman Hao Fengjun have defected recently and have come forward to give descriptions and documents of networks of over 1000 spies each in Australia and Canada. They revealed details of spying on Falun Gong practitioners and others whose human rights the CCP actively violates, both at home and abroad.
Defector Han Guangsheng in Canada, a one-time CCP Public Security Bureau deputy director, corroborated the spying and human rights violations.
Moniquet said that, in addition to the economic gains from spying in Europe, “the other point is that China is not a democracy and they use their spying ring to spy on dissidents, to spy [on] the opposition, to spy [on] the Falun Gong, for instance, and this is not acceptable for a democratic state.”
Moniquet emphasized that the majority of Chinese students in Europe are not spies, but the minority of ordinary students who are coerced into spying is due to “the nature of the Chinese communist regime in China, which makes it very easy to put some people under pressure by intimidating the family, by forbidding them to come back to China and so on, and so even if a student doesn’t want to spy, he could be forced to spy.”
Moniquet’s ESISC is a private organization that has close contact with intelligence and government entities in Europe. He said he was asked not to name the specific companies affected by this recent defector in Belgium, due to publicity concerns and also due to judiciary investigations not yet having begun in some of the affected countries.
Feeds