At a time when China is being systematically portrayed as a bogeyman trying to take over Australia’s political system, the emergence in October of a self-proclaimed Chinese spy claiming to have a trove of insider secrets to spill about China’s intelligence operations should have been a dream come true for Canberra’s top spooks.

But instead of putting Wang Liqiang in a secure location for a thorough debriefing which could take months, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation apparently took a back seat and allowed some enthusiastic journalists to lead the investigation on what has been billed as the most significant spy defection since 1954, when a Russian KGB officer sought political asylum in Australia.

After just a few weeks, some Australian media outlets started to splash stories on the so-called “explosive” allegations of Chinese espionage in Australia and Beijing’s meddling in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and elections in Taiwan.
However, significant doubts have since been cast on most of Wang’s sensational claims, including by a former senior intelligence official in Taiwan, prominent people named in the reports, and China’s state media, which started to dig into his background.

A growing consensus appears to be that, at best, the 27-year-old former art student is a low-level errand-running operative who has grossly overstated his role and access, and, at worst, he is a scam artist and a fugitive fleeing China and seeking protection in Australia.

Even the Australian government is wary about Wang’s spy claims. The Australian Financial Review reported on Tuesday that while it was considering Wang’s protection claims seriously, it would also “attempt to separate fact from fiction”.

Indeed, more details have emerged to show that Wang’s “explosive” allegations seem to be based on fiction more than facts.

James Kynge, a senior editor at the Financial Times, took the words out of my mouth when he tweeted this last Sunday: “A lot does not add up about this guy. His story reads like it’s been pulled together from press clippings. And then there is the lack of a real revelation.”

For a start, Wang’s accounts of his background and how he became a spy sound dubious.

According to his interviews and public records, he majored in oil painting at the Anhui University of Economics and Finance from 2011 to 2014. He said a senior university official suggested he work in Hong Kong for China Innovation Investment Limited (CIIL), a listed company with investments in technology, finance and media. He jumped at the chance and moved to Hong Kong in 2014.

What the Australian media probably did not know is that for a Chinese mainlander to work in Hong Kong, a special administrative region, he would need to get a company-sponsored work permit approved by Hong Kong’s immigration authorities, a process which could take months. It makes little sense for China’s military intelligence to go through the hassle of recruiting a fresh graduate with a fine arts degree and sending him to Hong Kong to work at the company, which Wang said was a key command centre of the espionage.

It now appears that since his graduation in 2014, Wang spent a considerable amount of time in the Chinese mainland. The Global Times on Wednesday released a video of Wang being tried for fraud and admitting culpability in a Chinese court in 2016. It is hard to refute that piece of evidence as the recording was done in court, as is standard in Chinese trials.



Wang claimed he played a big role in the infamous October 2015 kidnapping of Lee Bo, the owner of the Causeway Bay Bookshop, whom Beijing accused of publishing disparaging materials about the private lives of China’s top leaders. Along with Lee, four other people linked to the bookshop were taken to the mainland for questioning. The incident led to international condemnation of Beijing’s efforts to undermine Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous status.

Lam Wing Kee, one of the five booksellers, told the Hong Kong media last week that Wang’s allegations were probably based on what he had “heard” elsewhere, and dismissed him as a low-level operative at best.

Indeed, details of the kidnappings were widely reported around that time.

Wang also said he worked on a major operation in Taiwan, directing a cyber army to influence the municipal elections last year with the ultimate aim of removing President Tsai Ing-wen from office in the upcoming presidential election in January. Tsai and her independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party have taken advantage of Wang’s allegations to attack mainland China’s interference in Taiwan’s democracy.

But Lieutenant General Wong Yen-ching, former deputy chief of Taiwan’s Military Intelligence Bureau, has given a withering assessment of Wang’s allegations, dismissing him as “an outright liar”.

In an interview with the Taiwanese media, Wong listed 10 major inaccuracies in Wang’s claims. He said Wang lacked proper knowledge of the spy agency he supposedly worked for, was too young to be involved in any major operation targeting Taiwan, and his background was too weak for him to be recruited by military intelligence.

Wong also said the kidnapping of the booksellers was orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, not by military intelligence operatives as claimed by Wang. China’s numerous intelligence agencies rarely work together, as is the case elsewhere in the world.

Even more importantly, Wong said it was unlikely that a spy would work on two main fronts – Hong Kong and Taiwan – at the same time, as spy agencies around the world compartmentalise a spy’s portfolio.

He also said the wives and children of spies on overseas missions were kept in the mainland as part of China’s tight control over its operatives. If Wang’s spy credentials are true, the fact that his wife and child could go to Australia beggars belief.
Wong believed most of Wang’s allegations on Taiwan came from press clippings.

Having worked in military intelligence for 35 years, Wong is one of Taiwan’s most authoritative experts on espionage operations against China. One of his biggest achievements was to recruit a major general of the People’s Liberation Army in the 1990s, the highest-ranking military officer ever turned by Taiwan.

Wang’s allegations about Huang Xiangmo, the Chinese billionaire who was denied residency in Australia on national security grounds, sound equally implausible.

Wang claimed Huang once led a group of Australian state and local lawmakers to Hong Kong where they met Wang’s boss, Xiang Xin, the chairman of CIIL, which Wang claimed is the regional centre of China’s military intelligence.

Huang, now based in Hong Kong, denounced Wang as “a bad liar” and said he did not know Xiang.

In a series of tweets, Huang challenged Wang to specify which lawmakers he had taken to Hong Kong and when, saying it should be easy to verify as their itineraries are matters of public record.

There was a farcical moment in Wang’s television interview on Sunday. When pressed for information about Huang’s alleged connection with Xiang, Wang waved his hand in a flourish and asked what time it was, emphatically stating Huang was in Xiang’s office at the time of the interview.

He was left unchallenged, but how could he have known Huang was in Xiang’s office at the time of the interview? It was recorded in October or November and he went to Australia in April (since when he has been in hiding), saying that he had moved house at least three times as he was followed by suspicious people.

It is also interesting to note that there has been no follow-up in the Australian media on this serious allegation that a group of lawmakers met the alleged master spy Xiang, and were introduced by Huang – someone the Australian media is keen to write about at every available opportunity.

To be sure, the fact that Wang has come so far probably means he possesses some knowledge about something, although it remains unclear what that something is.

He claimed Xiang was his boss in the intelligence operation and he gained his trust and that of his wife Gong Qing by teaching her oil painting.

Although Xiang’s company CIIL said Wang had never worked there, it did not say if Xiang or his wife knew him. There are reports suggesting that CIIL and Xiang are connected to Chinese military companies. Both Xiang and his wife have been detained by Taiwanese intelligence for questioning and more information will surely come out soon.

Meanwhile, China’s state media has stepped up attacks on Wang, labelling him a fraudster on the run, but the government propaganda is hardly convincing. If the Chinese government has more evidence about Wang’s fraud or his background, it should release this as soon as possible, just as it released the video recording of his fraud trial in Fujian in 2016.

On Monday, Shanghai police said Wang was suspected to have been involved in another fraud in February this year and that he left for Hong Kong on April 19, suggesting that is probably what triggered his decision to flee to Australia using a fake passport.

There is no doubt that Beijing is aggressively expanding its espionage activities overseas as it takes a more assertive stance on the international arena, but it looks increasingly unlikely that Wang was an important cog of that intelligence machine.

His main motive appears to be to seek protection in Australia from the latest fraud. To strengthen his case, he invented or embellished his spy credentials, acting like someone who is throwing mud at the wall in the hope that some of it will stick.