‘I did it for money’: the Chinese spy who handed over state secrets

An engineer in central China was jailed for nine months for spying for an unidentified “foreign organization”, a Chinese television station reported on Saturday on the sixth anniversary of the country’s counterespionage law.
In an interview with Henan Television, Liu Xin, 40, from Pingdingshan, Henan province, said that he was imprisoned in September 2019 under the 2014 law for transmitting state secrets to overseas forces through a man identified only as “Yang”.

Liu said that at the end of 2018 he was a senior engineer with access to classified information at a company in Pingdingshan, earning around 10,000 yuan a month while his friends took up to five times that amount home.

He posted his resume online in hopes of attracting job openings, and in October 2018, he received an encrypted email from Yang claiming to work for a new company abroad.

ang offered money for information and over the next three months Liu provided his new contact with classified data on China’s military and energy sectors, according to the report.

Liu said he was suspicious of Yang’s identity and knew the information he had was confidential, but decided to pass it on for the money.

“I didn’t think too much about [Yang’s intentions] … I did it for money and I didn’t think it could have serious consequences. Now I am very sorry, ”Liu told Henan Television.

He was arrested before he could turn over about a dozen documents containing highly classified information in exchange for 60,000 yuan, according to the report, without specifying the date of Liu’s arrest.

A state security official was quoted as saying that Liu provided information on the construction and operations of Chinese power facilities that he obtained through his work and restricted internal posts.

“I started by studying relevant information through some magazines and also got more information through my business trips,” Liu said.

The report said that it was later revealed that Yang was not working for a start-up company as he claimed, but for an unidentified foreign organization.