A Chinese academic linked to a Singaporean consultant who pleaded guilty to acting as a spy for Beijing said he was pleased that his former student was detained by US authorities.
Huang Jing confirmed to Bloomberg Television that he served as Dickson Yeo’s PhD Advisor a few years ago, when they were both in Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Yeo He admitted on Friday that he provided information to Chinese intelligence and that he knowingly recruited others in the United States to do the same, according to a statement by the United States Department of Justice.
“I was very surprised, but I’m glad he was caught,” said Huang, who is now a distinguished professor and dean at the Institute for National and Regional Studies at Beijing University of Language and Culture. “He impressed me as someone shy, but also humble. But you are hungry for someone. You know the self-imposed importance, after that I don’t get much of an impression on him.
Yeo’s case has led to renewed interest in Huang’s expulsion in 2017 from Singapore, where he had been a visiting professor at the prestigious school of politics. Authorities in the city-state he revoked Huang’s permanent residence after accusing him of using his position to covertly advance the agenda of an unidentified foreign country at the expense of Singapore, a charge Huang denies.
Huang said he had some meetings with Yeo over the course of a year at the Lee Kuan Yew school, but that he never saw the Singaporean student after he went to visit a student in the United States.
The Yeo case was one of numerous espionage allegations negotiated by the United States and China in recent days, as the Trump administration took an unprecedented step to close the Chinese embassy in Houston. Chinese officials on Monday It took over the US consulate in Chengdu, which Beijing ordered closed in retaliation on Friday.
While each side accused diplomats of the other of compromising their national security, the Trump administration went further, with officials saying in a briefing on Friday that the FBI has about 2,000 active cases related to Chinese counterintelligence operations in the US Separately, US officials said they took The custody of a Chinese investigator who had taken refuge in the country’s San Francisco consulate after she was accused of trying to hide her military background.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference on Monday that he “was not aware” of the Yeo case.
“I want to say that the US law enforcement departments, to smear and pressure China, have been promoting this so-called Chinese infiltration and espionage,” Wang said in Beijing, accusing the US side of its own espionage activities. “U.S hope The United States will stop using this so-called espionage problem to defame China. ”
When asked if China used to use students to collect information from foreign countries, Huang said he was not familiar with such cases. “All of this has to be done under the table,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a public campaign, and therefore for an academic like me, I’m not aware of things like that.”
Huang described President Donald Trump’s policies on China as “quite unpredictable” and suggested that, given the right conditions, China may be willing to calm tensions.
“If the United States does something else to challenge China, China will retaliate and that will lead to a downward spiral,” Huang said. “But if the United States, especially President Donald Trump, does not go any further, China is very happy to stop here.”
– With the assistance of Colum Murphy, Tom Mackenzie, David Ingles and Jing Li
(Updates with the response from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the eighth paragraph.)
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