He goes by the name Eric and he is 39-years-old. He recently fled China and settled in Australia. Upon arriving, Eric identified himself as a former spy working for the Chinese government. He also contacted Australia’s ABC news to tell his story.
It started when he was just 22-years-old. He joined a party called the China Social Democratic Party and wrote about what they were doing on social media. That led to a visit from the police.
“They told me, ‘Get dressed and follow us. You know what you’ve done’,” Eric says.
He was taken from his home, interrogated over several days in a small room inside a local police station, and forced to sign a document confessing to his ‘crime’ of opposing the Chinese government.
Threatened with jail time, he was offered a second chance.
The second chance was to become a spy working for China’s secret police. Having little choice, he agreed and was given a series of tasks tracking various critics of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party who had fled abroad. One of those was Edwin Yin, a YouTuber who’d accused Xi of having four illegitimate children. Eric was tasked with contacting Edwin, who had fled to Australia, and convincing him to travel to a country where they could have him arrested and returned to China. Eric eventually told his handlers that Edwin seemed “too cunning” to travel outside Australia.
Indeed, Edwin told ABC News he has believed for some time that Chinese spies were tracking him. In 2021 he was beaten up and had his nose broken by three strangers in the street, one of whom filmed it. And in 2020 his girlfriend was told to return to China because her father was ill. When she arrived she learned that had been a ruse. Her parents had been forced to lie to her by the police. She was interrogated about Edwin by intelligence officers.
Another one of Eric’s targets was a cartoonist named Wang Liming, who went by the handle Rebel Pepper. Rebel Pepper drew comics mocking Xi Jinping and had fled to Japan. Eric was ordered to lure him to Cambodia where the Chinese would be able to have him arrested and sent back to China.
The set up for this plan was fairly involved. Eric was given an apartment in Cambodia and a job with the Prince Real Estate Group, which apparently has close ties to Cambodia’s leaders. He contacted Rebel Pepper and got him to design some characters for Prince Real Estate. There’s a photo in the story showing a large inflatable character they produced based on the drawings. The secret police then planned a job interview for Rebel Pepper which would take place in Cambodia. Once he was there, they planned to grab him. However, he was saved from the trap by his wife who apparently thought the whole thing sounded suspicious.
The final story Eric told ABC News took place in Canada. The target this time was a Chinese artist named Hua Yong who was a long-time critic of the Communist Party. Yong escaped to Bangkok and was highly sought be the secret police. Eric’s handler sent him a message saying “his Hua Yong, the superiors now find him very annoying and want to deal with him. As you mentioned, he is short of money and wants to do business together. You think of a way to lure him to Cambodia or Laos.”
Eric was given another cover story and he met up with Hua Yong and impressed him with his radical desire to bring an end to the communist party. To further his connection with Hua, Eric formed a fake revolutionary group called V Brigade and even filmed a video of himself in a jungle setting dressed in camo and calling for armed resistance against the Chinese state. Hua was impressed and promoted the video on his social media accounts.
Hua was granted a visa by Canada and moved to Vancouver. Eric continued filing reports with his superiors on what Hua was doing. Then in November 2022, Hua was found dead. He had been out kayaking at night and apparently drowned. Police said his death was not suspicious but Eric isn’t convinced.
Eric says he has his doubts about Hua’s death.
“My first reaction was that maybe he’d been killed, but in fact, I couldn’t tell whether his death was just an accident or a murder, because I wasn’t part of it.”
The last straw for Eric was his role as a fake video he made to convince Hua he was a real revolutionary. Apparently, some people inside the secret police noticed it but didn’t know it had been created as part of one of their own operations. Eric was told he was facing arrest. He was ordered back to China. Instead he fled to Australia.
Now that he has gone public, he thinks it’s likely he’ll be a target of the secret police. “They may mobilise some agents on the ground or send people to Australia to take measures against me,” he told ABC. He says he’ll never feel safe until “the day the CCP falls.”