Following speculations circulating in recent weeks, some analysts are beginning to suspect that Dong Jingwei, the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s (MSS) number two officer, defected to the United States.
The Chinese State media asserted Dong addressed military personnel in China during last week’s conference; this comes despite the fact that neither pictures nor video clips of Dong were ever released. Furthermore, no location was ever offered for where the event occurred; this is the latest piece of evidence that analysts have used to say there may be something to the rumors.
The very last occasion Dong was seen in public, according to Dr. Han Lianchao (a previous foreign ministry official in China to defect following the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen Square) was in September 2020.
"Oh boy, wait until you see what the Chinese have on Hunter…." – Sophie O'Hara
https://t.co/sxJvV6BMtR— Wayne Dupree Media, LLC (@WayneDupreeShow) June 21, 2021
They Are Hiding Something…
Based on various Chinese news stories from around the world, Baidu, the Chinese web browser, has erased Dong’s images. The lack of images of Dong at the ostensibly June 18 conference is particularly odd, according to Han, since Beijing has never been bashful about promoting Dong’s meetings.
Party leaders shared a photo of both him and his supervisor Chen Yixin at a large Sino-German meeting in Germany in 2018. As a result, Han claims there’s no excuse for not releasing a recent photo of Dong to dispel the notion.
Top Chinese spy ‘defects to US to spill Wuhan lab secrets’
Dong Jingwei, deputy minister for state security, is rumoured to have arrived in US with his daughter in Feb, first flying to HK. Would be highest ranking official ever to switch from China to UShttps://t.co/yfBeMKvtov
— Finbarr Bermingham (@fbermingham) June 20, 2021
Han said China’s foreign affairs minister Wang Yi and Communist Party foreign affairs leader Yang Jiechi urged that the Americans release Dong in a June 16 tweet, citing an unknown source.
Han claimed that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declined. Han told SpyTalk on Monday that his tweet regarding Dong Jingwei came from a Chinese source; he also claimed that he used it to illustrate the point that rumors are flying all around China today. These rumors exist because the CCP’s digital dictatorship has completely shut down the freedom of information.
Their Actions Don’t Add Up
According to Nicholas Eftimiades (a former Pentagon and CIA officer), China’s failure to put Dong in front of the cameras to remove any suspicions that he has deserted is questionable.
Nicholas Eftimiades, a former Pentagon, State Department, and CIA China expert, thinks it’s significant that Beijing hasn’t issued a flat denial and hasn’t publicly produced Dong. As a result, there is no obvious indicator of what is going on. He, on the other hand, refuted Han’s claim of Chinese censorship in the affair.
While American reports say the high-ranking official has defected with a cache of information, Chinese sources claim the top spy catcher is still in-country. https://t.co/I8Crx3QFm5
— The Western Journal (@WestJournalism) June 20, 2021
If Dong’s defection—roughly comparable to the FBI’s deputy director—is true, ripples will be felt throughout the Ministry of State Security, according to Eftimiades.
Beijing’s side is expected to take standard damage control measures, such as removing officers and operatives from areas where they shouldn’t be and assessing the potential for harm if Dong tells the American what he knows. However, his access was most likely restricted to espionage issues and did not involve access to a larger spectrum of secrets.
