How I almost became a Chinese spy – reflections on China's Age of Anxiety
How I almost became a Chinese spy – reflections on China's Age of Anxiety
The idea that China Correspondents Lisa Murray and Angus Grigg (pictured in the Western Province of Xinjiang) were merely journalists, chasing stories and looking to generate clicks seemed implausible to their Chinese minders. supplied
The offer to become a Chinese spy was made over a lunch of Sichuan fish, spicy tofu and stir-fried green beans. It was September 2013 and the trade was to be a simple one – money in exchange for information.
I had been in China for 17 months at that point and, like most foreign correspondents, was frustrated by the Communist Party's vice-like grip on information in a political system that had changed little since the days of Mao Zedong.
But on that autumn day in Shanghai's former French Concession, there was the possibility of a breakthrough.
My would-be handlers, who worked for a security consultancy affiliated with the Chinese government, had at least shown a willingness to talk. They had even passed on a couple of worthwhile tips over coffee during our previous meetings.
Christmas presents given to the AFR's China correspondent Angus Grigg from Chinese security officials for his daughters. Years later they remain unopened. Angus Grigg
But as it turned out they had no interest in being a source for the foreign press. After the lunch plates were cleared away and the tea pot refilled, their offer was delivered. It was wrapped in the camaraderie of our supposedly shared profession.
"We are just like journalists," said the younger man, smiling in his tight-fitting pink polo shirt that revealed significant time spent at the gym.
Money for information, straight up
"We need to get stories before our competition and when this happens we receive bigger bonuses."
It was then explained I should tell them when my newspaper was close to publishing articles that contained fresh revelations about Chinese cyber hacking or industrial espionage.
China's President Xi Jinping waves outside Beijing's Great Hall of the People. AP
"If you let us know, we could share our bonuses with you," they said.
So there was the inducement – a vaguely-defined pledge to share "bonuses".
To this day I regret not asking the quantum of those "bonuses", how they would be delivered and what they would do with the information sought. At the time though I was not sure if I had misunderstood the conversation, even though their pitch was delivered in tone-perfect English.
Two months later those doubts were erased when a second, far more significant request was made. This time there was no pretence of shared occupations or loosely-worded offers of remuneration.
A masked woman and a man walk by a poster of President Xi Jinping on a street in Beijing. AP
It was money for information straight up and there was no hiding their desperation.
Gifts for the children
The second offer came after a harried phone call from the younger man, who said they needed to see me urgently before I returned home for Christmas.
This apparent urgency, it was explained, was due to my cancellation of two previous appointments which had deprived them of an opportunity to deliver Christmas presents for my daughters.
A member of the Chinese military at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. AP
"Can we meet this afternoon?" said the younger man.
As it turned out they came to the state-run Regal International East Asia Hotel in Shanghai, offering more than just toys.
As we sat in armchairs pouring green tea, I was told about a "special commission".
This meant a job for me while on holidays in Australia.
China maintains an authoritarian presence, including through its military parades with giant displays of the national flag. AP
In hindsight my mistake was being politely vague in declining their previous offer.
It appeared they had interpreted my refusal as an inability to provide the required information, rather than an unwillingness to help.
That provided sufficient opening for them to try again.
After handing over the presents for my daughters, which remained un-opened in the basement of my home for the next four years, they dispensed with the usual small talk.
Appointments with ministers
Over the Australian summer I was instructed to make appointments with senior government officials, ministers and others in the foreign policy community and ascertain if there had been a substantial change in policy towards Beijing from the newly-elected federal government, led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
"When you return you can write a report and we will pay you for this," said the older man.
This time I flatly refused, saying I would be sitting on a beach in Byron Bay, not snooping for foreign policy morsels.
A member of the Chinese military marches before the welcoming ceremony for US President Donald Trump in November. AP
Besides, what they were asking for was hardly news. It was no secret that, under pressure from Washington, Abbott had taken a tougher line towards Beijing and sought to re-align Australian foreign policy to be closer to regional democracies like Japan and India.
This time the message got through. After stating my preference for sunbaking over spying, our regular catch-ups stopped. They contacted me once more when Malcolm Turnbull deposed Abbott to become Prime Minister, but apart from that they largely gave up on me.
There were no more harried phone calls or sipping of tea in hotel foyers.
For me the whole episode was both hilarious and revealing. It showed that, despite all Beijing's efforts to modernise and send officials abroad to understand the world outside, there had been little progress. But sitting alongside those awkward exchanges and "lost in translation moments" with my spies, was something more.
It was anxiety.
The end of clear-eyed optimism
In his book, Age of Ambition, The New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos wrote of a time when anything seemed possible in China.
It was a period when fortunes were made, cities built seemingly overnight and when people expected tomorrow would be better than yesterday.
A protester displays a Chinese flag as during a rally outside the Legislative Council chamber in Hong Kong,JEROME FAVRE
Everywhere you looked there was change and it was happening in the blink of an eye. There were, of course, plenty of dark elements, but equal amounts of hope.
By the time I arrived in the spring of 2012, however, the dominant narrative had moved on. Change and ambition were still prevalent, but these were increasingly over-shadowed by anxiety.
In searching for a tipping point, one reference would be the second quarter of 2012.
That's when growth in China's economy dipped below 8 per cent. The two-decade long "economic miracle" was over.
From famine to feast
According to official figures, China's economy still grew by more than the entire economic output of Saudi Arabia that year, but the "animal spirits" that dictate sentiment had changed. Where shortage once existed there was now excess.
China's leaders called this "over-capacity" and everywhere you looked there was too much of something. By mid-2015, the mining industry had expanded so quickly that a tonne of coal was worth less than the equivalent amount of water. Steel had become cheaper than cabbage and, rather than blackouts, China wasted 18 per cent of all the wind power it generated in 2016, as thousands of turbines had been built before grid connection was available.
In just a few short years, China's much-heralded model of state-planned capitalism, the so-called "Beijing Consensus", had delivered the country from shortage to saturation.
Peak China had been reached and it had come more than a decade before most economists and, it seemed, state planners had predicted.
The result was more mobile phones than people and an estimated 10 million vacant apartments on the outskirts of regional cities and provincial towns across the country.
These were not so much "ghost towns", as monuments to the folly of easy credit and over-exuberant developers.
Massive credit stimulus
Such excess capacity had been partially alleviated by mid-2017 through the forced shutdown of mines and outdated factories, but in seeking to reflate the economy Beijing was forced to embark on a credit stimulus larger than that undertaken during the 2008 global financial crisis.
That delayed worries around a hard economic landing, but seemingly only heightened Beijing's anxiety. For, while official figures show China remains the world's fastest-growing major economy, this is not enough.
Growth of 6.9 per cent in the first three quarters of 2017 may have seemed miraculous for an economy worth $US11.2 trillion ($14.65 trillion), but it didn't provide enough well-paid, white-collar jobs for China's eight million university graduates, who could expect to earn less than $900 a month.
Nor did it help those graduates buy an apartment in Beijing or Shanghai, which by 2017 were considered the world's two most unaffordable cities, when incomes were compared to property prices.
And, despite Premier Li Keqiang declaring a "war on pollution" in March 2013, air-quality readings across the country were often still 20 times above what the World Health Organisation considered safe.
It made for an anxious ruling party and an agitated population.
And back to authoritarian mode
In response the party fell back on the old habits of authoritarianism. Rather than finding an accommodation with dissenting groups, or looking for ways to bring them into the discussion, from late 2012 the party, under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, took the opposite route.
It got tough.
Anyone who diverted from the official narrative was a target. Bloggers, human rights lawyers, woman's rights activists, journalists and those who spoke in favour of better treatment for ethnic minorities were either jailed, detained or silenced.
The gradual relaxation of free speech which had played out under former leader Hu Jintao was abruptly reversed.
Social media platform Weibo (China's version of Twitter) went from a lively and often-brutal forum for outing corrupt government officials and parodying the party to a place where people posted food reviews and photos of their pets.
At our lane house in Shanghai, such anxiety meant the installation of an additional CCTV camera. Under threat from a slowing economy, the party was leaving nothing to chance. No problem was seemingly too small to ignore, even the movements of two journalists from a relatively small Australian newspaper.
For us this extra set of eyes became apparent in late 2014, soon after an environmental activist visited us at home. Soon after we noticed a CCTV camera had been installed on the adjacent house and trained on our front steps.
On camera, without pretence
While there had long been cameras at the entrance and rear of our lane, it was difficult not to view this additional installation as a less-than-subtle reminder that the operating environment had changed.
And, just in case the presence of these cameras went unnoticed, a sign in Chinese at the lane's entrance read: "This area is being monitored and the tape is linked with the police station."
Like in western capitals, safety was always the stated objective for installing ever more cameras, but in China there was never any pretence that one's privacy was an issue.
The power of these cameras and how effectively they could be deployed was revealed to me in March 2014, when I was in Beijing to attend the National People's Congress, the annual sitting of China's parliament.
Known as the "two sessions", the event is a series of choreographed meetings, where ethnic minorities in colourful costumes are paraded before the TV cameras while entering the Great Hall of the People, which sits adjacent to Tiananmen Square.
But more than anything the "two sessions" is a platform to demonstrate a unified party and therefore even the slightest dissent is not tolerated.
In Tiananmen Square fire fighters in orange overalls stood guard against self-immolations, armoured personnel carriers provided the security presence and plain-clothed police were stationed at intervals of 100 metres along major roads.
How I almost became a Chinese spy – reflections on China's Age of Anxiety
- Dec 21 2017 at 11:00 PM
- Updated Dec 21 2017 at 11:00 PM
The idea that China Correspondents Lisa Murray and Angus Grigg (pictured in the Western Province of Xinjiang) were merely journalists, chasing stories and looking to generate clicks seemed implausible to their Chinese minders. supplied
The offer to become a Chinese spy was made over a lunch of Sichuan fish, spicy tofu and stir-fried green beans. It was September 2013 and the trade was to be a simple one – money in exchange for information.
I had been in China for 17 months at that point and, like most foreign correspondents, was frustrated by the Communist Party's vice-like grip on information in a political system that had changed little since the days of Mao Zedong.
But on that autumn day in Shanghai's former French Concession, there was the possibility of a breakthrough.
My would-be handlers, who worked for a security consultancy affiliated with the Chinese government, had at least shown a willingness to talk. They had even passed on a couple of worthwhile tips over coffee during our previous meetings.
Christmas presents given to the AFR's China correspondent Angus Grigg from Chinese security officials for his daughters. Years later they remain unopened. Angus Grigg
But as it turned out they had no interest in being a source for the foreign press. After the lunch plates were cleared away and the tea pot refilled, their offer was delivered. It was wrapped in the camaraderie of our supposedly shared profession.
"We are just like journalists," said the younger man, smiling in his tight-fitting pink polo shirt that revealed significant time spent at the gym.
Money for information, straight up
"We need to get stories before our competition and when this happens we receive bigger bonuses."
It was then explained I should tell them when my newspaper was close to publishing articles that contained fresh revelations about Chinese cyber hacking or industrial espionage.
China's President Xi Jinping waves outside Beijing's Great Hall of the People. AP
"If you let us know, we could share our bonuses with you," they said.
So there was the inducement – a vaguely-defined pledge to share "bonuses".
To this day I regret not asking the quantum of those "bonuses", how they would be delivered and what they would do with the information sought. At the time though I was not sure if I had misunderstood the conversation, even though their pitch was delivered in tone-perfect English.
Two months later those doubts were erased when a second, far more significant request was made. This time there was no pretence of shared occupations or loosely-worded offers of remuneration.
A masked woman and a man walk by a poster of President Xi Jinping on a street in Beijing. AP
It was money for information straight up and there was no hiding their desperation.
Gifts for the children
The second offer came after a harried phone call from the younger man, who said they needed to see me urgently before I returned home for Christmas.
This apparent urgency, it was explained, was due to my cancellation of two previous appointments which had deprived them of an opportunity to deliver Christmas presents for my daughters.
A member of the Chinese military at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. AP
"Can we meet this afternoon?" said the younger man.
As it turned out they came to the state-run Regal International East Asia Hotel in Shanghai, offering more than just toys.
As we sat in armchairs pouring green tea, I was told about a "special commission".
This meant a job for me while on holidays in Australia.
China maintains an authoritarian presence, including through its military parades with giant displays of the national flag. AP
In hindsight my mistake was being politely vague in declining their previous offer.
It appeared they had interpreted my refusal as an inability to provide the required information, rather than an unwillingness to help.
That provided sufficient opening for them to try again.
After handing over the presents for my daughters, which remained un-opened in the basement of my home for the next four years, they dispensed with the usual small talk.
Appointments with ministers
Over the Australian summer I was instructed to make appointments with senior government officials, ministers and others in the foreign policy community and ascertain if there had been a substantial change in policy towards Beijing from the newly-elected federal government, led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
"When you return you can write a report and we will pay you for this," said the older man.
This time I flatly refused, saying I would be sitting on a beach in Byron Bay, not snooping for foreign policy morsels.
A member of the Chinese military marches before the welcoming ceremony for US President Donald Trump in November. AP
Besides, what they were asking for was hardly news. It was no secret that, under pressure from Washington, Abbott had taken a tougher line towards Beijing and sought to re-align Australian foreign policy to be closer to regional democracies like Japan and India.
This time the message got through. After stating my preference for sunbaking over spying, our regular catch-ups stopped. They contacted me once more when Malcolm Turnbull deposed Abbott to become Prime Minister, but apart from that they largely gave up on me.
There were no more harried phone calls or sipping of tea in hotel foyers.
For me the whole episode was both hilarious and revealing. It showed that, despite all Beijing's efforts to modernise and send officials abroad to understand the world outside, there had been little progress. But sitting alongside those awkward exchanges and "lost in translation moments" with my spies, was something more.
It was anxiety.
The end of clear-eyed optimism
In his book, Age of Ambition, The New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos wrote of a time when anything seemed possible in China.
It was a period when fortunes were made, cities built seemingly overnight and when people expected tomorrow would be better than yesterday.
A protester displays a Chinese flag as during a rally outside the Legislative Council chamber in Hong Kong,JEROME FAVRE
Everywhere you looked there was change and it was happening in the blink of an eye. There were, of course, plenty of dark elements, but equal amounts of hope.
By the time I arrived in the spring of 2012, however, the dominant narrative had moved on. Change and ambition were still prevalent, but these were increasingly over-shadowed by anxiety.
In searching for a tipping point, one reference would be the second quarter of 2012.
That's when growth in China's economy dipped below 8 per cent. The two-decade long "economic miracle" was over.
From famine to feast
According to official figures, China's economy still grew by more than the entire economic output of Saudi Arabia that year, but the "animal spirits" that dictate sentiment had changed. Where shortage once existed there was now excess.
China's leaders called this "over-capacity" and everywhere you looked there was too much of something. By mid-2015, the mining industry had expanded so quickly that a tonne of coal was worth less than the equivalent amount of water. Steel had become cheaper than cabbage and, rather than blackouts, China wasted 18 per cent of all the wind power it generated in 2016, as thousands of turbines had been built before grid connection was available.
In just a few short years, China's much-heralded model of state-planned capitalism, the so-called "Beijing Consensus", had delivered the country from shortage to saturation.
Peak China had been reached and it had come more than a decade before most economists and, it seemed, state planners had predicted.
The result was more mobile phones than people and an estimated 10 million vacant apartments on the outskirts of regional cities and provincial towns across the country.
These were not so much "ghost towns", as monuments to the folly of easy credit and over-exuberant developers.
Massive credit stimulus
Such excess capacity had been partially alleviated by mid-2017 through the forced shutdown of mines and outdated factories, but in seeking to reflate the economy Beijing was forced to embark on a credit stimulus larger than that undertaken during the 2008 global financial crisis.
That delayed worries around a hard economic landing, but seemingly only heightened Beijing's anxiety. For, while official figures show China remains the world's fastest-growing major economy, this is not enough.
Growth of 6.9 per cent in the first three quarters of 2017 may have seemed miraculous for an economy worth $US11.2 trillion ($14.65 trillion), but it didn't provide enough well-paid, white-collar jobs for China's eight million university graduates, who could expect to earn less than $900 a month.
Nor did it help those graduates buy an apartment in Beijing or Shanghai, which by 2017 were considered the world's two most unaffordable cities, when incomes were compared to property prices.
And, despite Premier Li Keqiang declaring a "war on pollution" in March 2013, air-quality readings across the country were often still 20 times above what the World Health Organisation considered safe.
It made for an anxious ruling party and an agitated population.
And back to authoritarian mode
In response the party fell back on the old habits of authoritarianism. Rather than finding an accommodation with dissenting groups, or looking for ways to bring them into the discussion, from late 2012 the party, under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, took the opposite route.
It got tough.
Anyone who diverted from the official narrative was a target. Bloggers, human rights lawyers, woman's rights activists, journalists and those who spoke in favour of better treatment for ethnic minorities were either jailed, detained or silenced.
The gradual relaxation of free speech which had played out under former leader Hu Jintao was abruptly reversed.
Social media platform Weibo (China's version of Twitter) went from a lively and often-brutal forum for outing corrupt government officials and parodying the party to a place where people posted food reviews and photos of their pets.
At our lane house in Shanghai, such anxiety meant the installation of an additional CCTV camera. Under threat from a slowing economy, the party was leaving nothing to chance. No problem was seemingly too small to ignore, even the movements of two journalists from a relatively small Australian newspaper.
For us this extra set of eyes became apparent in late 2014, soon after an environmental activist visited us at home. Soon after we noticed a CCTV camera had been installed on the adjacent house and trained on our front steps.
On camera, without pretence
While there had long been cameras at the entrance and rear of our lane, it was difficult not to view this additional installation as a less-than-subtle reminder that the operating environment had changed.
And, just in case the presence of these cameras went unnoticed, a sign in Chinese at the lane's entrance read: "This area is being monitored and the tape is linked with the police station."
Like in western capitals, safety was always the stated objective for installing ever more cameras, but in China there was never any pretence that one's privacy was an issue.
The power of these cameras and how effectively they could be deployed was revealed to me in March 2014, when I was in Beijing to attend the National People's Congress, the annual sitting of China's parliament.
Known as the "two sessions", the event is a series of choreographed meetings, where ethnic minorities in colourful costumes are paraded before the TV cameras while entering the Great Hall of the People, which sits adjacent to Tiananmen Square.
But more than anything the "two sessions" is a platform to demonstrate a unified party and therefore even the slightest dissent is not tolerated.
In Tiananmen Square fire fighters in orange overalls stood guard against self-immolations, armoured personnel carriers provided the security presence and plain-clothed police were stationed at intervals of 100 metres along major roads.