Chinese 'spy' urges US to press on rights

A man who said he was a Chinese spy has appealed to the United States to stand up to Beijing, charging it was running a vast intelligence operation at home and abroad to suppress dissent.

Li Fengzhi visited the US Congress on Thursday to talk to lawmakers and appeal for asylum. His supporters said it was the first time a Chinese intelligence officer had defected.

A visibly nervous Li told a news conference that he served for years inside China for the Ministry of State Security but had grown "furious" that his job entailed spying on dissidents, spiritual groups and aggrieved poor people.

"China's government not only uses lies and violence to suppress people seeking basic human rights, but also does all it can to hide the truth from the international community," he said.

Li said that despite China's rapid economic growth, "a government that disrespects and suppresses its people cannot be stable."

"When the West engages with China, if it only focuses on temporary economic and political benefits but keeps silent on human rights issues, it is tantamount to reciting from the book of the communist party's tyranny," he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised a furor among advocacy groups last month when she said that US concerns on human rights would not hold back cooperation with China on other issues such as the global economic crisis

Li, a bespectacled man in his early 40s, gave few details about his own past, saying he feared for family members in China. His supporters said he slept for only one hour the night before his news conference.

China's Ministry for State Security operated a worldwide network to steal secrets from foreign countries, Li said, adding the agency also keep a close watch on Chinese citizens overseas.

The communist party "uses huge expenditure of funds to suppress ordinary citizens and even extend their dark hands overseas," he said.

He said that only senior officials in Beijing knew the exact extent of China's spy network.

One of China's highest profile defectors -- Chen Yonglin, a diplomat in Sydney who sought asylum in 2005 -- has said Beijing had more than 1,000 agents in Australia alone who kidnapped some Chinese people and repatriated them for political reasons.

Li said he defected "several" years ago to the United States but did not speak publicly until this month.

He renounced his membership in the communist party as part of a drive led by supporters of the Falun Gong, a movement combining meditation and Buddhist-inspired teachings that China banned as an "evil cult" in 1999.

Li received a welcome in Washington from one of Beijing's most outspoken critics in the US Congress, Dana Rohrabacher.

The Republican representative said Li should inspire officials in China and elsewhere whose actions violate their conscience.

Li "was a henchman for the dictatorship, the gangsters," Rohrabacher said.

"No one who is in that position should think they have no alternative. We now have an example before us of someone who knew that yes, there was an alternative -- and that is to walk away."





Part of Compania Church is reflected in a mirror in Quito, Ecuador, on March 15. REUTERS/Guillermo Granja