When Russian spies tried to infiltrate Hong Kong to destabilise China
- Posing as stewards on Russian cruise liners, KGB agents were accused of setting up an espionage ring to undermine Mao’s China in 1972.
- Russian plot to purchase several US banks also thwarted
As an open port adjoining communist China, Hong Kong under British rule became a centre for covert intelligence gathering. But it wasn’t just the West that used the colony as a spy base. Just ask fans of John le Carré’s espionage novels.
During the 1970s, Hong Kong became known as a vital operating zone for the then Soviet Union’s intelligence agency, the KGB, undertaking what was known in intelligence circles as Line K (anti-Chinese) activities.
After the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s over disagreements about communist political doctrine, the KGB’s main Asian target became China. Its intelligence networks in Beijing were dismantled as Russian relations with China soured, so the KGB needed an unofficial base in Asia.
“Because of tight security within the [People’s Republic of China], however, Hong Kong became a more important base than Beijing for Line K operations,” states a recently declassified “top secret” US intelligence briefing document, dated April 20, 1978.
This was the background to a sensational Hong Kong Russian spy story that broke in 1972, making front-page headlines in the South China Morning Post and sending shock waves through the city. The exclusive account, by legendary Post news editor Kevin Sinclair, has since been largely forgotten.
On August 25 of that year, under the headline “Police smash Soviet spy ring in colony”, Sinclair reported how Special Branch police officers had broken up a ring of KGB agents masquerading as captains, cooks and sailors aboard Russian ships visiting the city.