‘I did it for the money’: the Chinese spy who gave up state secrets
- Engineer says he handed over classified information after being approached by a man who said he worked for a start-up company
- The contact was later found to be working for an unidentified ‘overseas organisation’, report says
In an interview with Henan Television, Liu Xin, 40, of Pingdingshan, Henan province, said he was jailed in September 2019 under the 2014 law for passing on state secrets to overseas forces via a man identified only as “Yang”.
Liu said that in late 2018 he was a senior engineer with access to classified information at a company in Pingdingshan, earning about 10,000 yuan a month while friends were taking home up to five times that amount.
He posted his résumé online hoping to attract job offers and in October 2018, he received an encrypted email from Yang who claimed to work for an overseas start-up company.
Yang offered money for information and in the next three months Liu supplied his new contact with classified data about China’s military and energy sectors, according to the report.
Liu said he was suspicious of Yang’s identity and knew that the information he had was sensitive, but he decided to pass it on because of the money.