My life as a Chinese spy: Secret police agent tells all
For the first time ever, an undercover agent for China's secret police steps out of the shadows to tell all about where he's been and who he's been targeting.
On a bitterly cold winter morning in China last year, a man who'd spent more than a decade working as a spy for the notorious secret police decided to flee his homeland.
"I spent most of the time in the airport's bathroom, worried that secret police would find out my plan," he recalls.
As an agent for the Political Security Protection Bureau, or 1st Bureau – a secret unit of China's Ministry of Public Security – he'd been involved in missions to surveil, abduct and silence targets around the world since 2008, including in Australia.
Now, the 39-year-old is divulging the secrets he's been guarding for years, at great risk to himself, to expose what he says is one of the most feared parts of China's intelligence apparatus.
"Without it, I am just a young man who likes to read books, play games, love animals, and occasionally write poetry."
