ASIO chief made secret China trip to meet Xi’s top spy

Australia’s spy chief made a secret visit to China to meet the country’s top intelligence officials in an unprecedented effort to open up channels of backdoor communication amid major tensions between Beijing and Canberra.

The revelation of ASIO director-general Mike Burgess’ clandestine mid-2023 trip to Beijing, months before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s very public China mission, casts rare light on the delicate and complex relationship between the two nations’ spy agencies as they try to undermine each other’s operations while advancing their respective national interests.

ASIO boss Mike Burgess discusses China with Nick McKenzie. Credit: 60 Minutes

It also comes amid a fresh round of tension between China and Australia after the Chinese navy conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea, forcing airlines to divert flights and drawing criticism from Australia and New Zealand.

Political sources, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, confirmed the trip and said it highlighted Burgess’ belief that closed-door spy-to-spy diplomacy would aid Australian efforts to resist Beijing’s aggressive intelligence and influence operations.

Pressed about the trip during an interview with this masthead and 60 Minutes, Burgess refused to confirm it had occurred or offer any details about its purpose.

But political sources described Burgess as having “politely but very firmly” pushed his Chinese spying adversaries on their activities in Australia that he believed crossed a red line, even in the shadowy and murky world of spying.

While Beijing and Canberra spy on each other, Australia does not seek to forcibly repatriate or physically harm its targets.

“We have relationships with some 365 foreign services, domestic services, military services and law enforcement in intelligence units in 131 countries … and some of those include relationships with countries that are problematic for us, which allows my officers and myself to have some very serious conversations in private, dealing with these particular matters,” Burgess said.

The trip mirrors a similarly secret meeting the head of the CIA held with Chinese spy chiefs in Beijing in 2023. While that event was reported by the Financial Times within weeks, Burgess’ mission to China had remained a secret.

The sources said that when Australia was publicly in, and emerging from, Beijing’s diplomatic deep freeze, Burgess’ ability to pass messages to the leaders of China’s increasingly powerful and global intelligence apparatus was especially valuable.

China’s State Security Minister, Chen Yixin.Credit: Internet

In contrast to Australia’s agency chiefs, China’s top spies are political operatives who must maintain favour with President Xi Jinping in order to hold their posts.

During his Beijing trip, Burgess met with State Security Minister Chen Yixin, a close ally of Xi. Chen replaced his predecessor, Chen Wenqing, after the latter was promoted to the powerful politburo, Beijing highest political body.

Burgess’ China trip highlights his strategy for dealing with Australia’s greatest contemporary intelligence adversary.

The ASIO director-general has, over six years, steadfastly refused to publicly name China in his public commentary in Australia, although he rarely calls out any country for its local hostile acts.

But he has also begun signalling with increasing vigour in his public set pieces – such as last week’s annual threat assessment speech – that his agency is waging a fierce war against Chinese intelligence operatives seeking to intimidate or harm Chinese-Australians, steal defence secrets and influence the domestic political scene.

The revelation of the trip and Burgess’ role in Labor’s efforts at a rapprochement with Beijing is at odds with the characterisations by some of his critics, who label him an anti-China hawk.

Several intelligence community insiders suggest Burgess’ trip was a coup that enabled vital communications when Australia was still repairing ties with Beijing. Others, also privately, raise concerns it may have played into Beijing’s hands.

Asked if, upon meeting China’s top spies, he wondered who was playing who, Burgess again refused to confirm the trip but responded: “That’s the intelligence business, is it not? You might be having a good serious conversation. You might even have a few moments of you thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going my way.’

“And then you’ve got to catch yourself and realise no, you’re dealing with intelligence professionals and our job actually requires us to manipulate sometimes to actually get the outcomes you are looking for in your national interests.”

Burgess then confirmed it was “absolutely” a case of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

He raised eyebrows when he personally invited the Chinese ambassador to his threat assessment speech last week, with some commentators describing it as a misstep in light of Beijing’s hostile activities in Australia.

A senior intelligence community source rejected this criticism, as “moronic and lacking in strategic understanding”, and said those dubious of the value of Burgess’ China trip probably had no insight into what was discussed behind closed doors by the Australian spy chief in Beijing.

Asked by 60 Minutes if he was aiming to send Beijing a message by inviting its ambassador to a speech that clearly referred to China’s hostile intelligence apparatus, while not naming the country itself, Burgess responded: “I’m sending messages to any foreign nation … if you are a foreign intelligence service and you have an interest in targeting AUKUS in particular or anything else for that matter, we are watching, we will find you and when we see you, we will deal with you.”

The only occasion Burgess has publicly chastised China explicitly was during a meeting between his Five Eyes intelligence partners in the US in October 2023.

There, he criticised the Chinese government’s “unprecedented” theft of Western intellectual property through hacking and other covert means.

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