China to execute spy who ‘sold state secrets’

China will execute a spy it has ­accused of giving away sensitive information on a flash drive, ­according to a rare announcement.

The ministry says the spy left his job, then took a flash drive full of secrets abroad and met a foreign intelligence agent

China will execute a spy it has ­accused of giving away sensitive information on a flash drive, ­according to a rare announcement about high-level breaches by its main security agency.

The spy “provided a large number of top secret and classified state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies”, the Ministry of State Security said. After an ­investigation, he was sentenced to death. A colleague who assisted him was given a six-year jail term.

Details about the case are sketchy, but that it has been made public at all is unusual. There was no public trial.

The statement identified the “spy” by his surname, Zhang, and said only that he was “a core ­confidential employee of a state agency”.

He was discovered to have travelled abroad after he quit his job, taking the flash drive containing secrets he had learnt with him. In an unnamed country, he was reported to have met a foreign intelligence agent by the name of Li and signed a “co-operation agreement”. He then had further training and became a “secret-stealing black hand” employed and controlled by the foreign agency.

“Black hand” is a term favoured by the Chinese Communist Party for those who collaborate with Western powers, or sometimes for Westerners themselves. The party regularly attacked the leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement as “black hands”.

“Zhang, who was weak in character and could not resist the temptation of money, became a ‘puppet’ controlled and used by the other party,” the statement said.

The details given make it impossible to surmise what secrets Zhang may have leaked. The concept of “state secrets” includes anything state-related the government has not chosen to make public, ranging from the health of its leaders to unreleased statistics.

Researchers often complain that what counts as a state secret in historical archives changes, making it hard to know what the boundaries are. The publicity given to the case serves as a warning to those who travel to the West at a time when mutual suspicions between China, Europe and the United States run deep.

President Xi Jinping is trying to revive the economy with measures such as encouraging foreign companies to invest. However, several have fallen foul of Mr Xi’s attempts to reinstate party control over areas of economic and social life that he believed were spiralling out of control.

Employees of companies providing consultancy and analysis services have been a particular target, accused of breaching ­privacy rules.

THE TIMES