China Alleges Spying for 6 years
A website run by the State Secrets Bureau and the state-run publishing house Golden Press said yesterday information from the company’s computers seized after the arrest of Australian executive Stern Hu showed six years’ worth of data that could be considered state secrets.
State secrets, a broad and vague term used as something of a catch-all by the Chinese, were at the heart of the arrest of Mr Hu, Rio’s main iron ore price negotiator in China, and of three Chinese colleagues in July 5.
They have been accused of bribery and criminally obtaining state secrets, but no charges have yet been laid and they have not had access to legal representation.
Yesterday two articles on the Baomi.org site repeated accusations already made by the Chinese against Rio that its actions had cost China’s steel industry 700 billion yuan ($122bn), as Rio executives used the information to get better prices for their iron ore.
“Plenty of Chinese steel industry information was found in the computers confiscated from Rio Tinto,” State Secrets Bureau official Jiang Ruqin wrote.
“Severe damage has been caused to China. For six years those spies gave bribery and played tricks to steal secrets.
“The interior evils took place within state-owned companies. Senior managers of SOEs should be more closely supervised.
“Business secrecy protection has become a shortboard in a barrel (or leakage) so a complete and efficient secret protection law should be set up.”
Mr Jiang was until March last year the head of the State Secrets Bureau in Huayuan, in the coastal province of Jiangsu.
One analyst suggested that Jiangsu, a neighbouring province to Shanghai where Mr Hu is being held, may be helping with the investigation.
A separate article on the same site discussed the importance of introducing new protections to stop the stealing of state secrets.
“State-owned companies are the major targets of overseas intelligence agents, but compared with foreign companies, SOEs have a large difference to them – much business information is not classified as confidential; anti-secrecy leakages are not found and no specific funds or personnel are assigned (to protect the secrets),” Luo Jianghuai, another Jiangsu State Secrets official, wrote.
The State Secrets Bureau reports to the Communist Party of China’s central committee.
Late last month, the business magazine Caijing, which has largely steered clear of the Hu story, said the 20-year-old state secrets legislation was now under discussion at the highest levels of government.
No Comments