Global Watch | George Soros and Chinese spy agency worked together as comrades

George Soros, the US-based controversial billionaire, and the Chinese premier spy agency Ministry of State Security (MSS) have worked hand in glove in the 1980s where Soros provided substantial funding to MSS through Economic System Reform Institute (ESRI) and China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC). It appears that Soros was playing a ‘double game’ by pursuing the Western interests to infiltrate China while also forging a close partnership with Chinese intelligence network and top bosses of the Chinese Communist Party. The apparent reason was an opportunity that he must have seen to benefit from China’s economic growth in the 1980s. But this partnership fell apart with the change in the Chinese regime after 1989. Several representatives of Soros’ entity ‘China Fund’ were arrested by the Chinese authorities post- Tiananmen square massacre in 1989. The Chinese authorities accused them of working for the US’ Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). Soros’ China Fund and MSS Soros started making overtures to China in the 1980s. He first identified and handpicked Liang Heng, a bestselling author in 1984 to set up his shop in China. Heng had become famous after publishing his memoir Son of the Revolution’ that was a personal account of how China was opening to the West and the purges carried out at regular intervals by the Chinese Communist Party. Liang connected Soros with important people in the Chinese establishment. The façade kept for this whole initiative was that Soros wanted to help China to carry out reforms. By that time, he had already set up ‘Open Society Foundations’, a funding arm known for instigating coups, political upheavals, and chaos in various countries through a web of well-funded Non-Governmental organisations (NGOs). But given the fact that bets were very high in China, Soros decided to set up a separate entity which would work only in China. In 1986, Soros set up ‘China Fund’ with a $1 million endowment. Through Liang’s network, the China Fund initially partnered with a Chinese think tank Economic System Reform Institute (ESRI). In October 1986, Soros opened the China Fund formally in a signing ceremony at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. This was his first trip to China. Soros struck gold by roping ESRI as it was considered to be close to the premier Zhao Ziyang, who became the Party’s general secretary the next year. Zhao’s personal secretary, Bao Tong, was also known for helping the China Fund-ESRI joint venture whenever they needed to get through the Chinese bureaucracy. Behind the façade of helping China to shape reformist economic policies, the China Fund started spreading its tentacles very fast. Within a year of its establishment, it set up an artists’ club in Beijing and an academic unit at Nankai University in Tianjin. Within the first two years of arriving in China, Soros’ China Fund gave hefty grants for at least 200 proposals. However, as the Fund started pushing the envelope too far by funding research on sensitive topics like the notorious ‘Cultural Revolution’ that had resulted in torture and deaths of millions of Chinese in 1960s, alarm bells started ringing in Chinese official circles and Zhao Ziyang had to step in despite his support for Soros and China Fund. Alex Joske says in Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World, “In the face of complaints from Party elders about the China Fund, Zhao Ziyang ceded its control to new management. It wasn’t a fight he wanted to pick, nor one he could dare to. Zhao agreed to sever ties between the ESRI and the China Fund, bringing in the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), a group under the Ministry of Culture, as its new partner institution. Things weren’t all bad, or so it seemed. CICEC had the backing of senior Party leaders, including (present Chinese president) Xi Jinping’s father, and served as one of the only official channels for cultural exchanges with the outside world. Its strong ties to officialdom could insulate Zhao and the China Fund.” Soros travelled to China in February 1988 to sign a revised agreement with Yu Enguang, a Chinese spy master who was a high-ranking official of the MSS. CICEC itself was a front for the MSS. It would be too naïve to accept that Soros didn’t know about this ‘open secret’ though he tried to defend himself later by pleading ignorance about this fact. Soros got along well with Yu Enguang at a personal level. The latter secured Soros a rare meeting with the top leadership of CCP in Beijing. Soros, reconfirmed his commitment to bankroll joint operations of China Fund and CICEC. The new Chinese co-chair of this project Yu Enguang. According to Joske, Yu Enguang was the pseudonym of the Chinese spy master Yu Fang. ‘Among his comrades in the MSS, Yu Fang was just as respected as ‘Yu Enguang’ was by the targets he cultivated. At some point in his career he headed the agency’s important central administrative office, and in the early nineties helped secure the passage of China’s first National Security Law, which expanded and codified MSS powers. The authors of several MSS publications, marked for internal distribution only, thank him for advising on and improving their drafts. He also oversaw MSS production and censorship of histories, TV dramas and movies about spies, which were designed to build public awareness and support for the MSS’s mission.’ Joske adds, “Ironically for a man who helped bring Chinese intelligence history into the public sphere, Yu’s true legacy is an official secret. Official references to his achievements are brief and elliptical. The authoritative People’s Daily eulogised him in 2013, an honour only a handful of intelligence officers receive: ‘In his sixty years of life in the revolution, Comrade Yu Fang was loyal to the Party, scrupulously carried out his duties and selflessly offered himself to the Party’s endeavours, making important contributions to the Party’s state security endeavour.’ The article also noted that he’d been a member of the National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature.” Thus, Soros was dealing with a top-ranking Chinese intelligence official. Initially, this partnership was going off well. In fact, MSS was using Soros’ money to fund its operations under the garb of cultural exchange programmes carried out by CICEC. Incidentally, the official website of the CICEC, when accessed currently, doesn’t show any link it had in the past with Soros and the China Fund. It talks about its focus on ‘cultural exchange programmes’, which is a common phrase used frequently by the Chinese intelligence agencies to give legitimacy to their spy operations. The CICEC holds cultural festivals across the world and officially claims to be working to create support for China’s ‘One belt, one road’ initiative. Incidentally, CICEC was set up in 1984, a year after MSS came into existence and it was just a couple of years old when Soros’ China Fund forged a partnership with it. It was well-known to China watchers right since its inception that CICEC was a front for the MSS. It is difficult to apprehend that Soros didn’t know about this! Post-Tiananmen Square Everything was going well for Soros’ China Fund till Tiananmen square happened in 1989. Chinese authorities suspected that the China Fund played an active role in fuelling demonstrations at Tiananmen square that ended in a massacre of thousands of people by Chinese authorities. Meanwhile the Tiananmen square massacre also led to a purge within the party as CCP’s general secretary Zhao Ziyang was not only replaced but was also put under house arrest. With the arrest of Zhao as well as his secretary Bao Tong, both of whom backed Soros and his China Fund, the Chinese authorities began their crackdown. Soros immediately shut the shop leaving many of his Chinese associates in the lurch and at the mercy of Chinese authorities. MSS, in its updates to the top party bosses, days before the Tiananmen massacre happened gave details about the role of China Fund as a CIA front in fuelling these demonstrations. According to The Tiananmen Papers, a huge cache of internal CCP reports related to the massacre, that was leaked later, the MSS told the party bosses, “Our investigations have revealed that Liang Heng, the personal representative of the (China Fund) chairman George Soros, was a suspected US spy. Moreover, four American members of the foundation’s advisory committee had CIA connections.” “According to the MSS’s narrative, Soros showed his ‘true colours’ by asking Yu to close the fund in May 1989 once he realised that supporters of reform were being purged,” observed Joske. It is clear that Soros co-chaired the China Fund-CICEC partnership with a top level Chinese spy master Yu Enguang (also known as Yu Fang). The MSS used the funds provided by Soros’ China Fund to finance many of its operations. Had there not been an internal turmoil in the Chinese Communist Party throwing Soros’ supporters in the Chinese establishment out of power, Soros would have been working closely with an authoritarian Chinese government and continued to play the ‘double game’ ultimately benefiting his business interests from both sides. This history of Soros with the Chinese also exposes his double speak as he claims to be the champion of democracy! This is Part 2 of the Chinese Spy Games series The writer, an author and columnist, has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.