(Minghui.org) Editor’s note: Humanity is at a historic moment. In the face of the fast changing and complicated worldly affairs, it is morality and conscience that can help people understand what has been going on and take the correct actions. It is the most basic of all. Conscience is bestowed by the heaven and an innate trait everyone has. One doesn’t need a degree or use any scientific method to develop conscience, which also has nothing to do with one’s color, wealth or social status. We are born with conscience. But if one’s conscience falls asleep, then one is lost, something very serious. When disaster strikes, conscience is what saves a person, as long as one’s conscience stays awake.
The Sky News Australia reported on December 13, 2020 about a leaked register with the details of nearly 2 million Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in organizations around the world.
In the report titled “Major leak 'exposes' members and 'lifts the lid' on the Chinese Communist Party,” it said that “Communist party branches have been set up inside western companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members - who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to the Chairman, the president himself.”
“Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies.”
It’s reported that the leaked name list contains details of the CCP members’ names, party position, birthday, national ID number and ethnicity.
The list was first obtained by Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which is an international cross-party group of over 170 legislators hailing from 18 democratic countries, including the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, and France, to foster collaboration between countries to handle the challenges posed by China on international rules, human rights, and national integrity.
After verifying and authenticating the material with the support of data security analysts, IPAC shared the information with four media organizations, including The Australian, the UK’s The Mail on Sunday, Belgium’s De Standaard and a Swedish editor.
After reviewing the information, thirty UK MPs said they would be bringing an urgent question about the issue in the House of Commons.
Pompeo: CCP the Single Greatest Threat to the U.S. of Our Times
In an interview with Breitbart News Radio, U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said that “President Trump’s been the first president of the United States, and frankly, one of the first global leaders to identify this challenge from the Chinese Communist Party.” The CCP “have infiltrated our schools and they spend money on research projects and so co-opt our institutions that are higher learning and research. They now infiltrate – we’ve seen this – into our government, into our businesses.”
“President Trump called this out. We’ve begun to push back against it; there’s a lot more work to do. But make no mistake: The Chinese Communist Party presents the single greatest threat to the United States of America of our times.”
“Unprecedented View” Into the Structure and Method of Operations of the CCP
Robert Potter, co-founder of Internet 2.0 who participated in verifying the register, said in an interview with Sky News Australia that this list provides an “unprecedented view” into the structure and method of operations of the Communist Party of China.
“It shows how the party has increasingly taken on a global view the way that it interacts with foreign companies, the way that it seeks to influence and engage in operations abroad,” he said.
Although no evidence showed that everyone on the list is working as operatives for the CCP, such a large list nevertheless left many to worry about what steps big corporations have taken to protect themselves against the infiltration.
Among the identified 79,000 communist party branches, many of them were inside international companies, including manufacturing giants Boeing and Volkswagen, financial service companies HSBC and ANZ, as well as diplomatic agencies, multinational banks, high-end pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and defense manufacturers, etc. For some of the companies, they even had Communist party branches within their Chinese businesses.
An intelligence officer told The Australian that over the past 20 years, Chinese nationals have compromised the security of global companies as part of the military supply chain for the West.
“Allowing members of the CCP to work for such companies risks their stealing technology, providing intelligence to China on forthcoming weapons systems and capabilities, or on force structures built around those capabilities.”
“Imagine if a CCP member was allowed to work on the new Australian submarine project, and got technical data on the performance of the subs. This would give the Chinese navy a massive advantage and put Australian lives at risk.” the officer said.
Australian and UK Companies Infiltrated the Most
Included in the CCP member list is Chen Hong, the former director of the Australian studies centre at East China Normal University in Shanghai. His visa to Australia was rejected this September after the Australian intelligence agency determined that he posed a direct security risk to the country.
Boeing, one of the biggest aircraft suppliers for the Australian government and Defense Department, had 287 CCP members working in 21 of its Chinese branches in 2016.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which was granted a $48 million project from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to build a new supercomputer, was found to have 390 CCP members working for its 14 Chinese branches.
And in Volkswagen, 5,700 CCP members worked in its 131 branches. ANZ and HSBC each had 23 and 345 CCP members as their employees.
The list also indicated that two giant pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, two front-runners of the development of coronavirus vaccine, each had over 100 CCP members as employees. The CCP members working at GlaxoSmithKline, the largest pharmaceutical company in the UK, have direct access to its R&D department and production line.
Other companies in the defense industry such as Airbus and Rolls Royce, as well as the French defense contractor Thales, all had hundreds of CCP members on their payrolls.
Cosco, a major Chinese shipping firm, has two branches at the port of Felixstowe, Suffolk in the UK for its seven members, and its business covers almost half of Britain's container trade.
There were also CCP members found to be working for University of New South Wales and in universities in the UK, studying sensitive subjects, including aerospace engineering and chemistry.
More ironically, a CCP member working in the British consulate in Shanghai was only one floor away from the intelligence M16 team working in China as diplomats.
3-tiered Spy Program
Darrell Issa, a Congressman-elect in California, tweeted, “China has a 3-tiered spy program: Professional Spies, Chinese Companies operating within the United States, and Chinese Nationals who come here as students who are interrogated whenever they return home.”
He also told Fox News that when “you put that all together, it’s not just a few spies, it’s hundreds of thousands of people that act like spies that were coordinated by China. It is aggressive, isn’t just looking at government, it’s also looking at every part of our enterprise, every part of our business operations.”
Issa also said in an interview with Newsmax on December 8 that tens of thousands of Chinese students, most of whom aren’t formal spies, were forced into providing intelligence to the CCP after being interrogated or having their families targeted.
Speaking of the Chinese students, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said during a speech at Georgia Institute of Technology on December 9, 2020 that the CCP is sending 400,000 students a year to the U.S. to study. Some of them stayed in the US after graduation and stole high end technologies for the CCP’s state companies. Despite that, Pompeo emphasized that many of the students are the biggest victims of the CCP’s tyranny themselves.
The Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Department
According to The Australian’s report, titled “Party insiders in the ranks: communists infiltrate Western consulates,” the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been directly hiring local staff through a Chinese government agency, the Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Department (SFASD), for more than ten years.
The Australian report quoted foreign affairs experts that “the employment of CCP members in the consulates, some for up to 16 years, could be part of a ‘state-sponsored spy ring,” while “intelligence officers labeled it a breach of protocol and a risk to national security.”
It was found by The Australian that “at least 10 consulates in Shanghai have CCP members employed as senior political and government affairs specialists, clerks, economic advisers and executive assistants, ” including those in Australian, US, British, German, Swiss, Indian, New Zealand, Italian and South African missions in Shanghai.
The following is the list of CCP members uncovered by The Australian that have worked in foreign consulates in Shanghai.
- A senior executive assistant for the Australian consulate, who has been involved in organizing parliamentary delegations- A policy adviser for trade and economics for the New Zealand Consulate for four years- Six CCP members who have worked at the US Consulate in Shanghai in roles including a political specialist, a procurement supervisor and an assistant- A trade officer and deputy head of station in the Swiss Embassy- A clerk in the German Consulate- An officer in the Italian consulate who spent 12 years there- An officer in the South African consulate who spent 16 years there- A senior political and government affairs specialist at the US consulate for eight years before moving to the British consulate
One intelligence officer told The Australian that CCP members working in consulates, even in junior positions, posed a serious security risk. He said, “Any CCP member who is allowed to work in a foreign country’s embassy or consulate is a potential spy. Even at a low level they would have access to information on visas, or be able to grant visas to people who might otherwise not get into the country. At a higher level, they may have access to information such as the identities of intelligence officers operating in the country, or even cipher traffic.”
“It is extraordinary that some countries have persisted in employing locally engaged staff in China when these threats have been clear for some time,” the officer added.
Clive Hamilton, a professor of Charles Sturt University and author of Hidden Hand, said that the leaked list would provide important insights into spying and influence operations in Australia, and elsewhere.
“Shanghai is the main hub in China for organizing spying on western nations. There’s a lot of overlap in the Chinese system between spying and foreign interference operations. The Ministry of State Security often uses the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences to recruit foreign academics.” he told The Australian.
UK Politician: Joining the CCP Similar to Joining a Mafia
Iain Duncan Smith, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions of the United Kingdom, wrote on the Daily Mail on December 12, 2020, that “with hopeless naivety, big business and universities have failed to understand that China is out to destroy our way of life.”
Smith said, “Joining the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is quite unlike signing up for a political party here or in any other democracy. It might seem closer to joining a crime family in the New York Mafia.”
The CCP members “must pledge to 'guard party secrets', to 'fight for communism throughout my life' and to be ready at all times 'to sacrifice my all for the Party'. The oath is for life and sworn in the presence of party officials.”
He wrote that joining the CCP is not a simple formality, as the Party is demanding “secrecy, cunning and utterly ruthless discipline from its millions of members” and those members “are routinely schooled in the beliefs, tenets and principles of Chinese Communist thought.”
He said that the UK mistakenly believed the CCP would open up its economy and bring a “Golden Era” of growth, investment, and prosperity in the UK, but that may just be wishful thinking.
“We have failed to recognise that at the core of China's system is a system of ideas and values that not only runs contrary to ours but seeks to overcome it. The interests of the Communist Party come first. It is not that China has sought to hide this reality but that we in the free world have been prepared to turn a blind eye to it for so long.” said Smith.
He said this list showed that the CCP members have already spread around the world and infiltrated top global enterprises, academic institutions and diplomatic agencies. He called upon the UK government to take action against the CCP members, and expel them from “our consulates in China.”
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