The Spy Who - The Spy Who Outplayed Nixon | The Rise of China’s Intelligence Machine | 1

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

How did one CIA mole tip the scales of power between two superpowers? Investigative journalist Bethany Allen exposes the hidden world of Chinese espionage operations in America - from Larry Chin's decades-long infiltration of the CIA to the sophisticated intelligence network that emerged in its wake. In conversation with Bond author Charlie Higson, Bethany reveals how a single Cold War security breach evolved into a vast system of global influence, and examines the modern landscape of China's espionage capabilities today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of The Spy Who, ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. I'm James Bond novelist Charlie Higson, and this is The Spy Who, an audible original. Hiding in plain sight, Chinese super spy Larry Chin, infiltrated the very heart of US intelligence for 37 years. His breach would set in motion China's meteoric rights. to global power and shape the course of geopolitics today. But this wasn't just one spy.

It marked the beginning of something much larger, the explosive expansion of China's intelligence machine, a machine that would embed itself far beyond the shadows of the Cold War. In today's episode, we're going to pull back the curtain on decades of espionage. And for this, I'm joined by investigative journalist Bethany Allen. Bethany has spent 10 years exposing the world of Chinese intelligence and what she's uncovered will make you rethink how power moves through the world. Today we're going deep.

The history, the tradecraft and what Beijing spy game actually looks like right now. Welcome Bethany. Thank you so much for joining me. Can we just start with your own experiences? Because you've had your own run-in with the Chinese government, haven't you? Can you tell us about that? Sure. So I've worked on China-related issues for almost 20 years, about 12 of those as a journalist. In 2018, I was hired by Agents France Press to be their China correspondent. I waited six months for a journalist visa and then heard informally or unofficially, but officially via China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that I would not be granted a journalist visa. And to quote them, they said to AFP, If you want to hire for this position, put forward a different name. So I was not permitted to return to China very specifically because of something related to the work that I had been doing.

Right. So you say return to China. You had been in China before. Yes. I lived there for a total of four years from 2008, 2012, and then with some other shorter stents here and there. And what sort of work were you doing in China at that time? During those years, two of the years, I was studying Chinese full time at Peking University. and then also attending the Hopkins Nanjing Center, which is a graduate level program that's co-hosted by Nanjing University in Johns Hopkins in Nanjing, and I was studying Chinese politics and society. And then the other two years I was working at a university.

So what had you done that triggered the Chinese to ban your visa? Yeah, well, you know, if the Chinese government were the kind of government that was transparent about that, then we would be dealing with an entirely different kind of government. However, I have a good guess because I was able to. to get visas to China in 2015 and 2016. So between 2016 and 2018, I did something that got me on some list somewhere. And presumably, you know, the main thing I did during those two years was I wrote a series of investigative stories about the Chinese government's covert interference in the United

States. And that ranged from transnational repression from its efforts to co-opt Chinese student groups and use Chinese embassies and consulates to kind of create astroturf pro-China demonstrations to political interference, to funding of organizations that promulgated pro-China opinions. So kind of a range. But it was the first series in the U.S. that took this question, is the Chinese government interfering in our political rights on U.S. soil? It was the first investigative series in the U.S. that did that.

Were you the first journalist not to be granted a visa? Certainly not. The Chinese government has a long history of doing this. Basically, all journalists were kicked out of China from 1949 to 1978. Then they started letting in some. There was another big round of kicking out journalists after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, then gradually opened up again. And then there was a long period where there were no visa denials,

more than 10 years under Hu Jintao primarily. And then in 2013 or 2014, it's notable. So Melissa Chan, who was China correspondent for Al Jazeera, she was kicked out of China. Her visa was pulled. We read that as kind of the canary in the coal mine of what Xi Jinping was going to be like as a leader. And indeed, that turned out to be quite accurate. There were a few more journalists who were essentially kicked out of China in the years following that. Then there was me in the unusual situation of being kicked out without actually physically being there.

And then, of course, there was March 2020-COVID era when the Chinese government expelled around 18. journalists with U.S. publications and there has been extremely limited press access ever since then. So how was that for you? How unsettling was that to be personally singled out like that? I didn't find it unsettling. I found it extremely sad. Very, I mean, heartbreaking is the word. I had dedicated my entire adult life to China, not because I hated it, but because I loved it. I loved the people. I loved the culture and the history. And I was so interested in the political system. And I have always, you know, worked really hard to try to uncover facts and show what Chinese people really feel, what they're really experiencing. And that was what had led me to publish my investigative series at Foreign Policy Magazine in the first place because Chinese people in America were saying, we don't feel free.

We feel like the Chinese government is constricting what we can do even on U.S. soil. And that is kind of what led me down that path of seeking how the Chinese government could do that inside the United States. And so to have access to that country taken away was really, really sad. And it took me a long time to not cry when I thought about it. It still affects me. I still wish I could go. It has severely limited my career opportunities. So I've just had to be very creative.

But I'm far from alone. I'm far from alone in that situation. And I'm not personally in danger. I just want to emphasize that because Chinese people who have exiled themselves or feel they can't go back to China are in a very, very different situation. so I don't want to exaggerate, you know, the sadness of my situation. And you're living in Taiwan now. Yes. So, I mean, what does a situation feel like there day to day?

Well, day to day, Taiwan feels like a completely normal country. And it's interesting because, you know, when there are Chinese military drills or, you know, some other saber rattling from China, friends and family will email me and be like, oh, my goodness, are you safe? Should you come back home? And the thing is that living inside of Taiwan, day-to-day life, feels completely normal and completely safe. I think it's because Taiwanese people have lived with threats from China for their entire lives, you know, 75 years at this point.

And China's never actually invaded. And so it's kind of like a boy cries wolf situation. But on the other hand, since 2022, the threats from China have gotten more immediate and more pressing and feel more tangible. So more Taiwanese people that I talk to, they're

thinking about, they'll talk about, well, you know, should we have an exit plan in case we need to leave? So, People do talk about that, but life feels normal here. Okay, Bethany, well, let's talk about Larry Chin for a minute. I mean, how typical is he as an example of Chinese Cold War espionage? Well, he was certainly a very high-placed example. He's kind of the ideal.

He's espionage gold. You have someone who's so highly placed, who's able to pass information to you for years and years and years. That's really what you want. So how typical is he? Well, certainly China didn't have a lot of him running around. It's hard for any country to have some. someone as highly placed and as reliable as him. But if you want to view him as a type, Cold War espionage was aimed very often at having moles

inside the government. This is what we'd think of as traditional espionage. So certainly the Chinese government in that period would also seek to have those kinds of people placed in high ranks with access to sensitive information. And so what was China's main incentive there to spy on the U.S.? What did they want? Well, they wanted technology, certainly. They wanted insider political information.

And not all of this has to be classified, right? Like, if you want to know how a government thinks or if you want to identify people to pursue for further operations, you need information about their personalities, about their vices, about their beliefs, and having people close to them, you can send that along. Having access to very sensitive political information, such as ongoing decision-making processes in the government, for example,

of what they're planning on doing in relation to your home government, that is very highly sought information, and that's what he at times had access to. So how was China viewed globally at that point in the 70s and the 80s? And how was espionage going to help China assert itself on the world stage? Well, in the 70s and 80s, it's important to think about what was happening in the communist block in the 50s and to some extent in the 60s. China and Russia were very close, and that's very intimidating. Just look at them on a map.

That's a big chunk of the world to have these two, you know, enormous countries basically allied, more or less, closely marching in step against Western powers. That's really intimidating. But for a variety of ideological and geopolitical reasons, from the mid-50s to the mid-60s, there was a process known as the Sino-Soviet split, when China and Russia were no longer close and, in fact, in some ways, treated each other as adversaries. And so Chinese espionage, particularly beginning in the 70s, didn't just target the U.S. as a top country and Europe, but also Russia. There was actually a quite a lot of, you know, Russia-China spy wars going on during this time.

But if you want to talk about what China wanted to accomplish through espionage, from, you know, both targeting the U.S., also targeting Russia, they wanted technology, and they wanted to improve their geopolitical situation. And talking about Larry U. Taitin, that's exactly what he did in the 1970s. He had a not small role in the opening of diplomatic relations, in fact, between the U.S. and China. Well, let's talk now about the big Chinese coup during that period, which is all thanks to Larry Chin, who, as a reminder, handed over Nixon's game plan to the Chinese authorities ahead of crucial negotiations, which led to the Shanghai communique being signed. I mean, is that right? That's right. So because Mao Zedong was privy to internal deliberations in the Nixon government, he was able to push harder for certain concessions because he knew where he could push. He knew where the weak spots were. And so he helped China come away with a stronger hand.

Now, of course, Nixon's visit was in 1972. That was the first time a U.S. president had ever visited the People's Republic of China, which was established in 1949. The Shanghai communique was also written during this time. And the Shanghai communique, among other things, the really important sticking point that it addresses is the status of Taiwan. The U.S. says, and this wording is really important, the U.S. acknowledges China's position. on Taiwan. The U.S. side doesn't say we agree with China's position that Taiwan is part of China, just that we acknowledge it. But on the Chinese side, the Chinese translation of the word acknowledge, which is chengen, is stronger. An English acknowledge can mean, I hear what you're

saying. It can also mean, I agree with what you're saying. I acknowledge that as correct. And on the Chinese translation, it's closer to the, I agree with what you're saying. And so this is kind of how they threaded that needle of how can we come closer while having such a fundamental disagreement over the status of Taiwan. Chin's arrest and subsequent death in 1986 might have looked like a setback for Beijing, but the real crisis was yet to come. A few years later, in 1989, the Chinese government wasn't fighting American counterintelligence, it was fighting for its own survival. It's 1989. The Chinese regime is in crisis. Pro-democracy protests sweep Beijing and are crushed in Tiananmen's What follows is a new doctrine of control. From this moment on, intelligence wouldn't just

protect the regime. It would become central to its expansion. So Bethany, what was at stake for the Chinese government at that moment? In 1989, what was at stake was the future of the Chinese Communist Party. Its very legitimacy and its very position was extremely fragile. And so there was this huge national movement, the pro-democracy movement, with weeks of sit-ins, not just at Tiananmen, Beijing, but in cities around China. And the party eventually perceived it as kind of a make or break moment, you know, how we deal with this protest movement is going to determine what happens in the future and how in the end they chose to deal with it was by sending in the tanks. And that set the direction that China would take. There was kind of what people call a social contract that

became the way that society functioned going forward. It was this kind of agreement. You have freedom to pursue prosperity. We will give you economic freedom as long as you shut up about politics. And that set the stage for China's dramatic economic growth in its total economic transformation over the next 25 years. I mean, one of the consequences of opening up economic growth in China was that it allowed its people to migrate. How important was that in what was going on? Oh, I mean, it's massively important. After 1989, a lot of people wanted to leave China.

They were like, I was part of the movement, I'll go to jail if I stay, I need to leave. Or people who wanted to seek freedom in democratic countries. And the Chinese government made the decision to allow them to leave. Now, they did obviously put some people in jail. But generally speaking, if you were sort of a normal young person, a normal university graduate, you could leave. And that was really the first big exodus from China in the modern era after 1914. And that is when things really began to change. If we're talking now about espionage, about China's capabilities abroad, you could say that that was really the moment that things really began to change because you have so many Chinese people going out into the world now.

There's something like 60 million Chinese people outside of China. Wow. That's a larger population than most countries on Earth. That means it's easier for Chinese agents to also go out into the world. It means there's a larger population of people abroad to try to co-opt. And it also means that there's a larger population of Chinese people abroad to fear. And the Chinese government has always, and especially in the last 40 years, wanted to keep tight tabs on its diaspora populations abroad

because those are some of the populations that fear is the most. So the Chinese intelligence services, they're not just directed at, say, America, they are directed at the Chinese in America. Yes. And, you know, it depends on how broadly you want to speak of the Chinese intelligence services. So the Ministry of State Security is China's premier intelligence agency. It's kind of a mix between the FBI and the CIA in that it operates both domestically in China as part of its machine of repression, your political intelligence, kind of your KGB service. And then also it operates as a foreign intelligence service as well.

So it holds both repressive functions domestically and internationally and intelligence functions. And those are often difficult to separate. But there's other elements of the Chinese government and party systems that at times also function in certain ways like intelligence. Some people suggest that the United Front Work Department, which is a Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, which is basically tasked abroad with trying to co-opt and control the Chinese diaspora often can function like an intelligence service because it's collecting information on people. And then, you know, I talked about, you know, Chinese people going out. It wasn't always just for seeking political freedom. Also during this time, the 90s and especially the 2000s, you get a lot of Chinese people going abroad to earn money. To start businesses, to join businesses, they go as part of Chinese businesses already established that are opening up international arms.

And so you have Chinese business people abroad who then have access to a lot of industrial technology, intellectual property that China wants as well. It's very interesting because when we talk about spying, one of the things I do is write James Bond books, and a lot of people have that idea of that's what spies do. And you can understand how espionage works if two countries are at war. You want to know what tactics they're using where they might be moving troops to. But this idea of espionage between countries that aren't at war with each other, it is what is espionage? What are they trying to find out? Is it mainly business economics? How much is that Chinese intelligence services trying to sort of influence trait the government and find out about government thinking. I mean, these days it's really all of the above. You know, there's still that Cold War-style spy games, you know, trying to get people highly placed double agents and trying to co-opt people who have access to sensitive information. That absolutely still happens. In addition to that, you get other kinds of operations that are aimed, again, at very traditional

classified military secrets or very, very sensitive political decisions. But you also get so much more now. The rise of hacking because of the rise of the internet. Political influence and interference operations, transnational repression and other forms of softer espionage have really flowered during this time. But the biggest growth market for Chinese espionage in the past, let's say, 25 years, is industrial espionage. Right. Because the Chinese government has viewed the power of China as being very, very intricately linked to Chinese economic growth,

in general, but also Chinese economic dominance in specific industries globally. You can call it a mercantilist approach. You can call it a state capitalist approach. But whatever it is, it's something that's sort of hybrid, and it's something that Western governments do not do. Western governments have not, in the modern era, on a vast scale, used their intelligence arms or similar networks to try to get company secrets, bring them back and then give them to their own companies.

That sounds like some kind of combination of imperialism and mercantilism and spying. That is what the Chinese government does. And then it also has incentivized bottom-up actors. It is well understood in China that if you're working with foreign partners, you can use various means to take their technology and use it for your own Chinese company. And this happens in many kinds of ways, some of which are not intelligence-related. So, for example, foreign companies that want to invest in China have to have a Chinese partner in a joint venture. Many Chinese partners in joint ventures have engaged in something called forced technology transfer,

which is where that foreign company has to hand over their sensitive technology or their IP to the Chinese company. And then they can have their joint venture. And then, guess what happens in so many occasions? The Chinese company will just take that and run with it, leaving the foreign company, you know, empty handed. So that's the ethos. And so you have then actors from China who are out in the world who basically, do that in other ways as well. And you could call that industrial espionage, but it's a different use of the term. It's non-state actors, but they have state supporter, state permission to do it.

They know that the Chinese government is not going to fight them or hand them over, you know, to the U.S. The Chinese government's going to have their back if push comes to shove. And I guess all of this has led to a sort of slightly racially tinged paranoia, this idea that all of the Chinese people in the world are spies. They're all against us. They're all spying on be they students, businessmen, politicians, whatever. And America realized that the Cold War model had changed. And a former FBI analyst coined the thousand grains of sand theory, which I know is very controversial way.

What did he mean by this? It's the idea that the Chinese government or the party views every Chinese person as a potential collector. And that every Chinese person, regardless of who they are, a student, a business person, a teacher, anyone, could be used to bring back information to the Chinese government. You know, it's this idea that because there's so many of them, you know, I gave that number 60 million. Yeah.

It's this idea that all of them can be kind of weaponized in favor of the Chinese government. Now, that is a theory that has obvious racial implications. And there's a former CIA analyst, Peter Mattis, who has done work to disprove that theory, not just say, well, that's racist, but to say it's also just not accurate. That is literally just not how the Chinese government views espionage. That is not their working model for how to collect. But, you know, to your point that there's a racial element here, yes, and I think that this idea that any Chinese person is a potential Chinese spy, it's an idea that lives all the way through the present.

In U.S. President Trump's first term, we saw a number of measures coming from the U.S. government that seemed to treat Chinese heritage or, Chinese origin as a black mark on people. And we saw, for example, with the China initiative, a targeting of often Chinese heritage researchers or Chinese origin researchers in the U.S. for things that ended up being basically, you know, paperwork errors. And in fact, one of these researchers who was targeted just recently committed suicide, very likely due to this years-long investigation into her work that never really revealed anything. So there's a lot of very human tragedies that can result from this kind of a misunderstanding of how China's espionage works. So, I mean, how do the intelligence agencies distinguish between normal professional activity and

intelligence gathering? And how do you protect security without casting suspicion on entire communities? That's the million dollar question, isn't it? How do you try to stop actual Chinese intelligence operations without victimizing innocent people, particularly people of Chinese heritage. You know, the answer to that is that you get highly trained professionals to do that work, people who understand really well what the signs are of actual espionage. And the key here, if you want to be really sure that what you're dealing with is something that is espionage and not normal exchange is, is there a handler?

Can you identify on the Chinese side that there is a government handler, a ministry of state security handler, a liaison who is regularly, meeting with this person that you are suspicious of, that is a crucial difference. And, you know, one big problem with the China initiative is that they were targeting normal university collaboration or collaboration that was being incentivized by the Chinese side, but there were no handlers involved, maybe abusing the open system, but not in a targeted way. So that's a key distinction that I like to give to people. When you're looking for claims of this, find the handler. So the Chinese government is no longer just running spies in the Cold War sense.

It opened up to the world and used that openness to gather information at scale. Today, China is deeply embedded in global trade, technology and geopolitics. Allegations of espionage regularly make front-page news. So Bethany, you've written extensively on contemporary Chinese espionage. Can you just talk about the Christine Fong story? which is a story that you broke. So Christine Fong was a young Chinese woman. She enrolled as a university student in a small university in the Bay Area in northern California.

Now, she was a non-traditional student, which means she was probably 26 or 27 when she enrolled. And at that university, she very swiftly became kind of a star. She appears to have founded the Chinese Students and Scholars Association there. She received an award from the Chinese Embassy for doing that. And then she used that as a platform to begin outreach to the local political community. You know, she would invite local politicians to speak. She herself became quite involved in the U.S. China mayor's conference. She interned in a local mayor's office.

And she used that platform to become a common and known face in local up and coming political circles in the Bay Area. And she developed close relationships with people that she identified were up and coming local politicians. including perhaps most notably Eric Swalwell, who when she first met him was not yet a U.S. representative, but then was elected as U.S. representative in California. And she also cultivated relationships with U.S. mayors around the country. And as I write in my book, the U.S. government believes that she was engaging in sexual relationships with as many as 12 to 15 U.S. mayors around the country. She was busy. So that's like the sort of classic idea of the female spy. Oh, totally.

Now, she was, you know, to be clear, she was not herself an employee of the Ministry of State Security. She was an asset, not an operative at the time. But how did she first get on the radar of U.S. counterintelligence? It was because she was seen regularly meeting a person who was attached to the Chinese embassy, whom the U.S. government knew was a Chinese Ministry of, of state security agent under diplomatic cover. So she was regularly meeting with a Chinese spy. They were tracing him and saw her and were like,

who's this person? Then they started searching for her activities and swiftly became very alarmed at what she was doing. So that goes back to what you were saying before about the idea of the handler. So what benefit, what information was she actually usefully passing on to everything? You know, if you're targeting up-and-coming politicians, local politicians, They don't have the nuclear codes.

They don't have the missile blueprints. So this is not traditional kind of spy games. This is two things. It's looking for useful insider political information. What I mentioned earlier, what are their personalities, what are their vices? But why would you expend that effort for a state representative or a city council member or a mayor? Why would you do that? Because espionage gold is if you can become a trusted associate of someone,

before they are powerful. Once you become powerful, everybody wants a piece of you. But if you have a friend that you've known since before you were famous, since before you were powerful, and they've always been trustworthy, you really trust them. So if the Chinese can get in someone really early on who has known these people for years and they've trusted her for years and then they rise in the ranks, that is really valuable. And look at where it almost got her. So Christine Fong, again, a close associate of Eric Swalwell's office for a time. He was elected to U.S. Congress, and he was slated to join the House Intelligence Committee, the Subcommittee for Oversight of the CIA. And on the eve of his appointment to that, the FBI gave him what is called a defensive briefing. They said,

look, you know, because you're about to join this committee, we looked around. We identified this person, Christine Fong, in your network, who we believe has these ties. And Swalwell told me, and then has said this publicly as well, and this is also our understanding from our sources, that as soon as he had that defensive briefing, Swalwell immediately cut off contact with her and did not resume it. But what if that hadn't happened? What if the U.S. hadn't already pinged her as a problematic person? What if they hadn't given that defensive briefing? Then you would have a close and trusted associate of someone on the House Intelligence Committee with access to classified briefings. That is intelligence gold. Well, that's really interesting there that the Chinese playing the long game there. Recent FBI reports name Chinese espionage as a, if not the, top national security threat.

I mean, how serious do you think the threat is in practical terms? Very serious. I don't think that there is another country that has the capability to do at scale what the Chinese government can do, whether it's industrial espionage, whether it's hacking, whether it's traditional forms of espionage, that the Ministry of State Security. has professionalized and has learned a lot and is capable of pulling off really impressive operations. Chinese hackers are among the best in the world. And then we've seen, and the U.S. government has not said this for years, that in terms of industrial espionage, what China has taken from the U.S. has been one of the biggest transfers of global wealth in history. So they're doing a pretty good job. Yeah. When you have cases like Christine Fong, some of the real victims of this are Chinese

communities in the U.S. who are loyal U.S. citizens. who participate in politics at a lower rate than some other communities. And when cases like this of people like Christine Fong traveling in political circles, and it turns out they're doing it on behalf of the Chinese government, this creates additional barriers for Chinese Americans to participate in political processes. That is their right. And I want to highlight that instead of viewing Chinese Americans as a potential threat, in reality, they are some of the biggest victims of Chinese essence.

espionage, and it's important to keep that in mind. I mean, there's a danger in this of it, all looking a bit one-sided. You know, it's all about Chinese espionage. I mean, presumably the American security services are working just as hard on their espionage, as it were, whether it's within China, but also what you're talking about is within the USA itself. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, the U.S. isn't trying to hide that at all.

In fact, in Trump's second term, the U.S. government has published a number of recruiting videos. These are public. You can find them on the internet. Openly and explicitly aimed at the Chinese domestic population in China saying, hey, here's some problems you may be having. Why don't you come talk to us? Like, here's a secure way to contact the CIA. You know, we're very, very openly recruiting. Just a few little points on that. Starting around 2012, the Chinese government began rounding up and executing CIA assets. So the Chinese government was rolling up the CIA's source network in China.

Very effectively, I can't remember the exact number of people who were executed, but it was a lot. And it turns out that what happened was Iran had compromised the U.S. covert communications system, their COVCOM system, and then had shared that vulnerability, had shared that information with China. So China was able to use the U.S.'s own COVCOM system. to uncover the identities of U.S. assets in the Chinese government and party. And ever since then, or certainly in the years following that, the U.S. was quite blind on what was happening in Zhongnanhai, which is the leadership compound in Beijing. And the U.S. has not really ever recovered.

It's pre-2012 insider insights into how Xi Jinping is thinking. Now, there have been some statements from the U.S. saying, oh, you know, are recruiting commercials are working, that could be true. That could also be basically psychological warfare on China. So it's hard to say. Wow. So, Bethany, we mentioned at the start how you're now living in Taiwan. How does Chinese intelligence manifest itself there? And what concerns you most when you look at Taiwan's position today? Taiwan has been one of the biggest targets of Chinese intelligence for decades. I mean, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, which of course came about as a result of a civil war with the government that is now in Taipei. So the government in Taiwan has been heavily targeted and heavily penetrated by Chinese intelligence. There's a joke that CIA analysts working on China and Taiwan tell each other, which is that if you want Xi Jinping to really believe something, You don't send it via diplomatic channels. You give it to the Taiwanese.

And it'll be on Xi Jinping's desk in 24 hours. And he's more likely to believe it because it was obtained by espionage. Now, how true that is, I don't know, but that is a saying that, you know, some U.S. intelligence officials have. And that tells you about how compromised people believe certain elements of the Taiwanese government and military are. And the current government in Taiwan, which is Lai Jingda, he's the DPP president, he has made combating Chinese espionage a big focus. And indeed, there have been more cases, more prosecutions, more investigations of Chinese espionage cases in Taiwan. And as a result, there's more in the public sphere. We know more about the former military generals who have been compromised and others. Well, it's been really interesting talking to you, Bethany. There's so much more we could have talked about. but it's fascinating to have your overview of Chinese intelligence, and it's made me wonder how much I should be worrying about it.

Well, if you're not handling classified information and if you don't have the ear of top current politicians, you're probably okay. That's very reassuring. Thank you so much, Bethany. Thanks for having me. So that was Bethany Allen, and I've certainly found it fascinating,

finding out a bit more of this stuff, because we all talk about, oh, you know, the dangers of Chinese espionage. And the consequences and significance of that. The old model of the Cold War is very much history now, but the idea of the shadow war just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Bethany made some really interesting and thought-provoking points there. I had no idea, for instance, that the Chinese diaspora was so huge, and we talked about how we cannot be suspicious of every Chinese person outside of China,

and yet at the same time Chinese espionage is very widespread, and is kind of infiltrating every aspect of our lives. But I think the big central point that Bethany made was that the biggest victims of Chinese espionage are the Chinese people themselves. And we mustn't forget that. Thank you for listening. And do join us for the next series of The Spy Who, hosted by Indra Vama. Next time we open the file on Christina Scarbeck, the spy who inspired the first Bond girl. Cut a drift from her occupied homeland, Polish countess Christina Scarbeck must join the fight against the Nazi regime.

The men around her are sceptical, but Scarbeck is not to be underestimated. As the fate of Europe hangs in the balance, Will Churchill's favourite spies survive? Follow the Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow the Spy Who on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of The Spy Who, add. free by joining Audible. From Audible originals, this is the final episode in our series, The Spy Who Outplayed Nixon. This episode of The Spy Who was hosted by me, Charlie Higson.

Our show was produced by Vespucci, with story consultancy by Yellowand for Audible. The senior producer was Holly Aquilina. Our sound designer was Alex Port Felix. The supervising producer was Natalia Rodriguez. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sink. Executive producers for Vespucci were Johnny Galvin and Daniel Turcam. The executive producer for Yellow Ant was Tristan Donovan. Executive producers for Audible were Estelle Doyle and Theodora Laudis.