Alice Guo an incidental spy

We will not belabor the testimony and narrative of Alice Guo in the last two weeks of the Senate hearings which has become more incredible and contradictory. She is unable to be consistent with her personal and family history, her businesses, and the source of her wealth. As she is intelligent and eloquent enough in both Tagalog and English, we can only conclude that she was badly briefed/debriefed by her handlers. I believe the Communist China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) is more competent to have this kind of embarrassment that is getting the attention of the whole world, that they will deny involvement and not join this fray.

Alice Guo is actually an incidental spy. I was mulling whether to call her an accidental spy or a reluctant spy, but the most appropriate term is really an incidental spy, as spying was her secondary/ancillary job. Incidental, because she is really a creation of the Chinese Triad for the purpose of legally fronting for their corporations, businesses, and assets. She was most appropriate because of her language skills and partial connections to the Philippines. She was expected to assimilate into Philippine society and protect the activities of the Triad, both legal and illegal, including the POGO, cyber scams, online gambling, and other activities.

Her Philippine citizenship was also important to be able to legally acquire Philippine properties. Her original job description did not include spying, information gathering, and political influencing. These came later when China had geo-political ambitions on the Philippines and expanding globally their economic and military ambitions.

Any intelligence analyst who had kept track of China in the last 20 years would have figured out Alice Guo after two days of the Senate Hearings. It is common knowledge that the MSS has significant influence on the Chinese Triad. They are well controlled in mainland China but are allowed leeway in foreign countries as they are useful for some intelligence undertakings. POGOs are prohibited in China and cyber crimes/cyber scams are closely controlled, but are allowed unhampered by the Chinese government in foreign countries that allow them to operate. So, they are in Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other developing countries. Once in a while or more often now, the MSS orders these Triad facilities to do influencing, spying, and other intelligence work for the Chinese government and they are obliged and cannot refuse.

In the last 10 years China’s spying activities have made headlines, with the raid in their New York clandestine offices, their buying up of companies in Italy and other European countries, the recent incident of a Chinese-Australian member of the Parliament, and the use of Chinese-controlled companies in intimidating overseas Chinese citizens who were considered opposition or dissidents. As long as the Chinese Communist Party’s top honchos continue with their global ambitions, Chinese intelligence gathering and influencing will continue, including weather balloons, satellite communications, and internet/social media accessing. On top of these are the massive Chinese propaganda offensives in all media with troll farms in social media. Technically, there is already an ongoing cold war.

The governments and the people of most countries in the world are aware of China’s ambitions and actions and are reacting. This is why China is also doing the soft selling of economic/financial investments, infrastructures, and aid. There have been some pushback as some of the Belt and Road projects were costly and not viable, resulting in debt default and China foreclosing some infrastructure assets of developing countries.

The Alice Guo incident in the Philippines may just be the tip of the iceberg and there could be more China spying which could be more deliberate than incidental. The Philippine government should continue the pushback on Chinese spying activities in line with the pushback of China’s encroachment on Philippine territorial waters. While the MSS cannot be implicated in this Guo case due to its solid deniability, Guo has to be stripped of her official government position and her illegal assets confiscated. So should all of the assets of all illegal POGOs.