BEIJING, Nov. 2 -- November 1st of this year marks the seventh anniversary of the promulgation of the Counterespionage Law of the People's Republic of China. In recent years, foreign spies and intelligence agencies have attempted to jeopardize China’s national security in more non-traditional security areas, and a large number of such cases have been uncovered under the investigation of China’s national security agency.
Recently, a case was publicized, in which a non-governmental organization (NGO), funded by some foreign ones, set up maritime garbage monitoring points in China, collected and sent abroad the monitoring data and other sensitive information.
It is reported that those monitoring points basically covered China's coastline from north to south, which involved the waters of the South China Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Bohai Sea. Among them, 22 monitoring points were close to military targets, which directly threaten China's military security.
After investigation, it is revealed that the organization has complicated overseas backgrounds. It has continuously received funding from more than 20 overseas institutions since 2014, and the funding from overseas just from 2018 to 2019 reached more than two million RMB Yuan. According to the procedures established by overseas institutions, the organization set up maritime garbage monitoring points in coastal areas of China, and then formulated and published China's maritime garbage distribution map and relevant research reports.
The staff of China’s national security agency pointed out that maritime data leakage could threaten China's military security, and the so-called monitoring report from this organization also deliberately discredited China's environmental protection work. According to the assessment by the PLA Navy, the 22 military-related monitoring points have posed a real threat to China's maritime military security. The information they collected on latitude and longitude, environment, geology and ocean flow could easily be exploited by foreign intelligence and military agencies, posing a potential threat to China.
In addition, the "monitoring report" released by the organization declared that the amount and weight density of waste it detected were 20 times and 8 times compared with that of China's official data, respectively. These fabricated data were also utilized out of ulterior motives to blacken and hype up China's environmental protection cause, bringing about negative impacts on China's international image.
The national security agency has punished the organization in accordance with the relevant regulations of the Counterespionage Law and the Implementation Rules of the Counterespionage Law. At the same time, the relevant organizations and personnel should be alert to such infiltration and exploitation from overseas organizations or personnel with ulterior motives, and stamp out any act that endangers national security.
