Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World

Spies and Lies a groundbreaking exposé of elite influence operations by China's little-known Ministry of State Security. Revealing for the first time how the Chinese Communist Party has tasked its spies to deceive the world, it challenges the conventional account of China's past, present, and future.

Mere years ago, Western governments chose to cooperate with China in the hope that it would liberalize, setting aside concerns about human rights abuses, totalitarian ambitions, and espionage. But the axiom of China's 'peaceful rise' has been fundamentally challenged by the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian behavior under Xi Jinping. How did we get it wrong for so long?

Spies and Lies pierces the Ministry of State Security's walls of secrecy and reveals how agents of the Chinese Communist Party have spent decades manipulating the West's attitudes—from an Australian prime minister to the US Congress, prominent think tanks, and the FBI—about China's rise. Through interviews with defectors and intelligence officers, classified Chinese intelligence documents, and original investigations, the book unmasks dozens of active Chinese intelligence officers along with global MSS fronts, including travel agencies, writers' associations, publishing houses, alumni associations, newspapers, a Buddhist temple, a record company, and charities.

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Release date

Audiobook: 22 August 2023