On this episode of China Uncensored,
the inside story of a Chinese official
who risked his life to defect.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
Life is tough for Chinese communist officials.
Long hours of hard work,
monitoring dissidents and critical voices.
But Chinese officials are only human,
and sometimes they simply get fed up with it.
I sat down with Chen Yonglin.
He was the consul for political affairs
at the Chinese consulate here in Sydney.
But one day in 2005,
he decided he’d had enough of being forced
to spy on overseas Chinese.
So he walked out of the consulate forever—
and put his life on the line to tell the world about
how the Chinese Communist Party really operates.
Thank you for joining us, so tell us,
why did you defect from China
and seek political asylum in Australia?
This is complicated.
I'd been thinking a long time
for leaving the Chinese government.
My father was persecuted there
during the Cultural Revolution
by the Chinese regime,
and also when I joined the Tiananmen
Democracy Movement in 1989
and witnessed the Massacre event,
and also in the past several years I can see that,
I feel there is no future for China,
and I don't want to live in that environment.
And also I don't want my child being brainwashed as I was.
Before you defected, you were doing things that,
you felt were morally questionable.
I used to be certain kind of proud
to being a Chinese diplomat,
it seems I'm joining the policy decision to contribute
to the national interest.
But when I arrived in Sydney,
I found this is not the case, and I found Chinese diplomat
is a shameful career, shame sameful job,
and because what the diplomats are doing
is not trying to contribute to the country,
it's actually, try to join certain kind of persecution
against dissidents, dissident groups.
Did you face any danger or retaliation
from the Communist Party?
Yes, actually, they are a lot of risk.
At the beginning they found us and tried to
take us back to the consulate.
Probably they tried to kidnap me back to China,
and said that this guy voluntarily returned to China.
They tried to take something like this.
I believe I remember hearing you say
that you had a source who told you there was
some kind of assassination squad, sent after you?
Yeah, so from my colleagues in Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and of course sometimes I can get sources from other department,
which some friend I make when the delegation visit from China.
What did they tell you?
They implied that there's a team of MSS,
and they are going to doing some mission so that,
well targeting, my family.
So they went after your family?
They targeting my family,
actually of course the main target is me.
Wow.
Are you in danger right now?
If I do too much, it's hard to say.
If they thought that I'm playing a leading role in some area,
they may try to hurt my family or harm myself in a certain way.
And if you're too quiet?
If I'm too quiet, same thing.
Too quiet, they can also take action.
So you need to be just loud enough.
Yeah, that's right.
Just loud enough, and do as much as I can.
So how did your family and friends react to you defecting?
When I left the consulate, I have prepared that these friends
or relatives will all cut the relation, the connection with me.
But for my family, my wife and my child,
we just want pursue a life here,
in the freedom world.
How does the Chinese consulate silence critical voices
within the Chinese-Australian community?
There's many ways to silence the dissident's voice,
there's many ways, and one is actually they trying to infiltrate
the Chinese community organizations,
and it's generally via money,
use money to influence these communities.
And also try to isolate the dissident's voice...
And Falun Gong at that time, from 2001-2005,
when I was in the consulate, was actually the main target,
and to make the Chinese community
generally resent the Falun Gong practitioner,
and it's very effective, obviously,
because the propaganda to defame the Falun Gong totally.
And I understand after you defected,
you quit the Chinese Communist Party.
Can you tell us a bit about that?
At that time, not many Chinese have the courage
to declare publicly that they quit from the CCP
because in the communist system,
you can only join, usually, or expel,
there's no resign or quit.
It's like a bad party, and you can't leave.
You can't leave, you're controlled,
you joined the Party, it's like cult, evil cult, biggest,
you can see the largest evil cult group.
That's funny, they usually call the Falun Gong the evil cult.
Usually if you read the Chinese Communist Party propaganda,
you should read the opposite meaning that is correct,
so if CCP say that this is the evil party,
the evil group, Falun Gong is evil,
that means Falun Gong is really good.
How do Chinese-Australians feel about
the Chinese Communist Party's presence in Australia?
They feel very scared, obviously...
Yeah, the feeling is awful, because many Chinese immigrants,
they have very, the family, usually,
they suffered from persecution from the CCP.
They came to Australia, they feel relaxed and feel safe,
but in the past decade, the Chinese-Australian feel
that their lifestyle been threatened.
So how do you feel about the growing influence
of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia?
I feel very bad, extremely bad,
because my child will live here,
and this is our new home.
Because of Chinese influences,
Communist influences is here,
and we feel that, we're still in China.
This place is turning red, and it's also against my will,
that I don't want my child be brainwashed as I was.
And now we can see that a lot of Chinese propaganda here,
and if you can see that the only Sam Dastyari case,
even the MP's speak for China's interest...
And I feel that there could be one day that
the whole community will be controlled by the CCP…
Is there anything that can be done to stop
the Communist Party's growing influence around the world?
That rely on the Western democracy;
they should know that China has never given up
the Cold War of thinking,
the ideological, the propaganda, they just-
They have the Cold War mentality.
Yeah, totally.
And they just stay low,
and as Deng Xiaoping said,
hiding our capacity, biding our time.
So when time is proper,
they will launch the fierce attack
at the Western ideology again.
What do you think is the most important thing
about the Chinese Communist Party
that the West doesn't understand?
The Chinese Communist Party is very cunning, deceptive.
All the propaganda are lies,
but in the disguise of a beautiful looking,
and it's like the Red Ballet,
the Red Detachment of Women.
It's fascist aesthetics, looks beautiful,
but it's all about hatred and brutality,
and that will actually influence the public
about the basic human rights values.
Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. Chen.
This was a very enlightening interview.
My pleasure, thank you.
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