Although the Senate and House of Representatives’ respective hearings have done well to expose her identity and involvement in criminality, it would be a documentary by Al Jazeera that truly unraveled the mystery behind disgraced former mayor, Alice Guo.
In an episode of its 101 East docu-series, Al Jazeera featured detained Chinese national and admitted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spy, She Zhijiang and his incredible rise-and-fall story. Once a prominent business mogul with various holdings across Southeast Asia, She has been detained in Thailand since 2022 awaiting extradition back to China.
While the arrest only came in 2022, She had already been convicted by a Shandong court of running an illegal lottery business in the Philippines that targeted Chinese online users as early as 2014. The reason the businessman enjoyed his freedom throughout those years is allegedly because of a deal he made with a recruiter from China’s Ministry of State Security – the country’s civilian intelligence agency.
She was promised that his arrest warrant in China would “disappear” if he used his business dealings to gather intelligence and help bolster the PRC’s influence in the region. In short, the business mogul was recruited to be an asset for China’s espionage network.
China’s Ministry of State Security arranged for She to assume a Cambodian identity, complete with Cambodian citizenship, to do business in that country. The mogul was even invited to a state dinner hosted by former President Rodrigo Duterte for visiting PRC President Xi Jinping in Manila as Tang Kriangkai – the fraudulent identity of a Cambodian businessman.
In Myanmar, She’s company – Yatai International Holdings Group – entered into a business deal with a local warlord to build a US$15 billion city near the country’s border with Thailand. The Yatai New City soon became a hotspot for criminal activities, including human trafficking and torture of foreign nationals working at the site; this bears strong parallels with what is also being reported in POGO hubs in the Philippines.
However, She’s relationship with his CCP handlers changed when he was asked to leave Myanmar to join United Front efforts in Taiwan. The businessman had refused this call from the Ministry of State Security, which drew the ire of China.
In retaliation, She was invited to a banquet hosted by the CCP in Bangkok in 2021 which unbeknownst to him, was actually a sting operation that would lead to the businessman’s arrest for his earlier charges on running illegal casinos in China. According to She, he was targeted by Beijing because he “knew too much” about the extent of CCP espionage activities in the continent.
She’s arrest paves the way for his extradition back to China, which poses an existential threat to his life given that the Beijing government could ultimately see his actions as treason. Such desperation could also be viewed as a reason for the businessman’s motivation to talk to Al Jazeera and divulge his story as a CCP spy before it becomes too late.
To prove his spy credentials, She gave Al Jazeera access to an alleged dossier of CCP intelligence agents working in the region. One file in the dossier that caught the Qatar-based media outfit’s attention was that of Guo Hua Ping, infamously known as Alice Guo, the disgraced former mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac.
Guo’s mysterious ascent as a local government official in the Philippines, despite having very dubious credentials as a Filipino citizen and her glaring inability to speak the Filipino language properly, led many to suspect that she is a sleeper agent sent by the CCP to the country.
Amidst those suspicions, Guo adamantly proclaimed that while her father is a Chinese national, her mother is allegedly a Filipina and that she herself was born in the Philippines – a prerequisite to running for public office in the country. However, in the dossier shown to Al Jazeera it was revealed that Guo was born in China’s Fujian province and that her mother is a Chinese national as well named Lin Wen Yi.
When the media outlet visited the disgraced mayor’s listed address in Fujian, it turned out to be the headquarters for the local branch of the CCP. If the files are authentic, this revelation leaves no question about Guo’s loyalty and her true identity as a CCP intelligence asset.
Further into the documentary, She Zhijiang told Al Jazeera that he would communicate with Guo previously with his “handler” from the Ministry of State Security acting as a conduit. According to the jailed business mogul, Guo had asked him for donations to fund her campaign for the Bamban mayoralty.
Asked to pass on any message to the embattled ex-Bamban mayor, She told Guo: “If you don’t want to be eliminated; tell the world the truth.”
She Zhijiang’s revelations could be the smoking gun that Philippine authorities need to pin down Guo Hua Ping and uncover a genuine network of Chinese spies operating in the country. However, it is important to first verify She’s claims.
Supporters of the former Mayor Guo downplay the Al Jazeera documentary given that She, the subject of the feature, is an indicted criminal himself. It could also be the case that both Guo and She are members of Chinese criminal triads, rather than government agents acting on behalf of the PRC.
However, it begs to be questioned what a Chinese businessman operating in Myanmar and Cambodia would stand to gain by accusing a person in the Philippines of being a spy. Given the influence She had among Chinese economic and political circles, particular his prominent involvement in the PRC’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, it is also difficult to dismiss him as an irrelevant or inconsequential person.
Ultimately, this matter is for the concurrent hearings conducted by the Senate and the House of Representatives to uncover and for Philippine security forces to act on if in case there are any legitimate national security threats. But with the story that is slowly unraveling, it deserves to be asked: “Has our government truly been infiltrated by foreign actors?”