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The 1950s series I Led 3 Lives aired for three seasons, but is mostly forgotten today. Almost certainly because its real-life tales, based on the memoirs of ad-man turned Communist Party of America infiltrator Herbert Philbrick, show just how pervasive the threat of communist sympathisers really was. McCarthy may have been paranoid, but he wasn’t wrong.
What’s most notable about Philbrick’s tales is that communists weren’t all wild-eyed hippies, but just as often apparently ordinary suburban families. They were sleeper agents hiding in plain sight.
They still are.
Polite, young and even quietly patriotic to her adopted country, Zheng Siru presents as a hard-working bakery assistant serving coffees and buns to busy Canberrans.
But federal authorities allege the “peaceful life” Ms Zheng insists she leads is a facade – and that the 31-year-old with a shy smile is a Chinese Communist Party agent working surreptitiously to monitor members of Australia’s Chinese community.
These are all allegations, of course, but the feds are confident enough to take them to court.
Ms Zheng on Wednesday sat in the ACT Magistrates Court, charged as an alleged foreign spy together with a 25-year-old Chinese man who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Police accused the pair of collecting information on a Canberra Buddhist group for Beijing’s Public Security Bureau with another Chinese woman who was arrested in August. All three face charges of reckless foreign interference, which carries a maximum 15-year prison term.
The spying (allegedly!) is part of the CCP’s crackdown on diaspora Chinese, especially religious groups.
The Australian approached Ms Zheng at her central Canberra workplace on August 15, as part of this newspaper’s inquiries into the alleged targeting of the Canberra branch of the Guan Yin Citta Buddhist Association, which the Chinese Communist Party considers an “evil cult”.
“It’s better for everyone to keep quiet now,” she said at the time.
Asked whether she worked as a spy for China and whether she was a police suspect in the case, Ms Zheng said the question was “over the line”.
“I understand you are doing your job … but for me I just want a peaceful life,“ she said.
None of which is actually answering the question.
Details of the allegations against Ms Zheng were not aired in court.
Her lawyer, Travis Jackson, said he had been handed a 57-page statement of facts by the police but “whether it’s actually fact or fiction is the question”.
Police alleged the 25-year-old man, who was given the pseudonym “Joseph Vance”, had since May 28, 2022 tasked associates to collect information and had engaged in conduct for a “foreign entity” to support the intelligence work of the People’s Republic of China.
The suppression order was requested by Australian Federal Police, in order to protect “other people connected to the case”.
Still, this is the ACT legal system, so of course judges are bailing alleged spies.
The arrests were made as part of an AFP-ASIO operation called Operation Autumn-Shield.
They came after the first Chinese woman charged over the matter was granted bail in October by an ACT magistrate, who acknowledged there was an outside risk she might flee the country.
Prosecutors at the time argued the woman, who has significant “unexplained wealth” and a China-based husband who works for the Public Security Bureau, could have a fresh passport issued by Beijing allowing her to abscond. But the court ruled that the likelihood she would abscond or interfere with witnesses was not sufficient to deny her liberty.
Gotta give them the golden opportunity to skip the country, after all.
