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I'm James Bond novelist Charlie Higson, and this is The Spy Who, an audible original.

Hiding in plain sight, Chinese super spy Larry Chin infiltrated the very heart of US intelligence

for 37 years.

His breach would set in motion China's meteoric rise to global power and shape the course

of geopolitics today.

But this wasn't just one spy.

It marked the beginning of something much larger,

the explosive expansion of China's intelligence machine,

a machine that would embed itself far beyond the shadows of the Cold War.

In today's episode, we're going to pull back the curtain on decades of espionage.

And for this, I'm joined by investigative journalist Bethany Allen.

Bethany has spent 10 years exposing the world of Chinese intelligence,

and what she's uncovered will make you rethink how power moves through the world of Chinese intelligence, and what she's uncovered will make you rethink how power

moves through the world. Today, we're going deep. The history, the tradecraft, and what Beijing's

spy game actually looks like right now. Welcome, Bethany. Thank you so much for joining me. Can we just start with your own

experiences? Because you've had your own run-in with the Chinese government, haven't you? Can you tell us

about that? Sure. So I've worked on China-related issues for almost 20 years, about 12 of those as a journalist. In 2018, I was hired by Agents France Press to be their China correspondent. I waited six months for a journalist visa and then heard informally or unofficially, but officially via China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

that I would not be granted a journalist visa.

And to quote them, they said to AFP,

if you want to hire for this position, put forward a different name.

...