The spy who ‘loves’ us?

By Alex P. Vidal

“I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretence?”

— Tony Gilroy

IS controversial Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo a Chinese spy, but is someone who happens to “love” us?

One of my most favorite James Bond films was The Spy Who Loved Me starring Roger Moore as British Agent 007 and Barbara Bach as KGB agent, Major Anya Amasova, released in 1977.

I watched the biopic created by Ian Fleming several times in 1977 and 1978 free of admission in the old Cinema, a movie house then located a stone-throw away from our school, Hua Siong College of Iloilo (formerly Iloilo Central Commercial High School), together with my Chinese mestizo classmate, Wellington Chu, whose family owned the theater.

Wellington, who became a part-time movie stuntman, and I fancied the film’s villain and thug, Richard Dawson Kiel, known as “Jaws”. When we had fistfights in school, we mimicked Jaws’ brutality of showing his steel-capped teeth during assassination missions.

In the film, after British and Russian submarines carrying nuclear warheads vanished, James Bond traveled to Egypt, where illicit microfilm plans for a submarine tracking system were being offered for sale.

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Let me share a little background of the film further: In Cairo he met KGB agent Amasova, who was on the same mission. After their contact was murdered, they fought Jaws, a steel-toothed villain in the pay of industrialist Karl Stromberg.

MI6 and the KGB ordered Bond and Amasova to work together. In Sardinia, they encountered Stromberg and suspected that he was behind the submarine disappearances.

After being chased by Jaws and Stromberg’s henchmen, they escaped underwater in Bond’s amphibious Lotus Esprit. Onboard a US submarine, the spies learned more about Stromberg’s underwater base, Atlantis, and about the supertanker The Liparus.

When their sub was captured by The Liparus, a huge vessel, that “swallows” submarines, Bond discovered Stromberg’s plan to trigger a nuclear war.

Bond led the captured sailors against The Liparus’ crew and defeated Stromberg. Atlantis sank but Jaws escaped.

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In present time Philippines, Guo was alleged by Senator Risa Hontiveros to have links to illegal activities by Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) following the 2023 and 2024 raids in Bamban.

Her Filipino citizenship has been questioned due to inconsistencies in her documents and testimony.

According to POLITIKO, as Guo’s nationality comes under scrutiny, online sleuths have found images of full page ads congratulating her on World News’ May 12, 2022 issue.

World News is a Chinese language paper with an office in Binondo, Manila.

Guo was hailed as the “first Chinese mayor in the Philippines” in one of the ads. A Google translation of the text, however, labeled her as Chinese American.

“Congratulations to Guo Jian, a Xiangxian of Chaodai, for becoming the first female mayor in the Philippines and the first Chinese mayor!,” the text of the ad read, according to Google Translate as reported by POLITIKO.

Guo was described in the ad as a “businesswoman and a novice politician” who “was elected the town’s first female mayor and the first Chinese-American mayor in the town’s history with 16,503 votes.”

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Most of the congratulatory messages for Guo came from groups in Chaodai, a village in Jinjiang City, Fujian province in China.

While the ads have rattled some netizens, POLITIKO reported that those claiming to be knowledgeable in Mandarin said the ad could not be considered proof of Guo’s Chinese nationality.

“The Chinese in the mainland really do have this habit of claiming anyone with Chinese ancestry as their own and crediting their success to their common heritage,” one social media user said.

“(T)he newspaper (worldnews.net.ph) is a local Chinese paper based in the Philippines, not China. Notice that the text is in traditional form (Taiwan) and not simplified (China). In short, this does not prove anything re Alice Guo’s citizenship, just her ethnicity. But of course, we still need more info on her to come out to know for sure,” another netizen said.

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As this developed, we came across a report in the United States about an incident a few years earlier involving a  suspected Chinese intelligence operative who developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.

It triggered alarm in the intelligence community as the alleged operation reportedly offered a rare window into how Beijing has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles.

The woman at the center of the operation, a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage, according to report.

Through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, Fang was able to gain proximity to political power, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and one former elected official, it was reported.

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Even though U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information, the case “was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up” in the intelligence network, a current senior U.S. intelligence official said.

Private but unclassified information about government officials—such as their habits, preferences, schedules, social networks, and even rumors about them — is a form of political intelligence. Collecting such information is a key part of what foreign intelligence agencies do.

Let’s hope the Tarlac mayor isn’t a Chinese spy like Fang Fang. If she is—or has been—a spy, she has no business staying in the Philippines and holding an elective position as her continued stay might cause irreparable damage in the national security, now reeling from the repeated firing of water canons by the Chinese Navy of our ships in the disputed South China sea.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)