Latest Batch Of Chinese Spies Wear The Collar Of Catholic Priest
Attache-carrying businessmen in pinstriped suits are ripping off North American enterprises by first stealing then carrying trade secrets back to the Peoples Republic of China.

The FBI believes that as many as 3,500 Chinese "front companies" are involved in espionage for the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

While North America is fighting Islamic terrorism, China will be America’s greatest counterintelligence problem during the next 10 to 15 years.

After the United States and Russia, the PRC can boast the world’s third-largest intelligence apparatus, still growing to spy on governmental, military and high technology secrets.

While intel agencies are on to industrial espionage conducted by Chinese agents, the latest batch of Chinese spies would give The Da Vinci Code a run for its money.

Not all Chinese spies look like the bustling Wall Street set. These days Chinese spies are wearing the collar of the humble parish priest.

"China’s foreign intelligence service Guoanbu is taking advantage of the thaw with the Vatican to send government-approved Chinese priests abroad," reports the Paris-based Intelligence Online. "They are, in fact, intelligence operatives, as European counter-intelligence agencies have come to realize in recent months."

It all started with changes in the balance of power between the underground, unofficial Catholic Church and the official, communist-dominated Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association following recent talks between envoys from Rome to Beijing.

There should be broad hints for the Vatican in a Chinese counterintelligence that views unofficial Catholics as potential threats, similar to the Falun Gong sect.

"The government denounced the Vatican’s appointment of 40 bishops in the unofficial church in February." (World Tribune.com, July 31, 2006).

In China, the occult is in, Christianity is not. Indeed, scores of Catholic clergy have been beaten, imprisoned and murdered.

The official church in China is headed by Fu Tieshan and Liu Bainian, media-dubbed the "Red Pope".

Among other things, the Red Pope seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur.

"China’s socialist system comes from God. We should all protect it and obey it. This is what the Bible tells us to do," Liu announced in March 2006.

There can be little doubt that Liu, likely also believes that the Bible authorized Chinese authorities to remove organs from living victims, too.

The leader of China’s state-controlled Catholic church said he suspects the Vatican appointed an anti-Communist Hong Kong bishop to be cardinal because the Pope wanted to play a role in the Communist Party’s demise.

"Why would you appoint someone who doesn’t support communism as a cardinal?" Liu said in an interview in Beijing with Hong Kong Cable TV.

The Chinese Communist state, apparently still bristles at the memory of Pope John Paul 11 and his courageous fight against communism.

"Is isn't like Poland? Didn’t the church play a big role in Poland?" Liu asked.

Perhaps papal envoys Archbishop Claudio Celli, of the Vatican property office, who is in charge of relations with China and Monsignor Gianfranco Rota Graziosi, a senior aide in the Vatican state secretariat, should add spy alert to their envoy work.