A person claiming to be a Chinese Communist Party think tank official reportedly offered to pay for a journalist’s sources if it led to information on policy decisions.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, an Axios reporter who covers China, reported that someone named Aaron Shen, who claimed to be the assistant director of international liaison at the China Center for Contemporary World Studies, which is the in-house think tank of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, was specifically seeking the names of her sources and reporting on the incoming Biden administration’s views on China.
Allen-Ebrahimian was one of two reporters, along with Zach Dorfman, who broke the story that a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang, targeted U.S. politicians such as California Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Shen, who sent her a LinkedIn request a couple of weeks ago, said he was interested in “the policy standpoints and considerations on the issue of punishing and blocking certain entities and individuals of China by the means of imposing sanctions, enforcing long-arm jurisdiction, putting pressures on allies, and so on.”
After asking to switch to the encrypted messaging app Signal instead of on LinkedIn, Shen also said, “If the contributions can really reflect real situation and meet our demand well, the remuneration will be generously paid without doubt.”
Prior to his request for specific sources, Shen asked Allen-Ebrahimian how she was able to gather “first-hand information” during the coronavirus pandemic, and he said he was “troubled by lacking channels and sources to gather the first-hand in-depth information we need for our research and consulting work.” Shen also said that the think tank, which functions as the IDCPC’s foreign affairs wing of the party, places significant value on “information sources” with “authority” that could “reflect true situation and trends of the U.S.-China relations.”
Allen-Ebrahimian said she did not provide him with any of her sources, and he deleted his LinkedIn account once she sent requests for comment and questions about his identity and intentions to his email address and LinkedIn private messages.
