The Story of a Chinese Spy Who Pretended to Be a Woman

When Beijing opera singer Shi Pei Pu met French embassy employee Bernard Boursicot at a party in 1964, he convinced her that she was a woman and they began an affair. They both eventually were convicted of espionage. The story went on to inspire the Broadway musical Madame Butterfly.

The case illustrates how Beijing can target local and state-level politicians who may someday play a role on the national stage. Axios’ investigation reveals how the suspected operative gained proximity to political power.

Shi Pei Pu

In a story that was at once romantic, scandalous, and complicated, Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu enchanted Europe with her elegant singing and graceful stage presence in the 1960s. But behind the mask was a secretive, deceitful spy who used her feminine allure to seduce a French diplomat and then pass documents for the Communist Party in Beijing. Eventually, their complicated affair was uncovered and the two were arrested on charges of espionage. It was the first time that a woman’s sexual prowess was linked to international spying and became a catalyst for discussions about gender identity and deception.

The saga began when Shi met Bernard Boursicot at a diplomatic party in 1964. A talented actor and Beijing opera singer, Shi knew fluent French and taught the language to members of the diplomatic community. The pair fell in love and began meeting regularly for “lessons about Chairman Mao.” In 1986, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire caught wind of the relationship and convicted both Shi and Boursicot of espionage. Boursicot had passed information about the embassy to his lover, and Shi had purchased a child from a poverty-stricken family in China to be her son. Medical examinations revealed that Shi had male sexual organs and had been a man all along.

Despite this revelation, Boursicot maintained that he had never known that Shi was a man and continued to refer to her as his wife. In prison, he was convinced that the medical examinations were doctored to prove his innocence and that he had only been passing information to help his country. After his release, Boursicot stayed in contact with Shi but they no longer dated. Shi died in 2009 at the age of 70.

Shi’s tale is a fascinating example of how international affairs can be linked to personal relationships and how political climates shape cultural beliefs. It has also drawn attention to questions of gender identity and sparked discussion about the role of women in society. The couple’s affair also inspired the 1988 Tony Award-winning Broadway play M. Butterfly and the movie of the same name in 1993.

Ma Wei

A machinist’s mate on the amphibious assault ship USS Essex has been charged with leaking national security information to a Chinese intelligence officer. The Justice Department says Wei allegedly provided his contact with photos of Navy ships and their movements, as well as documents and blueprints detailing the technical layout, systems and departments on those ships. Wei’s contact, identified in the indictment as “Conspirator A,” reportedly paid Wei for this information. It’s believed Wei made $10,000 to $15,000 a year for his services. The case is the first espionage charge ever filed in the district covering San Diego and only the fifth such one nationwide in six years.

China is a country that has long been an adversary of the United States. Its government is notorious for conducting espionage, including selling classified information to U.S. agencies and corporations, as well as stealing trade secrets and personal data from American citizens and federal employees. In September 2015, a Chinese national working for the Office of Personnel Management was arrested for breaching the system and stealing the private information of more than 200,000 federal employees.

In the early 2000s, a New York Times columnist named David Ignatius wrote a series about a real-life CIA whistleblower called Ma Wei who was alleged to have passed classified CIA and FBI information to her handlers in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Her deception led to her being sentenced to prison for 20 years on espionage charges. Ma, who had a master’s degree in chemical engineering and worked at two different technology companies, was also known for her fundraising for political campaigns. She had been an active member of a pro-democracy group in Queens and regularly sent information about the organization to her MSS handlers. She was also a contributor to a newsletter published by the National Committee to Promote Democracy in China. In addition, she had attended several conferences sponsored by the group. These activities earned her the attention of MSS agents, who recruited her for espionage work. She began sending information to her handlers in the early 2000s.

Chi Mak

Chi Mak was one of several Chinese-born engineers who have been convicted of sharing information about American defense technologies with the government of their home country. Mak, who was naturalized as a United States citizen in the seventies, moved to California and worked on power-distribution systems for naval propulsion. He was convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy to violate export control laws and making false statements to federal investigators in 2007. The judge sentenced him to 24 1/2 years in prison.

FBI agents hounded Mak for months before arresting him in January 2006. They had been tracking his phone calls and following him on errands, but his OPSEC was weak; he sometimes threw documents he had collected in the trash (but only after removing sensitive parts from them).

At a six-week trial, prosecutors described Chi Mak as an experienced spy who had begun his career in Hong Kong. The prosecution also alleged that Mak passed information to the PRC that helped it develop its own version of the Aegis weapons system for Navy ships. Mak denied that claim.

During the trial, defense attorneys argued that much of the information Mak collected was not classified. They noted that it was often made public at industry conferences attended by engineers from around the world, including China. In addition, they argued that the technology Chi Mak tried to pass to the PRC was obsolete and could not be used against US combat ships.

In the weeks leading up to his arrest, Mak copied the defense documents he planned to send to the PRC onto CD-ROM disks. He then delivered them to his brother, Tai Mak, who, with the help of their son, Yui “Billy” Mak, encrypted them for his uncle before hiding them in his luggage for a surreptitious trip to the PRC.

During my visit to FCI Lompoc, Mak sat down in his cell and denied that he ever spied for the PRC. He said he came to the United States in the seventies not to work as a sleeper agent but to advance his career and see the world. He said he would not be returning to the PRC after his release from prison.

Xu Yanjun

When Xu Yanjun was caught in Belgium in 2018 and extradited to the United States, he became the first Ministry of State Security officer ever lured out of China and prosecuted for committing economic espionage. A deputy division director for the agency, Xu had targeted American aviation companies and recruited their employees to travel to China to steal their proprietary information for the Chinese government.

Xu worked for a special unit within the MSS that focused on stealing aviation technology, including advanced aircraft engines. He used a number of methods to obtain the secret data, from hacking into company computer infrastructures to corrupting insiders and stealing their personal information for his co-conspirators in cyber units back in Beijing. He also sought to steal GE Aviation’s composite aircraft engine fan, which is so innovative that no other company has duplicated it.

The FBI’s case against Xu was based on evidence that included messages in his iCloud account, which investigators discovered after he was arrested. Those messages showed that he helped coordinate a campaign against multiple aviation technology companies, including Honeywell, Capstone Turbine and Safran, by sending malware to their computers and directing their insiders to install it. Once the malware was in place, Xu instructed his assets to destroy the malware and to monitor the success of the attack and its cover-ups.

In addition to his iCloud messages, the FBI’s investigation into Xu’s crime also included evidence from his mobile device and the hard drives of his laptop and desktop. Those devices contained emails between Xu and his assets, as well as photos of aviation workers that he had taken of them in their hotel rooms with the goal of recruiting them to travel to China. The photos were saved on Xu’s laptop as screenshots that he would then transfer to his phone and send to the MSS agents working for him.

As a result of the plethora of information collected by investigators, Xu was found guilty in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit economic espionage and attempting to steal trade secrets from American companies. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions in 2022.