Narrative Non-Fiction

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Spies and Lies

A Groundbreaking Exposé of China’s Clandestine Operations

Alex Joske

September 2022

9781743797990 POL036000 $22.99 | Paperback 304 pages | 6 × 9.2 in Text only

A forensic and gripping examination of China’s intelligence work globally.

Spies and Lies by Alex Joske is a groundbreaking exposé of elite influence operations by China’s little-known Ministry of State Security. Revealing for the first time how the Chinese Communist Party has tasked its spies to deceive the world, it challenges the conventional account of China’s past, present and future.

Through interviews with defectors and intelligence officers, classified Chinese intelligence documents and original investigations, Alex Joske unmasks dozens of active Chinese intelligence officers along with global MSS fronts including travel agencies, writers associations, publishing houses, alumni associations, newspapers, Buddhist retreats, a record company and charities. This book pierces the Ministry of State Security’s walls of secrecy and reveals how agents of the Chinese Communist Party have spent nearly 40 years manipulating Western leaders’ attitudes about China’s rise.

Spies and Lies is an extraordinary insight into the most successful influence operation in history, one which has fooled the West for years, and indispensable reading.

Alex Joske was the youngest-ever analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and is known for breaking open new fields of research through meticulous Chinese-language investigations grounded in authoritative and independently verifiable sources. His research in the hotly contested field of Chinese Communist Party influence and espionage efforts has withstood intense scrutiny and earned the respect and interest of governments and policymakers globally.

• Australia’s leading expert on the Chinese Communist

Party’s influence and intelligence operations—with global recognition from key voices in media and politics, particularly in the US.

• Alex was the youngest-ever analyst at the Australian

Strategic Policy Institute, publishing the most-read reports in

ASPI’s history.

If only this book were a work of fiction, we could all sleep better at night. But the revelations by Joske will keep you up all night reading, learning and marvelling at how Beijing’s agents pulled the wool over the eyes of the world for so long. Spies and Lies is a brilliant book.

– Matt Pottinger, former US Deputy National Security Advisor

Alex Joske is one of the most innovative and impressive voices on China policy today. When Alex speaks, governments need to listen.

– Mike Gallagher, Member of Congress

Joske, only a couple of years removed from university, has quickly risen to prominence on issues of Chinese government influence.

– David Barboza, The Wire China, formerly New York Times

Alex Joske is one of the leading researchers on the subject of Chinese Communist Party influence and interference around the world and he is already a trusted authority on the matter for journalists, academics, lawmakers and government officials in Washington, DC. His book will be both an important contribution to the field as well as a popular success in several countries. I can’t wait to read it.

– Josh Rogin, Washington Post