[FreeBeacon] Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned away a high-ranking Chinese defector who sought political asylum after the communist police chief sought refuge in a U.S. consulate in southwestern China four years ago.Critics say Clinton's handling of the defection of Wang Lijun, a close aide to a regional Communist Party leader, was a blunder and lost opportunity for U.S. intelligence to gain secrets about the leaders of America's emerging Asian adversary.
Instead of sheltering Wang and granting him political asylum, Clinton agreed to turn him over to Chinese authorities in Beijing, and claimed he was not qualified for American sanctuary because of his past role as a police chief accused of corruption.
However, the defector’s case highlights Clinton's policy of seeking to preserve U.S. ties with China's communist leadership instead of pursuing much-needed intelligence gathering on China at a time when Beijing is emerging as an increasingly threatening power.
Clinton defended the betrayal of Wang in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices. The former secretary and current Democratic presidential nominee revealed in the book that the U.S. government agreed to keep secret all details of Wang’s sensational defection attempt in order to help Beijing's Communist rulers avoid public embarrassment over a major internal power struggle and high-level corruption scandal months ahead of then-Chinese leader Hu Jintao's transfer of power to current supreme leader Xi Jinping.
Details of the mishandling of the Wang defection have been kept secret by the Obama administration, and Clinton's version of events were contradicted by U.S. officials and the official Chinese account. Instead of gaining long-term access to a valuable defector with inside knowledge of Chinese strategy and policies, Clinton contacted the Chinese government in Beijing and allowed security officials to take Wang into custody outside the U.S. consulate some 30 hours after he entered the property in a daring bid to flee China for the United States.