Philippine Navy Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad had an unusual mission in February 2025. Wearing a combat uniform, he arrived early at a tiny courtroom in Metro Manila, standing before a judge who sat behind a desk piled high with thick case files.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) learned the rear admiral had been summoned to be a witness against a Chinese national in one of the country’s first espionage cases since World War II.
“I was called to testify. I was there in my function as Inspector General of the Navy,” Trinidad confirmed with PCIJ.
Trinidad declined to share more. But a PCIJ source who witnessed the court session said the officer’s testimony gave the judge a fuller appreciation of the importance of the case before his court.
Only about 20 people were present in the usually full courtroom; the judge had ordered everyone with no connection to the case to leave. The accused was handcuffed and accompanied by lawyers.
This year alone, at least 13 Chinese nationals have been arrested and charged on suspicion of espionage, along with one Cambodian and five Filipino accomplices. The trials are taking place amid growing anxiety about China’s alleged collection of high-resolution images of critical military bases and infrastructure. Beijing, however, dismissed the cases as “baseless speculation and accusation.”
“All of the espionage cases are still pending in court. Hearings are ongoing,” according to a source at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
National Security Adviser Eduardo Año told PCIJ their activities pose “significant threat” to the Philippines.
“Chinese spies use sophistsicated equipment, work with local accomplices, and engage in cyber operations…. It could undermine national stability if sensitive or classified information and access to critical infrastructures are obtained by hostile agents,” Año said.
The alleged spies were mostly accused of gathering what is known as imagery intelligence, described by Rommel Ong, a retired navy rear admiral and professor of praxis at the Ateneo De Manila University, as the collection of images that “provide a detailed understanding of the target, particularly its features, nature of activity, profile of persons involved, etcetera.”
Philippine laws penalizing espionage still imagine paper documents and predate cyberwarfare and high-tech surveillance, however. Article 117 of the Revised Penal Code from 1932 and the more specific World War II-era statute, Commonwealth Act No. 616 from 1941.
“We’ve never gone after spies before,” said Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea and leading expert on the South China Sea dispute.
Batongbacal said the ongoing trials will test whether or not the 80-year-old law can sufficiently punish modern-day espionage — and whether the courts can keep up with the evolving nature of national security threats.
Meanwhile, the threat from China is growing, said Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former police intelligence officer who rose to become the country’s top cop before entering politics. In August, he again raised the alarm, warning that a “whole network of espionage operations” is present in the Philippines. He called not only for arrests but for the dismantling of entire spy networks.
“I have it on good information na maraming sleeper agents, even regular members of PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army),” Lacson said during an August 27, 2025 Senate hearing.
First known espionage cases
Outside the courts, authorities hope that exposing the alleged espionage activities will raise public awareness of the threats and encourage citizens to support the country in its David-and-Goliath struggle to defend the West Philippine Sea from China’s aggression.
Citizens should report similar tactics if they observe them near sensitive sites such as military bases, ports, or critical infrastructure, said Año. He said recent arrests may just be “the tip of the iceberg.”
The first known espionage case of recent vintage involved Deng Yuanqing, a Chinese national who, according to authorities, moved to the Philippines in 2013, married a Filipino, and had a child.
He was arrested in January for allegedly directing — and at times accompanying — two Filipino drivers as they drove around Luzon in a vehicle fitted with a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanner and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology, equipment capable of mapping topography, terrain and man-made structures.
Media briefings detailed how they spent a month on the road — “in the guise of developing an autonomous vehicle,” driving across Luzon and passing through “critical” infrastructure sites.
They supposedly slowed down in sensitive areas, including two locations where the U.S. military was granted access to preposition assets under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement — the 5th Infantry Division in Isabela and the Camilo Osias Naval Base in the Port of Santa Ana, Cagayan.
A Filipino driver who executed an affidavit said he believed the equipment could be controlled remotely, raising concerns that data might have been already transmitted to Beijing. PCIJ is not privy to whether this was later confirmed from the data extracted from the hard drives collected during the arrests.
Deng’s wife denied he was a spy, but the NBI said no permit was shown for mapping roads on behalf of a self-driving company. NBI chief Jaime Santiago said the LiDAR was a military-grade, long-range, high-resolution device manufactured in China — and not available in the Philippine market.
More arrests came shortly after Deng’s.
Five Chinese nationals were accused of using a drone to conduct aerial reconnaissance of Philippine naval and coast guard assets in Palawan, reportedly frequenting Ulugan Bay, where the AFP’s Western Command is based. They were supposedly particularly interested in Oyster Bay, a strategic location where ships bound for the Kalayaan Group of Islands or Spratlys are docked.
NBI said the men’s mobile phones showed they kept photos of, and ran applications to track, ports, vessels, small crafts and docks in other sensitive locations such as the Naval Operating Base in Subic, Zambales — the logistics and staging points for operations in Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, another disputed atoll outside of the Palawan jurisdiction.
In March, six more Chinese nationals were arrested for reportedly conducting surveillance operations in Central Luzon. The NBI said they occupied Grande Island in the guise of recreational fishing to monitor vessels “entering and exiting Subic Bay during maritime patrols or joint naval patrols in the West Philippine Sea.”
Batongbacal said the alleged espionage activities exposed the weak operational security of military facilities. “What are they interested in? Movement of our vessels, at the minimum. Every move that we make, they want to know,” he said.
Ong, however, said the objectives could be more sinister. “Ship passages can be focused on hydrographic data or vessel traffic patterns. Or it can target specific types of ships, such as navy or government vessels.”
In the age of artificial intelligence, government operatives told PCIJ the risks underscore the need to inform the public, citing the possible use of these high definition images for training data that can inform future operations. They also cited how unmanned aerial vehicles like drones and robots have been used in warfare.
In April, China also arrested three Filipinos under the suspicion of espionage. China Daily reported that they were accused of “working for the Philippine intelligence agency to gather classified information on China.” The Philippines supposedly recruited “trained Filipino nationals living in China to gather information on the country’s military deployments.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the three are civilians with no ties to the military, while Año suggested the arrests might be “politically motivated,” possibly in retaliation for the Philippines’ detention of Chinese nationals.
Just before the May 2025 elections, the Philippines arrested another Chinese national, Tak Hoi Lao, for reportedly carrying a telephone eavesdropping device near the Commission on Elections in Manila. He was alleged to be in possession of an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catcher, which can intercept mobile phone traffic.
The Chinese Embassy in Manila denied what it called a “heinous accusation” of election interference and accused politicians of using the “so-called China card” to boost their election prospects.
The public can help by being aware and alert on the sinister motives of foreign nationals whose actions are not in conformity with usual behavior. They must report any suspicious person or activity to the nearest or most accessible agency like NBI, NICA, PNP or the AFP.
National security adviser eduardo Año
Modern spies, outdated laws
The activities underscore the challenges of countering modern espionage, said Batongbacal, yet the country continues to rely on statutes written in an era when spies slipped into bases to steal paper documents.
The 1931 Revised Penal Code defines espionage as the unauthorized entry into “a warship, fort, or naval or military establishment or reservation to obtain any information, plans, photographs, or other data of a confidential nature relative to the defense of the Philippine Archipelago,” or the disclosure of such confidential information to a foreign power.
A more specific law — Commonwealth Act No. 616 of 1941 — expanded the offense to include gathering or transmitting information useful to an enemy in wartime. But no comprehensive update has been passed since then, leaving the legal framework largely pre-digital.
NBI Cybercrime Division chief Jeremy Lotoc said the espionage cases rely on Republic Act No. 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which modernizes the country’s legal framework by introducing cybercrime offenses and increasing by one degree the penalties for crimes under the Revised Penal Code when committed through information and communications technology.
In other parts of the world, governments have enforced stricter policies to protect their countries from data collection.
The US and UK have banned TikTok on government-issued devices, and a broader US law could ban the app nationwide, though enforcement is still under review. Canada has announced a ban on Huawei and ZTE in telecom networks, but the policy is carried out through government directives rather than new legislation, and full removal deadlines have yet to take effect.
In August, US Navy sailor Jinchao Wei was convicted in California of spying for China.
The Philippine Congress is now playing catch-up. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. has urged lawmakers to pass a bill updating the definition of espionage to account for new technologies in information exchange and “make it effective even in times of peace, not only in times of war.”
“China is getting more aggressive and asymmetric,” Teodoro said during a Senate hearing on the proposed bill, citing tactics such as fake citizenship and sham marriages to operate in the Philippines, sometimes involving Filipinos as “unwitting participants.”
Teodoro sought to return jurisdiction over armed forces personnel accused of espionage to general courts-martial — now under civilian courts — so the military can hold them accountable even after separation. He said penalties such as dismissal and forfeiture of benefits would deter such acts despite no cases so far.
Lacson urged lawmakers to include a provision that will allow the Anti-Money Laundering Council to freeze the assets of those involved in espionage.
The NBI called for tools and equipment that would enable investigators to gather evidence against alleged spies more quickly and effectively.
A Department of Justice representative stressed that any new definition of espionage must be precise to prevent arbitrary application — a concern raised against the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, which has been used instead against activists and journalists.
Influence operations, too
The activities of some of the alleged spies extend beyond image collection to engaging in “malign foreign influence operations.” This is a U.S. national security term for covert or deceptive efforts by foreign governments or their proxies to shape another country’s policies or public opinion in ways that undermine its sovereignty, security, or democratic institution.
It underscores how espionage can overlap with other threats. “The Philippines is confronted by Chinese use of hard and sharp power in their exercise of statecraft…. Doctrinally, united front work covers both influence operations and espionage,” said Ong.
Authorities said the five Chinese nationals arrested after Deng built networks in the Philippines, mingling with Chinese embassy officials as well as local politicians and personalities through their groups — the Qiaoxing Volunteer Group of the Philippines and the Philippines-China Association of Peace and Friendship.
Reuters reported on these networks in February, showing how they donated cash to the Tarlac City government and vehicles to local police forces. They were photographed with politicians — including former Cagayan governor Manuel Mamba, who opposed the EDCA sites in his province — and with the former Chinese ambassador to Manila. PCIJ has obtained photos that were not previously released.
The donations and the socializing “foster goodwill,” said Ong. “It exploits the Filipinos’ sense of utang na loob. It might be used as a starting point to corrupt local officials and render them pliable. Corruption is one of the tools they employ in influence operations,” he said.
Teodoro Jr. also urged Congress to pass a law penalizing foreign malign influence operations, saying this would strengthen the country’s defenses against covert interference.
Such a measure, intelligence officers told PCIJ, could have allowed authorities to act earlier in the case of Steve Zhang, a Chinese national alleged to have cultivated a network of contacts in the Philippines long before the arrest of Deng.
Rappler reported that Zhang “Steve” Song served as Manila bureau chief of the Chinese newspaper Wenhui Daily, and that Philippine intelligence sources identified him as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security. Authorities reportedly took interest in him because of his frequent visits to the Chinese embassy and frequent interactions with Philippine officials and business leaders — notably during critical supply missions to the West Philippine Sea — but he had a sparse number of bylined articles published.
Año confirmed the Rappler report, describing Zhang as an “agent of influence” working against Philippine interests. He said Zhang could not be arrested because there was no law penalizing such activities. Zhang has since left the Philippines.
Attention has now shifted to another Chinese national, Joseph Sy, who joined the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary and rose to the honorary rank of commodore — the equivalent of a one-star officer. Sy, chairman of Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc., has been in the custody of the Bureau of Immigration since August 21, 2025, after he was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport on suspicion of fraudulently claiming Filipino citizenship.
Senator Risa Hontiveros has flagged further irregularities, revealing that Sy’s son allegedly holds two different Philippine birth certificates — one listing him as Chinese, another registering him belatedly as Filipino — and reportedly possesses two active passports.
Experts warn the threat landscape is growing more complex. Batongbacal said the case of Alice Guo — a Chinese national who became mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, and was linked to the expansion of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) — shows how foreign actors can penetrate the murky intersection of national security, crime, and politics.
“If they can pull off an Alice Guo, anything less than an Alice Guo is easy,” he said – PCIJ.org
