MANILA, Philippines – Alice Guo, the disgraced former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, was visibly riled up on Friday, September 27, when the House Quad Committee showed Al Jazeera’s interview with Chinese crime gang leader She Zhijiang tagging her as a Chinese spy.

Breaking away from her monotonic assertion of her right to remain silent, Guo was raring to answer interpellations Friday night about She Zhijiang, at one point even rolling her eyes. “Your honor, unfair naman po sa akin, hindi ko po siya kilala, at never po akong humingi ng campaign funds…Gusto ko rin pong iparating sa lahat ng kababayan ko at buong Pilipinas…hindi po ako spy, totally hindi po, hindi po ako spy,” Guo exclaimed.

(Your honor, it’s so unfair to me, I don’t know him, and I have never asked for campaign funds. I want to tell my fellow townspeople and the entire country that I am not a spy, totally not, I am not a spy.)

She Zhijiang, who is a known criminal gambling leader to world operatives, is detained at a jail in Thailand and is claiming that the reason why China is moving to expatriate him is to kill him for being a spy. In the files that She Zhijiang showed, a dossier on Guo Hua Ping was included, the alleged real Chinese identity of Guo, and which showed a local address in Fujien province that’s supposedly a local office of the Chinese Communist Party. She Zhijiang said Guo had also asked him for campaign funds.

She Zhijiang said: “Guo Hua Ping, China cannot be trusted. The two of us once dedicated our lives to China’s Ministry of State Security. Look at what happened to me.”

“If you don’t want to be eliminated, you should tell the world the truth,” said She Zhijiang.

It was the most that Guo had said since she was arrested in Indonesia, and even threatened to find a way to sue the detained Zhijiang. “Gusto ko po magdemanda (I want to sue),” said Guo, and later added “

Guo was so riled up that PBA Partylist Representative Migs Nograles told her “to relax.”

Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos told Rappler: “Definitely DILG-PNP [Department of the Interior and Local Government-Philippine National Police] should investigate these allegations.”

The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) declined to comment.

She Zhijiang’s Philippine enterprise

She Zhijiang is China-born but a Cambodian citizen. He owns the Yatai International Holding Group, and has been linked to human trafficking and cyber-fraud, much like what Guo is being accused of over her incorporation of a compound that was used for an illegal POGO (Philippine offshore gaming operator) hub.

Before She Zhijiang was arrested in August 2022, he was “known to have a robust business and investment portfolio across Southeast Asia, and particularly Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines, spanning across industries including real estate, construction, entertainment, and blockchain technology,” according to a 2024 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In the Al Jazeera report, She Zhijiang said he was recruited to be a spy in the Philippines in 2016. She Zhijiang claims that because he was already a fugitive at that time, evading an arrest warrant from China over illegal gambling, his recruiter instead offered to drop the case in exchange of him turning into a spy.

Nograles pointed out that She Zhijiang’s enterprise resembles what happened in Bamban, Tarlac — the hubs operated by him look like Guo’s Baofu too. The pattern, Nograles said, was very apparent, including getting Filipino nationals as “dummies.”

Guo’s rise to local politics in Bamban, Tarlac was baffling because she beat the dynastic bets there, winning as an independent candidate on her first try. While Guo claims she divested from Baofu before she ran for mayor, court certifications say this divestment was fake. Guo asserted once again on Friday that she is Filipino, and that Li Wen Yi, her alleged mother, is the partner of her Chinese father.

“There seem to be steps, a standard, perhaps a mission order for spies, and it’s sad that they entered the Philippines, and we allowed them,” Nograles said in Filipino.

“They took advantage of our country, our laws, our citizens and our resources,” said Nograles. – Rappler.com