He wasn't a professional agent by any means. He was a tennis coach. A restaurateur. A businessman who lived with his wife and daughter in a Louisiana town known for swamp tours and charter fishing. Born in Taiwan, son-in-law of a senior military officer there, he was an unlikely spy for China if ever there was one.What might be surprising to the average reader is how mundane Kuo's tumble into the spy game really was. There's very little cloak-and-dagger intrigue stuff. It's just a lot of meetings and relationships and favors (and of course, cash). In the end, the information he passed along actually caused little or no harm to national security.
And yet his journey from entrepreneur to secret operative - one of dozens convicted in the last three years of efforts to pass secrets or restricted technology to the Chinese - is, in many ways, emblematic of the way China conducts espionage in the 21st century, experts say.
It is rooted in opportunity, nurtured by perseverance, sustained by greed. It relies on "guanxi" - a you-scratch-my-back, I'll-scratch-yours notion of developing close relationships.
The Chinese took advantage of all of these things to cultivate Kuo, and then the man with the winning personality went to work on their behalf. In the end, Kuo would convince two U.S. government employees to give him secret information, which he then conveyed to an official with the communist nation.
This is apparently espionage in the 21st century. Are you scared yet, America? Here's part one of the Associated Press series on China's spying efforts: China, ever more powerful, has become a major instigator of espionage in the United States.