First of two parts
On December 24, 2024, as most people around the country were preparing their Christmas Eve dinners, Deng Yuanqing, Jojo Besa, and Jayson Fernandez were busy driving around the provinces of Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Pampanga, and Bulacan.
They were not in a rush to make it to Noche Buena in those provinces. Nor were they tourists casually exploring the vast highways of Luzon.
The three were on Day 12 of what would be a grueling 35 days of driving around most of mainland Luzon to survey roads and critical infrastructure — military camps, sites where the United States military could preposition assets, energy and power hubs, and air and sea ports, among others.
The two Filipino drivers were required to travel at least 600 kilometers in a day, according to Besa’s sworn statement executed before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on January 19, 2025.
Besa, in the same statement, said their movements seemed to have been “monitored” by Deng in real time.
“Eventually, I noticed that he knew where we were going and where we were eating. He also knew where our drives ended. When we’d stop, he’d call right away,” said Besa in Filipino.
Clik here to view.
On most days, they would go at speeds of up to 160 kilometers per hour — save for when they reached the port of Santa Ana, Cagayan, where their trusty white Toyota RAV4 cruised at a much slower 20 to 30 kilometers per hour, according to our intelligence sources familiar with the operation.
After all, Deng took time to alight from the vehicle to take photos and videos, not just with the high-tech equipment that they had on board their SUV, but with his own phone, too.
In just over a month, Deng and his team were able to drive around 18 provinces in Luzon at least once, crossing paths that brought them close to 120 infrastructures that military intelligence operatives flagged as “critical.”
Deng, a Chinese national, and Besa and Fernandez, both Filipino citizens, were arrested on Friday, January 17, in Makati City during what was supposed to be a break from their surveying job.
A Makati stop was part of their routine for the past month or so — not so much for rest, but to back up all the files containing the information they had gathered.
High tech equipment
The Chinese embassy in the Philippines, in a statement on January 25, said the allegations against Deng were mere “baseless speculation and accusation.”
“We urge the Philippine side to base its judgment on facts, not to make presumption of guilt, stop airing groundless speculations about the so-called ‘Chinese spy case,’ handle relevant cases in accordance with the law, earnestly fulfill the obligations of the bilateral consular treaty and protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens in the Philippines,” the embassy said.
When he was arrested, Deng could not show documents to prove that he was licensed or that he had the authority to conduct his survey activities, according to National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Cybercrime Division chief Jeremy Lotoc.
Clik here to view.
Atop the vehicle’s hood was a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) scanner with Global Navigation Satellite System technology — equipment that, intelligence sources and investigators told Rappler, could not only identify land topography and terrain, but could also figure out the layout of certain structures.
The devices were able to siphon off data, too, even from a distance.
Most worryingly of all for Filipino investigators and intelligence operatives, all that information was being transmitted real-time to a foreign country, based on the IP addresses extracted from the devices. Initial reports indicate that country was China.
NBI Director Jaime Santiago said the data gathered was being sent to China simultaneously “using real-time kinematic and global navigation satellite system.”
Based on the NBI’s initial probe, what Deng and his cohorts did was spying.
Deng and his two Filipino cohorts have since been charged before a court in Makati for cybercrime law violations in relation to espionage — a crime defined by an ancient 1941 law that was created when the Philippines was still a commonwealth of the US.
Who is Deng?
Deng first arrived in the Philippines in 2013, the same year he apparently met his wife Noemi through the Chinese chat app QQ.
Noemi, who spoke to the media for the first time in a press conference on January 27, declined to answer further questions about how she met her husband.
She has insisted that her husband of over eight years was not a spy, but was just tapped to conduct surveys for a company that, she said, specializes in self-driving cars. That company would later be identified as Zhejiang ATTC Automotive Technology Service (Zhejiang ATTC).
Based on information gathered by intelligence operatives, Deng had been in Thailand in 2012 with a previous partner before flying to the Philippines for Noemi.
By 2015, Noemi was pregnant with their first and only child.
Military intelligence sources said it was around this time — supposedly before or during Noemi’s prenatal check-ups — that Deng met a Chinese woman based in the Philippines who would play a role in his alleged espionage operations nearly a decade later.
The Mandaluyong-based woman had been living in the Philippines as early as 2020 and has a handful of businesses in her name, including two restaurants. She would also tap Besa for occasional driving gigs.
Rappler is withholding her identity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation.
In 2016, Noemi gave birth to her first and only son with Deng. Months after their son’s birth, they returned to China with their young child.
Clik here to view.
But a year later in 2017, they flew back to the Philippines and settled in Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay. Before moving to the Philippines for good, Deng resigned from his last known employer while in China, the Chinese state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation or Sinopec, sources privy to the information said.
Sinopec is “China’s leading integrated energy and chemical company,” according to the World Economic Forum. In the Philippines, its footprint is through S-Energy, a distributing company for Sinopec lubricants.
When the NBI claimed in a press conference that Deng was also a Chinese academic affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army University of Science and Technology, it might have flubbed part of their background investigation on him.
The Deng in Philippine detention is not a known academic, but rather a graduate of a vocational school in China, according to informed Rappler sources.
The blunder was highlighted by the Chinese embassy in Manila — but investigators insisted it shouldn’t reduce the gravity of Deng’s information-gathering activities in the Philippines.
Deng, according to intelligence sources, moved out of Ipil and transferred to Metro Manila in 2023.
In Manila and Ipil, he lived a fairly low-key and humble life — driving only a motorcycle whose license had long expired, and taking taxis or Grab cars when needed. Deng and Noemi were also the owners of a small pharmacy.
Law enforcement operatives and military intelligence said that between October 2024 and January 2025, Deng had deposited close to P36 million to the couple’s Ipil-based pharmacy. This was evidenced by deposit slips and a handwritten ledger that Deng had in his possession when he was arrested.
Deng also recorded in the same ledger with handwritten notes close to P13 million in deposits and transactions with at least 41 Filipinos and a long list of Philippine companies.
A year later, in 2024, he accepted the job to survey the island of Luzon, supposedly on behalf of Zhejiang ATTC, according to military intelligence.
The Zhejiang-based company, according to its website, is an “international automotive technology service group that provides automotive and component testing, international certification, overseas engineering and after-sales consulting, and media evaluation.”
Under its overseas engineering services, Zhejiang ATTC claims to have “more than ten active and passive security and EU regulatory experts, subsidiary Russian cybersecurity expert team, subsidiary controller development expert team, parent company global certification regulatory team, and ADAS testing team from the European branch.”
ADAS refers to advanced driver-assistance systems, and is listed among Zhejiang ATTC’s capabilities as a company.
Zhejiang ATTC includes as its “cooperative clients” the China-made vehicle brands BYD and Geely Auto, the Chinese state-owned GAC Group, and the German-based Bosch, among others.
Although Deng’s wife Noemi had insisted that her husband was not into espionage work and that he was only doing survey work for a Chinese company, she did not name his company. Neither did the Chinese embassy in Manila also name Zhejiang ATTC as being that company.
It’s been personalities, however, like Anna Malindog-Uy — previously identified by a Rappler investigation as the “pro-China network’s top sources of information online” — who have name-dropped Zhejiang ATTC, citing an unnamed “reporter.”
Clik here to view.
NBI chief Santiago, speaking to the press in late January 2025, publicly rejected the alibis that had been laid out for Deng.
“They say [Deng] is just an ordinary surveyor working in a company that manufactures autonomous cars. What company is that? Why can’t they disclose it? Where is that company? And is that company licensed in the Philippines? Is [Deng] licensed as a surveyor? Remember that we have laws here before you can practice [this] profession, you must be licensed. He cannot show us anything about being licensed,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Santiago also sought to dispel talk that the equipment Deng had on the vehicle could be bought from popular eCommerce platforms.
“What you find in Shopee and Lazada are commercial grade. They’re ordinary. What we got from [Deng and the two drivers], especially the LIDAR…those are long-range, high resolution LIDAR…that model 80128, it’s military grade. It’s not available in any market here in the Philippines. That’s manufactured by Hesai in China,” he said.
Without permits and with top-notch equipment in tow, Deng and the two drivers cruised around Luzon scoping military bases and air and sea ports.
What kind of information were they able to siphon off that so alarmed Philippine intelligence operatives? (To be concluded) – Rappler.com