By 1968, global Communism was very much a threat to Western Europe. In Czechoslovakia, a massive invasion of Warsaw Pact forces saw a revolution crushed under the communist boot. Eurocommunist parties were popping up in Spain, Finland, and Italy. In China, Mao Zedong had rejected reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping and re-enacted the repressive policies that led to the Cultural Revolution there. Unlike the Americans, who faced the spread of global Communism with force, the Dutch decided to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands—a group with which China cooperated.
The Chinese didn't know its pro-China party in the Netherlands was a run entirely by Dutch spies who just wanted information on Chinese intentions.
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A Dutch intelligence agent named Pieter Boevé set up the MLPN in 1968, gaining the trust of its Chinese Communist allies through the publication of its newspaper. Its timing was also fortuitous, as China and the Soviet Union had long before began to split in their view of what global Communism should look like. Since the MLPN embraced Maoist China and rejected the Soviet Union, that was even better for the Chairman. Using his MLPN, Boevé was able to expand his influence deeper into the party in Beijing.
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His supposedly 600-member Communist party in a deeply capitalist society was the toast of the Communist world while Boevé ran the MLPN. In truth, there were only 12 members, but no one in the party or in the rest of the world knew that. Boevé could go anywhere in the Eastern Bloc, and China welcomed him with open arms. He was so appreciated that Zhou Enlai even threw a banquet in his honor. More importantly, the Chinese briefed him on the inner workings of their aims at The Hague.
Zhou Enlai.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsAfter attending a Communist youth seminar in Moscow in 1955, Boevé was recruited by the BVD, the Dutch intelligence service, to play up his Communist bona fides. He accepted and soon visited Beijing for a similar congress. The Sino-Soviet Split played right into the BVD's hands, and after he embraced Maoism, his fake party practically built itself. The Dutch were able to know everything about China's secret workings inside their country, and the Chinese paid for it. All of this was orchestrated by Boevé—who was never paid as a spy. Even as he was spying on behalf of the Dutch, Boevé was teaching math at an elementary school.
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"I was invited to all the big events—Army Days, Anniversaries of the Republic, everything," Boevé told The Guardian in 2004. "There were feasts in the Great Hall of the People and long articles in the People's Daily. And they gave us lots of money."
The secret was kept until after 2001, when a former BVD agent wrote a book about the agency's secret operations. Boevé and his fake party were outed.
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This article originally appeared on We Are The Mighty.
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