KGB Spy Cedric Belfrage and China

The BBC revelations that Britain failed to prosecute a member of the intelligence services, Cedric Belfrage, who passed secrets to Russia in World War Two out of fear of embarrassment, are not totally surprising but good to have confirmed. Belfrage’s turn to the left apparently took place while he was working in Hollywood in the 1930s; he then worked for Mi6 in New York. Suspicion that he had been passing secrets to the Soviets appeared in 1945. You can read the full BBC story here.

But is there a China angle to Belfrage? Certainly Belfrage was in China in 1957 where, he claimed, he was “the only person…reporting for an American publication”. Belfrage knew James Aronson, the American Leftist and co-founder of the National Guardian with Belfrage in the late 1940s and visited China to report for that publication. The National Guardian was considered generally friendly to the PRC. In 1979, Aronson was teaching journalism in Beijing – in a series of letters the two had a major disagreement about China’s presence in Vietnam that threatened their friendship (the letters are contained in the Belfrage archive in New York). Slightly earlier Belfrage had corresponded with a number of journalists and academics regarding about China’s position on Angola.

Belfrage had been deported by McCarthy from the US back to the UK in 1955 and then went to China shortly after that. By that point to all intents and purposes his spying days were over.

 Aronson, Belfrage and John McManus – the founders of the National Guardian – in New York in 1948