Our top spy chief has suggested that a growing number of Chinese officials are feeding information to local intelligence agencies because they’re unhappy with the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly authoritarian stance. Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) Director-General Paul Symon made the remarks in a rare speech in Sydney yesterday to mark the agency’s 70th anniversary. “Increasingly, officials and individuals unhappy with the trajectory of closed societies are willing to speak up and take risks,” he told the Lowy Institute gathering. And in a gloomy picture of the country’s strategic outlook, Symon says countries hostile to Oz are seeking to weaken our institutions and bend our values. On the new security pact between China and Solomon Islands, he wouldn’t criticise PM Sogavare but instead share information with them so they can “understand what’s going on at the moment is a big deal.” Reports this morning say Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is likely to visit Solomon Islands in coming weeks, possibly before Oz’s 21 May election.