China has for years invested heavily in espionage operations, the recruitment and training of new spies and, above all, the development of advanced technologies with the aim of making the collection of information about some foreign countries more effective. The issue is particularly worrisome for the United States, which sees China as a threat to its power but has failed to develop an effective informant network within the country. For this reason, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the main US foreign policy intelligence agency, is significantly increasing the budget for China-related operations and instead reducing resources for other countries, particularly in the Middle East.
China is now considered one of the most important and influential states in the world and maintains a rivalry and competition with the United States. It is ruled by an authoritarian and very opaque regime, and gathering information about the government's intentions proves to be very complicated. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal recently spoke with several U.S. intelligence officials to find out where the CIA's efforts stand in the fight against the growing power of its Chinese counterpart.
Until the early 2000s, the United States could count on an extensive network of spies in China, which it recruited by exploiting the corruption rampant at the highest levels of the Communist Party, which ruled the country dictatorially. However, the US spy network in China was almost completely dismantled between 2010 and 2012, the year current Chinese President Xi Jinping became party secretary.
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It's not entirely clear how the U.S. spies were discovered, but within a few years many of them were killed or arrested in what is considered one of the worst American intelligence failures in decades. The loss of the agents significantly weakened the United States' ability to infiltrate the country and learn about the government's plans, and even today it is difficult for the CIA and other intelligence agencies to recruit agents in China.
Xi Jinping became president in 2013 and quickly consolidated his power. The CIA had predicted the country's authoritarian turn, but Barack Obama's administration, which was in office between 2009 and 2016, ignored the warnings for years, preferring to focus on other problematic situations, particularly in the Middle East. It was, in fact, the period of the so-called “War on Terror,” which began after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in which the United States focused primarily on preventing and combating terrorism and the more traditional espionage, the other , some neglected villages.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Meanwhile, China vastly expanded its intelligence activities, focusing primarily on technology.
The country has long invested in the development of artificial intelligence systems and algorithms for data-based surveillance, but also in the use of biotechnology and the production of microchips, the basic building blocks of all electronic systems. For example, the New York Times wrote that during the Covid-19 pandemic, some members of the Chinese intelligence service asked to improve the facial recognition system installed in the cameras in the embassy district of Beijing: they wanted to track down diplomats and foreign officials to learn their identities movements and habits and identify any threats.
The Chinese Ministry of State Security is responsible for developing new espionage technologies and recruiting new spies, as well as overseeing Chinese intelligence activities abroad. It was founded in 1983 but has only gained great influence in recent years. Since 2022, it has been headed by Chen Yixin, who is very close to President Xi Jinping: in September, Yixin said that he intended to bring China to “technological self-sufficiency”, that is, to independently develop and own technologies that, in his opinion, still exist “under the control of other states”.
For this reason, Chinese intelligence is particularly interested in the findings and discoveries of the United States in the technical and scientific fields. The issue has also been at the center of a trade war for some time, with the two countries continuing to restrict exports of materials and technologies deemed strategic so as not to provide knowledge or tools that the other side could use.
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Over the past three years, the development of Chinese intelligence has become a non-negligible threat to the United States, which has therefore begun to address the problem in a much more systematic manner. In 2020, Democratic President Joe Biden appointed William Burns to head the CIA and it was immediately clear that a key part of his mandate would revolve around China. In 2021, Burns opened the China Mission Center, a CIA unit dedicated to China and its technological advances in intelligence.
China is “at the top of the CIA’s to-do list,” Burns told the Wall Street Journal. In recent years, the agency has doubled the country's budget, diverted funds to other goals and also invested heavily in hiring Chinese-speaking staff.
In order to improve its operations in China, the CIA had to partially change the way it worked. Traditionally, the agency is responsible for collecting information on very specific and detailed targets, such as foreign countries' military assets or plans, and is not used to investigating less concrete and ever-changing topics such as artificial intelligence or information technology that China concerns focuses on that instead. “We counted the tanks and examined the missile capabilities [degli altri paesi] longer than we have focused on semiconductors, algorithms or biotechnology,” said David Cohen, deputy director of the CIA.
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It is precisely the use of advanced technologies that has made the competition between US and Chinese intelligence services different and more complex than that between the United States and Russia. The United States recently proved that it has reliable sources and information about Russia's plans: it knew in advance some of President Vladimir Putin's moves related to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and was at least partially aware of those led by Russia Yevgeny's uprising informs Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, at the end of June.
In China, however, the US secret services have not yet succeeded in rebuilding an effective informant network. In February, Director Burns admitted that the information the CIA had about China's plans and intentions was less in-depth than that about Russia: “We're working on it,” he said.