On Tuesday, China came out with a rather stern proclamation that it would take necessary measures to crack down on what it perceives as “infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces”. This move graces the headlines just days after the CIA released videos aimed at enticing Chinese officials to leak secrets to the U.S.
It’s important to address what the CIA did. Last week, our national intelligence agency posted two Chinese-language videos on their social media accounts. These videos depict fictional scenarios in which both a senior Chinese official and a more junior government worker (who conveniently had access to classified information) become disillusioned with China’s system and lean towards the CIA.
The videos were dubbed a “damning confession” of the CIA’s efforts in “stealing” other countries’ secrets by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. “The U.S. not only maliciously smears and attacks China, but also blatantly deceives and lures Chinese personnel to turn to its side, and even directly targets Chinese government officials,” according to Lin Jian, the spokesperson in question. The audacity of this statement is staggering. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of espionage. By definition, espionage is a two-way street; China has been playing the same game for years.
Moving from the abstract to the concrete, let’s examine Beijing’s response. Amidst mutual accusations of espionage, both countries have pledged to bolster their counterintelligence efforts. Last month, China’s state security ministry highlighted a case of a government employee who was selling state secrets, secretly recording internal meetings, and stealing confidential files after reaching out to a foreign spy agency through email. Conveniently enough, they didn’t name which foreign intelligence agency was involved.
The CIA, on the other hand, has been transparent about its recruitment of informants in China, Iran, and North Korea, launching an online campaign in October to instruct potential recruits how to securely contact the agency. These countries are considered “hard targets” within the U.S. intelligence community, meaning their governments are challenging to penetrate. Yet, the left claims the CIA’s actions are somehow unique or untoward.
In conclusion, the left’s infatuation with the narrative of American overreach is nothing more than a fallacy. Their outrage would be more logically placed if they addressed the espionage activities of countries like China, Iran, and North Korea. But facts don’t care about your feelings, and the reality is this: Espionage is a universal game, played by all major powers.
