America’s China spy problem

China is patiently but unrelentingly playing a long game and targeting a wide range of institutions, big and small, private and public.

The House Select Committee on China recently announced that one of its staff members was offered $10,000 to give Beijing inside information about the committee’s work. The staffer declined the bribe and reported the incident to the FBI.

As Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, pointed out: “If the Chinese Communist Party is this brazen with congressional staff, imagine what’s happening in boardrooms, universities, and defense contractors. This is everywhere,” she warned. She’s right.

Recent years have seen local and state officials in California, New York, and elsewhere charged with working for the Chinese government. Former and current members of the U.S. military, including pilots, have also been indicted for providing secrets and training to the Chinese Communist Party, America’s chief adversary.

Yet the United States has been slow to appreciate the threat. As author Alex Joske documented, Western officials long believed China’s spy efforts were haphazard and amateurish. The evidence shows otherwise.

Former Defense Intelligence Agency officials David Shedd and Andrew Badger have argued that “China’s rapid rise in geopolitical power is due, in no small measure, to its unprecedented campaign of state-sponsored industrial espionage.” They say the U.S. needs an “urgent wake-up call.”

The costs of the U.S.’s complacency are beginning to emerge. The FBI calculates that Chinese intellectual property theft costs our country roughly $600 billion a year.

Chinese industrial espionage is an important component of Beijing’s strategy to overtake the U.S. But the CCP’s efforts to infiltrate local and state governments are equally revealing.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy has pointed out that local officials such as Wang aren’t recruited for stealing state secrets. Rather, they’re picked because “our adversaries seek to subvert and supplant us, not just steal technology.”

Chinese influence operations, often spearheaded by its United Front Work Department, are an important part of Beijing’s efforts. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called the United Front his “magic weapon.”

China is recruiting congressional staff members, mayors, and council members from small American towns. Calculating and patient, Beijing makes long-term and stealthy plans to achieve its malign objectives. 

The public must be vigilant about our opponent. We must ensure all of our officials, at local and national levels, are too. And we must steel ourselves for what is sure to be a prolonged struggle against a determined and highly capable foe.