Chinese espionage operations in US at their highest level: US Intelligence

At the beginning of November this year, the United States extradited a high level Chinese spy to the US from Europe.

The Chinese official in question is Yanjun Xu, a Deputy Director in China?s Ministry of State Security (MSS), mainly responsible for external intelligence. It is the first time that an official at this level has been moved to the US for trial. The conviction of Yanjun Xu could set the precedence for the extradition of other Chinese intelligence officials. Just how serious an issue Chinese espionage activity in the US becomes clear from the fact that the FBI opening a new counterintelligence case into China every 12 hours.

The US Federal Court verdict (5 November 2021) states that Xu is a Chinese national and Deputy Division Director of the Sixth Bureau of the Jiangsu Province, Ministry of State Security. Laying down the conviction, Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department?s National Security Division said, ?This conviction of a card-carrying intelligence officer for economic espionage underscores that trade secret theft is integral to the PRC government?s plans to modernize its industries?.

The Xu case is pathbreaking because he could provide leads to other Chinese espionage activity directed against the US. Also, his conviction will set the template for future trials of Chinese intelligence officers. Whether or not, Xu will give information to his captors remains to be seen, because he is a hardened intelligence official. By way of a distant analogy, one may recall that in 1945 KGB officer Oleg Guzenkohad defected, he provided the CIA with loads of information on KGB operations in the US. Returning to Xu, it can be
stated with surety that China will almost certainly seek to obtain his return.One way of getting Xu back would be for China to go after Americans in China in retribution, irrespective of whether they are spies or not and use them as eventual bargaining chips to help facilitate Xu?s release.

Just for the record, attention is drawn to the US think tank CSIS survey of Chinese espionage in the US since 2000. This survey lists 160 publicly reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the US since 2000. Of the total, 42 per cent cases were carried out by Chinese military or government employees. Of the 160 incidents it was found that 24 per cent occurred between 2000-2009, while 76 per cent occurred between 2010-2021.3
Christopher Wray, FBI Director had testified earlier this year that the US government had experienced a 1,300 percent increase in economic espionage investigations over the last few years.?I don?t think there is any country that presents a more severe threat to our innovation, our economic security, and our democratic ideas,? Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee talking about the threat from China in this regard.

The story of Yanjun Xu can be partially recreated from US Federal Court records. Beginning in 2013, he used multiple aliases to go after company secrets in the aviation field, mainly in the US. Like most Chinese operators, Xu targeted company employees with enticing offers and payments to travel to China to make presentations on their latest innovations. However, Xu was caught when he attempted to steal technology relating to GE Aviation?s
composite aircraft engine fan, which GE has guarded closely from competitors. In 2017, Xu targeted a GE employee and invited him to give a presentation at a University in China. He then tried to get the employee to hand off corporate secrets.

According to the US Federal Court, in January 2018, Xu requested ?system specification, design process? information from the employee and ? with the co-operation of the company, who was working with the FBI ? the employee emailed a two-page document from the company that included a label that warned about the disclosure of proprietary information.4 After much discussion, Xu eventually suggested they meet in Europe in 2018.

But by this time, GE and the employee had begun working with the FBI. When Xu tried his hand at the rendezvous in Belgium, he quickly learned he?d been duped. Xu was apprehended and extradited to the United States.

Reports indicate that the Biden administration has been working towards the setting up of a China Mission Centre in the CIA to ramp up intelligence collection on China. According to a Bloomberg report, US spy agencies have been struggling to provide the amount of information on China that would be helpful to policymakers. With the US government attempting to take a harder line on China, it also finds that China is becoming a harder target, just as demands for insights into Xi?s decision-making is increasing. Just as this
time, tensions with China are also heating up over issues from Taiwan to high
technology.

Bloomberg also cites a September 2020 House Intelligence Committee report (partially redacted) which had concluded that US spy agencies were failing to meet the multifaceted challenges posed by China and were overly focused on traditional targets such as terrorism or conventional military threats.

The China Deep Dive: A Report on the Intelligence Community?s Capabilities and Competencies with Respect to the People?s Republic of China, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence The Communist Party of China pursues a jigsaw puzzle strategy towards its adversaries, which includes talking to the adversary while taking all steps
simultaneously to weaken them. This is precisely what they have been doing with the US in recent years. That the conviction of Yanjun Xu occurred a few weeks prior to the Biden-Xi telephonic conversation, indicates that ties are still rocky. This also suggests that China will continue to engage Washington politically, while aiming to penetrate the US, its technology and defence companies for the purpose of stealing high technology to maintain its efforts to match the US. That is precisely why the China Intelligence Centre at the CIA will have to become the new frontline in the battle of wits against China.

Is India watching and listening?

(The Hong Kong Post)