Peddling fear: China’s top security agency mocks CIA spy recruitment drive as ‘farcical’
MSS calls US intelligence agency’s ‘clumsy’ effort to recruit Chinese informants a budget-driven stunt.
Yuanyue Dang in Beijing
China’s top intelligence agency says a recent CIA campaign aimed at recruiting informants from China is a sign the US spy agency is desperately looking for ways to survive as Washington slashes budgets.
“Yet, as resources shrink, the CIA has doubled down on hyping the ‘China threat’ as its lifeline, peddling fear to Congress and taxpayers to carve out a larger slice of the budget pie,” the Ministry of State Security (MSS) said in an article published on Wednesday on its official WeChat account.
The post, published in both Chinese and English, referred to a CIA effort to recruit Chinese spies as “yet another farcical performance”.
New CIA videos seek to lure Chinese officials to leak secrets to US
It was the first time that the MSS, which has become increasingly active on social media, has responded to the advertisements – two Chinese-language videos posted by the CIA on social media last month.
The videos were intended to exploit possible dissatisfaction among Chinese officials with the ruling Communist Party leadership and encourage them to leak secrets to the United States.
A public recruitment drive, launched by the CIA last October, posted instructions online on how to safely contact the US spy agency in the hope of attracting informants from China, Iran and North Korea.
Last month, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian condemned the recruitment drive, calling it “a serious violation of China’s national interests and a blatant political provocation”.
In an emailed statement last October, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, warned that “any attempts to drive a wedge between the Chinese people and the [Communist Party], or to weaken their close bond, will inevitably fail”.
The MSS article on Wednesday also claimed the CIA recruitment videos were “riddled with clumsy rhetoric and slanderous claims”.
The ministry added that the restructuring of federal agencies since US President Donald Trump took office again in January had “hit the CIA hard”.
“Plagued by internal and external pressures, the CIA still encounters mounting challenges,” it said, adding that the agency was recruiting Chinese spies to “avoid becoming a sacrificial pawn in the next political reshuffle”.
The MSS article stated that if the CIA’s tactics had been effective, “America’s intelligence failures against China wouldn’t be so glaring”, adding that China’s anti-espionage authorities have in recent years “dealt a fatal blow to the CIA’s intelligence network in the country”.
In 2023, former CIA Director William Burns told the Aspen Security Forum that the agency had made progress in rebuilding its spy networks in China after suffering significant losses ten years earlier.
The New York Times reported in 2017 that US intelligence operations had suffered a heavy blow in China between 2010 and 2012, with dozens of sources either being killed or disappearing.
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