The EconomistNovember 23rd 2019 751T
hechillingsceneseemsdrawnfroma
thriller,butwashorrifyinglyreal.One
day in 2011 employeesof a government
ministryinBeijingwereforcedtowatch
theexecutionofa colleaguewhohadbeen
caughtspyingforthecia. Hewasoneof
around 20 people roundedupas China
eviscerateda networkofinformers.Intheir
newbook,PeterMattisandMatthewBrazil
note that theman’s pregnant wife was
killedwithhim.Thepointoftheshocking
storyisnotjusttoillustratea catastrophic
failure of American intelligence. Itcap-
turesthegravestakesofa clandestinegame
played,orfought,byChinaandtheWest.
The rise of China under Xi Jinping has
reinvigorated talk about great-power rival-
ry. In the imagination of many Westerners,
theCommunistPartyofChinahas taken
theplaceofitsSovietcounterpart;China’s
BeltandRoadprojectsandoverseas stu-
dents,and Huawei’stelecomsnetworks,
recallcold-warscares.Often,though, the
fevereddiscussionofChina’sreachand in-
fluencelacksa clearunderstanding of the
toolsatitsdisposal,andofwhatthe mod-
ern Communist Partyreallywants. This
fuzzinessisespeciallyevidentinthe realm
ofespionage.Tosome,everyChinese trav-
ellerisa potentialspy;othersdismiss fears
oframpantChinesespooksasparanoia.
AsMrMattis,a formerciaanalyst, and
MrBrazil,a formerAmericanarmyofficer
anddiplomat,pointout,Chinahas been
playingspygamesfordecades. Western
counter-intelligence agencieshave beensounding warnings about them for just as
long—if more quietly than today. For much
of the cold war, however, the United States
and China shared a common adversary in
the Soviet Union. Deng Xiaoping even
agreed to let America establish listening
posts, or “big ears”, in the Xinjiang region
of China’s far west to monitor the Soviets.
On a visit to Beijing in 1980, Stansfield Tur-
ner, then director of the cia, supposedly
wore a fake moustache to evade the kgb.
China itself was a much smaller worry.
Today the scale and intensity of the
Sino-Western duel are greater, as are the
geopolitical stakes. Chinese espionage is
routinely identified by Western security
agencies as one of the most serious for-
eign-intelligence threats. China probably
has more intelligence personnel than any
other country. Hackers from the People’s
Liberation Army and the Ministry of State
Security have cracked open sensitive com-
puter networks around the world. These
days, China is implicated in the vast major-
ity of commercial-espionage cases prose-
cuted by federal authorities in America.
If Western countries have recruited
agents in Beijing, meanwhile, the Chinese
have reciprocated. In December 2017 two
former French intelligence officials were
charged with treason after allegedly spying
for China. This April a former cia agent
pleaded guilty to conspiring with Chinese
operatives, in a case that American officials
suspected was linked to the deadly collapse
of the agency’s network in China.
For years America’s spies and their al-Secretworlds
Spieslikethem
AsparanoiaaboutChineseespionagespreads,understandingthetrue
natureofthethreatisvital
Chinese Communist Espionage: An
Intelligence Primer.By Peter Mattis and
Matthew Brazil. Naval Institute Press; 384
pages; $45
Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi
Jinping. By Roger Faligot. Hurst; 568 pages;
$34.95 and £30
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