For China, all developed countries and emerging economies, even those of the BRICS, are its rivals and it therefore treats them accordingly.

China has not spared even its close friends when it comes to espionage, writes Dr Akhil Dev Sharma

For China, all developed countries and emerging economies, even those of the BRICS, are its rivals and it therefore treats them accordingly.

However, still remaining insecure about the ideologies it pursues and the agendas it pushes beyond its geographic borders, China heavily uses espionage as a tool to keep an eye on the activities of its rivals, espionage of their military, strategic, political and economic assets given priority. -eminence in its overall bilateral and plurilateral engagements with them.

US authorities last week charged five Chinese students at the University of Michigan with trying to cover their tracks and lying after taking photos of the Michigan military base at Camp Grayling, including while military exercises were taking place. between American troops and soldiers of the American army. Taiwan’s military in August 2023, AP News reported.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation was quoted by several media outlets as saying in Michigan District Court on October 3 that these Chinese nationals were found with cameras, tents and classified communications equipment during a training exercise for American troops with the Taiwanese army. .

Grayling Aerial Weapons Range

The incident has sparked deep concern among US officials over China’s continued use of its citizens for intelligence purposes in America. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 224 cases of Chinese espionage directed against the United States have been reported since 2000 and of these, 69% were reported after Xi Jinping took office, first in as chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2000. November 2012 and after he became president in March 2013.

The Washington DC-based think tank further stated that the majority of Chinese espionage activities in the United States include the collection of secret information on US military assets or research facilities, space assets, data on nuclear weapons testing, the country’s economy and politics. According to the think tank, Beijing uses its nationals and naturalized U.S. citizens born in China for espionage purposes in the United States.

In September 2024, Linda Sun, a naturalized U.S. citizen who worked as an aide to two former New York governors, Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo, was charged with acting as a secret agent of the Chinese government and having laundered millions of US dollars for China.

In his 63-page indictment, Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Linda Sun, working in the administrations of new governors Hochul and Cuomo, allegedly “prevented Taiwan government officials to meet with state officials (from New York) and attempted to arrange a high-level official visit to China.

What caused a sensation in American political and diplomatic circles was that Linda Sun, 41, was working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party in coordination with four diplomats from the Chinese consulate in New York. And then, all of this happened at a time when the United States and China are trying to ease tensions ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

Linda Soleil

Earlier in May this year, Joe Biden’s administration issued an order banning a Chinese company, Mine One Partners, backed by Chinese nationals, from owning land near a nuclear missile base in Wyoming . Such activities, experts say, have a profound impact on US national security, political and governance processes.

But the United States is not just the only target of China’s espionage activities: Europe has become another major location for Chinese spies’ intelligence-gathering actions. In this regard, Germany has served as a hotbed of information-gathering activities by Chinese agents.

On October 1, a Chinese woman, identified as Yaqi citing the German prosecutor’s office.

In April, German authorities arrested three people suspected of being in contact with Chinese intelligence officials and of having handed them innovative technologies that could be used for military purposes. German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann was quoted by Reuters as saying that “at the time of their arrest, the defendants were in talks about research projects that could be particularly useful in expanding China’s maritime combat power.” “.

Earlier this year, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD identified China as “one of the biggest cyber threats” to the Netherlands, while Norwegian intelligence said Chinese spies operate across the continent , with defence, cyberspace and technology remaining key areas of their intelligence gathering activities.

According to the Institute for Strategic Research, a Paris-based military think tank, China has a vast network of organizations, including the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the Ministry of State Security ( MSS), to carry out espionage activities.

The French military think tank said the intelligence branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security alone employs between 80,000 and 100,000 people, while the Ministry of State Security employs around 200,000 agents. However, the exact number of agents hired by these Chinese ministries could be very high, Paul Charon, a China specialist at the Institute for Strategic Research, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times.

In 2020, investigations carried out by journalists Die Welt and La Stampa, using sources from the European External Action Service (EEAS), revealed the existence of a vast network of Chinese intelligence agents in Brussels.

At that time, there were as many as 250 Chinese intelligence officials in Brussels, making the city, which houses NATO headquarters, 300 foreign diplomatic missions and a hundred other international organizations, the capital of Chinese spies, said journalists Die Welt and La Stampa in their report in Bloomberg.

Chinese President Xi Jinping chairs the 14th BRICS summit in Beijing via video link. (Photo: Xinhua/IANS)

But China has not spared even its close friends when it comes to espionage. For example, Brazil, a BRICS member that celebrated the 50th anniversary of its diplomatic relations with China in August 2024, is angry with Beijing for its alleged cyberattack on its presidential office. She seethes with anger that China has repeatedly targeted her vital interests in the country, despite being a close friend.

Since 2020, as many as 15 cyberattacks carried out by China have been reported across Brazil, including against the country’s presidential office. Experts say that espionage is the result of the CCP’s increasingly hostile policies and that hacking is the preferred mode of espionage.

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