British MI-5 Director General McCallum announced this week his service has more than doubled the number of personnel working to constrain Chinese spying in his country. American FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a speech alongside McCallum in London, added that the US also considers the Chinese government the “biggest long-term threat” to the US economy and its national security. Other Western allies in Europe also identify China as an extremely dangerous regime to watch. Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine may have relegated headlines about the Chinese threat to the bottom of the news cycle, but the danger posed by President Xi Jinping’s communist regime has not subsided to democratic states across the globe.
In a Reuters interview this week Wray said that “The Chinese government is trying to shape the world by interfering in our politics…” and that there already was direct interference in New York in a 2022 US Congressional race. Beijing intended to covertly defeat a candidate it disliked. The unnamed candidate was seen by China as voicing criticism of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which its troops descended on the Square and murdered over 1,000 young people. It occurred when unarmed students occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing participated in protests for freedom and then refused to leave the area. The CCP has censored information on the events surrounding the massacre so effectively that many young Chinese inside the country have never heard of it, the names of student leaders involved, or seen photos of those killed by Chinese troops.
On the economic side, even sophisticated American businesses are unaware of the level of threat coming from Beijing and the CCP leadership, according to Wray. He says that China is “set on stealing your technology.” Its hacking programs, he adds, are more extensive than those of every major country in the world combined. Reuters reports that in May Director General McCallum noted that the UK shared intelligence with 37 countries to help them defend against cyber espionage from China and other unfriendly nations. McCallum noted that the UK has disrupted a sophisticated threat targeting critical aerospace companies. Wray, in recent statements on Taiwan, said he believes China may try to forcibly take over the island. He notes that if it occurs “it would represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen.”
China is not liberalizing its economy or expanding domestic political freedoms, unlike predictions made by the Clinton Administration. The President granted China permanent MFN trade status during the Christmas holiday in 2001. It effectively eliminated the requirement that China show progress toward improved its domestic economic and political freedom. McCallum says the West was pure wrong when it assumed increasing connectivity to the world would lead to expanded political freedom. In response, the Chinese government defends itself by claiming the West has a “Cold War mentality” that is out of date.
Over the last three years, the UK has tightened its procedures to prevent the theft of sensitive academic research. It resulted in the expulsion of 50 Chinese students with links to the Chinese military studying in the country. The Guardian reports, however, that there still are over 150,000 Chinese studying in the UK. They made up the largest cohort of foreign students at 32% of the total number in the UK. The largest foreign component of students at American universities also comes from China. They compose 35% of the foreign student body in the US with 317,299 studying here during the 2020/2021 academic year. Over the past seven years the FBI has been opening one case against China every 12 hours. It represents a 1,300% increase over earlier periods. There are about 13,778 special agents in the entire FBI organization. In February Wray said he was blown away by the sheer numbers he learned when he took over as director. There currently are over 2,000 cases involving China underway in the FBI. He called China “more brazen, more damaging than ever before” in a speech at the Reagan Library earlier this year. The Russian invasion of Ukraine may be the immediate threat to stability in the world, but China has no equal according to Wray.
Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.
Illustration: Pixabay