Mao said Burns’ admission was in itself quite revealing. She vowed that China would take "all measures necessary" to safeguard national security.
"This is rather concerning. The US on the one hand keeps spreading disinformation on so-called ‘Chinese spying and cyber-attacks,’ and on the other hand tells the public about its large-scale intelligence activities targeting China," she told a daily news briefing.
Burns made the surprise revelation while attending the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week. He said the CIA was "working very hard to make sure we have a very strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods."
The CIA suffered a crushing blow more than a decade ago when it lost many of its assets in China to a combination of betrayal by a CIA officer and a breakdown in a secret communications system, American media reported.