Asia

Spy Versus Spy: Chinese Intelligence Agency Slams CIA

China’s Ministry of State Security posted a rare bilingual article on the WeChat platform Sunday criticizing the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) recent focus on China.
Sputnik
The strongly-worded missive accused the CIA of hypocrisy, noting that the United States has invested significant amounts of resources to gather intelligence in China while simultaneously criticizing China’s counterespionage efforts.

“You can do anything for intelligence while I shall do nothing against espionage?” read an excerpt from the post. “In recent years, the US, on the one hand, started intelligence wars, sparing no efforts to step up its espionage against China and, on the other hand, 'brought suit against its victims,' scandalously smearing China's justifiable defense and trying to misrepresent the Counterespionage Law of [China] as an 'evil law.'”

The article refers to a revamped Chinese anti-spying law passed by the country’s National People’s Congress last year, which prompted criticism from US officials. China has claimed the legislation is necessary to protect the country from espionage as it becomes a major world power.
China discovered and infiltrated the CIA’s spy network in the country more than a decade ago, leading to dozens of prosecutions. But the US intelligence agency has boasted of rapidly rebuilding its efforts in China in the years since.
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CIA Director William Burns said the agency had recently doubled the percentage of its budget devoted to China in a recent article in US media. Burns has reportedly directed every division within the CIA to contribute towards its anti-China efforts, writing of the “daunting geopolitical challenges” of China’s rise in a world “in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy.”
The decree has led to a surge in hiring of Mandarin speakers throughout the agency.
China’s Ministry of State Security said the CIA’s anti-China crusade represents “another typical case of hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices of the US.” Previously the agency has accused the CIA of promoting a “Cold War mindset” against the country. The CIA’s China Mission Center is the only division within the agency to have ever been established to target a specific country, the Chinese Ministry of State Security noted.
Western media still often parrots discredited claims of of the so-called “Uyghur genocide” in Xinjaing even as the United States backs Israel’s mass killing campaign in the Gaza Strip. China has been engaged in an anti-terrorism campaign against religious extremists in the region for the last decade.
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Claims of Uyghur “genocide” emerged around the same time former US President Barack Obama announced his planned foreign policy “pivot to Asia” to combat China's rise. China has rejected the claims, as have numerous Muslim-majority countries that have investigated the issue.
A few years ago the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA-connected US government organization that foments color revolutions in various countries, admitted it had been funding Uyghur separatist groups since 2004. The strategy mirrors covert regime change attempts the agency has sponsored in various countries around the globe.
The United States has regarded China with hostility since its 1949 revolution, constantly sending spy planes to surveil the Asian country throughout the 1950s. A decade later the country suffered a massive famine, worsened by a tight US embargo that prevented the country from importing food. In 1990s, US-China relations deteriorated.
The agency is joined by various other US intelligence and police organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, all of which possess significant capabilities to spy on American citizens and surveil communications around the globe.
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