Global Watch | How Chinese spy network has gone global with major thrust on stealing sensitive technologies

The Chinese diaspora including Chinese tourists and students studying abroad are emerging as a major source of spying for China. All the Chinese visiting or staying outside China are now legally compelled to work for the Chinese intelligence apparatus as and when required. The national intelligence law of the People’s Republic of China adopted at the 28th meeting of the standing committee of the 20th National People’s Congress on 27th June 2017 is worth mentioning here. According to Article 7 of this law, “All organisation and citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets work they are aware of.” Article 9 of the same legislation says that the state would give commendation and awards to individuals and organisations that make major contributions to national intelligence efforts. In this context a look at the number of Chinese travelling or staying outside China presents a dangerous picture for rest of the world. In 2019, the number of outbound tourists from China reached nearly 155 million, almost three times as many as 2010. There are 492,185 international students enrolled in Chinese universities, according to the latest statistics up to 2018. The capital city of China, Beijing, is the city with the highest number of international students, a total of 80,786. Around 928,090 Chinese students are currently studying abroad. The United States leads the list of the countries with the most Chinese students, with 340,222 students. The Chinese premier intelligence agency MMS (Ministry of State Security), keeps a close watch on its population and gathers an enormous amount of intel from them and filters it down for relevant information. Hence, for the Chinese it is the entire population that forms a part of intelligence gathering. The Chinese intelligence apparatus has not only put Chinese and international residents in China within surveillance but its carrying out similar activities to monitor Chinese diaspora in rest of the world also. Here is a typical case study that reveals the working pattern of Chinese spy network. A Chinese police station set up to spy on the Chinese nationals in Lower Manhattan is run by a US charity (America ChangLe Association NY Inc.) that was on an IRS blacklist. The non-profit organisation paid $1.3 million for the suite of offices that housed the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs bureau. The bureau was tasked to spy on the Chinese diaspora for the Chinese Communist Party. The stations also participated in “intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment” to spy on dissenters and return migrants. Additionally, two Chinese police stations were found in Paris, three in Toronto, two in London, and five scattered in the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. That indicates the global footprint of Chinese deep state. According to Ken McCallum, Chief of UK Intelligence agency MI5, they suspected Chinese agents to have approached over 20,000 people in the UK over professional networking sites like LinkedIn, in order to try to cultivate them to provide sensitive information. According to a BBC report, in 2022, MI5 came to know of more than 20 instances of Chinese companies considering or actively trying to gain access to sensitive technology developed by UK companies and universities through investments or other means where the full role of China is hidden, often through complex company structures. The pursuit of important and sensitive technologies developed by other nations and then copying them through the process of reverse engineering has a historical context. On June 23, 1978, Deng Xiaoping initiated a new phase in the China’s pursuit of foreign technology, proclaiming that thousands, or even tens of thousands, should be dispatched overseas instead of just a few. In 1993, a ground-breaking decree from the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the policy framework of support for studying abroad. However, these students were obliged and encouraged to come back to China and utilise the information about the technologies they worked on in foreign nations to develop China’s weapons systems. This initiated China’s notorious reverse-engineering of all the lead weapons systems of the world. The programme that forms the basis of this whole process is called Thousand Talent Programme (TTP). Of the 162 Los Alamos scientists who have returned to China, at least 17, including 13 permanent staff members, were selected in the TTP. Members of the TTP receive RMB 1,000,000 (approximately $155,000) and a research subsidy of RMB 3 million to 5 million (approximately $465,000 to $775,000). Forty-two scientists were selected for the TTP’s youth branch, the Youth Thousand Talents Programme (YTTP). One former Los Alamos permanent researcher researched for both the US military and the Chinese military (PLA) while concurrently employed as a professor at a US university and as a Thousand Talents selectee at Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST). NJUST is a member of the Seven Sons of National Defence, a group of universities that collaborate closely with the PLA. Between 2009 and 2015, the individual received approximately $1.8 million from the U.S. Army Research Office, the US Army Research Laboratory, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the US Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Programme for research on advanced materials. While conducting research on advanced materials for the US military, this individual presided over a 390 million RMB project from the CMC S&T Commission’s Major Frontier Innovation Programme that made breakthroughs in titanium aluminide (TiAl) alloys, a lightweight material with applications in defence aerospace. The former Los Alamos researcher collaborated on this project with a researcher who had previously spent time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a visiting scholar. The former Oak Ridge visiting scholar later won the China’s highest-level defence Science and Technology prize in 2021. The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.