According to public statements by French author and investigative journalist Roger Faligot,
who has written several books about the regime’s security services,
there are around two million Chinese working directly or indirectly for
China’s intelligence apparatus.
Copyright and republished
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/10/31/china%E2%80%99s-misunderstood-spies/?all=true
Chinese intelligence services are often assumed to use a vacuum cleaner approach to espionage. It’s a view that risks undermining other countries’ security efforts.
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/10/31/china%E2%80%99s-misunderstood-spies/?all=true
Chinese intelligence services are often assumed to use a vacuum cleaner approach to espionage. It’s a view that risks undermining other countries’ security efforts.
This month, Moscow publicly announced its federal security service had detained a Chinese spy,
Tong Shengyong, who the Russians say they caught attempting to purchase
documentation for the S-300 surface-to-air missile. The case has
puzzled observers, because Beijing had already purchased the S-300
system several years ago, and started fielding its own knock-off.
Speculation has abounded over why the Chinese intelligence services would waste their time stealing details of a system they already possessed. The mechanics of Tong’s case are less important, however, than what it says about Chinese intelligence services and their operations – or at least foreign perceptions of that threat.
Most analysts believe the Chinese intelligence threat is largely amorphous , a vast human network vacuuming up many bits of information. China’s seemingly unique approach to intelligence is known by various names, including ‘human wave,’ ‘mosaic,’ or the ‘thousand grains of sand’ approaches to intelligence. Ultimately, it’s a view of Chinese operations fundamentally at odds with normal understandings of intelligence.
There a three major assumptions about this approach. First and most importantly, is that Chinese intelligence officers don’t rely on the traditional tradecraft of clandestine collection, such as paying or blackmailing for secrets. Second, that their secret services rely on the efforts of ethnic Chinese émigrés and citizenry abroad rather than the willingness of foreign citizens to betray the trust afforded them.And third, that the Chinese intelligence services play a secondary role relative to large, informal networks of amateurs, vacuuming up information irrespective of Beijing’s economic, military, and political priorities.
But is this really an accurate picture?
The Tong case suggests Chinese spies work much as others do. Covered as a translator for Chinese delegations, Tong tried to find Russians venal enough to accept payment for classified documents. Both the cover and the method are time honoured hallmarks of espionage, whatever cultural or operational tradition analysts choose from which to draw.
The attempt to acquire a specific set of Russian documents, meanwhile, suggests Chinese intelligence collection may not be so much incidental or coincidental as it is targeted. The Russian announcement of Tong’s intelligence mission tied to the Ministry of State Security (MSS) should make observers rethink likening Chinese intelligence to a giant vacuum cleaner. Such characterizations provide no insight into what Beijing demands of its intelligence services, and no guidance for counterintelligence officials working against the Chinese services or trying to counter economic espionage.
The problem is that the vacuum cleaner perspective lumps together a vast body of Chinese activity that may or may not be related to the intelligence services or Beijing’s immediate objectives. What observers often call Chinese intelligence activity includes the acts of Chinese entrepreneurs exploiting Beijing’s tacit condoning of intellectual property theft and Chinese research institutes trying to overcome a technical difficulty. The transformation of China’s defence industries toward market-based and competitive contracts has given an added incentive for Chinese scientists and engineers to try to gain technological leaps from the West, intensifying their efforts to acquire parts and solutions – whether classified or not.
But what of the Chinese intelligence services? Research conducted by graduate students at Georgetown University found Chinese intelligence services’ activities bear different signatures than the entrepreneurial if criminal described above. In one such thesis entitled ‘Directed or Diffuse? Chinese Human Intelligence Targeting of US Defence Technology,’ Amy Brown, after reviewing roughly 30 confirmed technology transfer cases, concluded Chinese intelligence services use traditional, targeted espionage techniques to acquire significant defence-related systems. On the other hand, the amateurish, seemingly diffuse collection of low-level, sometimes export-controlled parts, usually involves companies, research institutes, and other non-government organizations—not the intelligence services.
Security officials the world over, meanwhile, have uncovered new Chinese espionage cases displaying a range of familiar clandestine techniques. Taiwan recently sentenced Gen. Lo Hsien-che, who Chinese intelligence both induced and pressured to spy through financial incentives and blackmail. In addition, Chinese intelligence paid American student Glenn Duffie Shriver $70,000 for three abortive attempts to join the US State Department and CIA. Also, a Chinese diplomat and journalist in Stockholm recruited and paid a Swedish Uighur for information on Uighur émigré associations and activists. All three now languish in prison for their covert and formal relationship with Chinese intelligence professionals.
All this means it should be clear that Chinese thinking about intelligence doesn’t justify the wildly different concept of intelligence many Westerners ascribe to the country. Long ago, Sun Tzu began his justification of intelligence with the admonition that foreknowledge of an adversary’s plans comes from the minds of men rather than divination. Qian Xuesheng, father of China’s missile programme, called intelligence ‘activating knowledge’ that catalyses policymakers to action.
Perhaps more recently and authoritatively, the Science of Military Intelligence distinguished intelligence from information by the former’s applicability to decision making. Whatever differences may exist between Chinese intelligence services and their foreign counterparts, they are more likely to relate to differences in institutional and cognitive style than some fundamentally alien concept of intelligence.
Speculation has abounded over why the Chinese intelligence services would waste their time stealing details of a system they already possessed. The mechanics of Tong’s case are less important, however, than what it says about Chinese intelligence services and their operations – or at least foreign perceptions of that threat.
Most analysts believe the Chinese intelligence threat is largely amorphous , a vast human network vacuuming up many bits of information. China’s seemingly unique approach to intelligence is known by various names, including ‘human wave,’ ‘mosaic,’ or the ‘thousand grains of sand’ approaches to intelligence. Ultimately, it’s a view of Chinese operations fundamentally at odds with normal understandings of intelligence.
There a three major assumptions about this approach. First and most importantly, is that Chinese intelligence officers don’t rely on the traditional tradecraft of clandestine collection, such as paying or blackmailing for secrets. Second, that their secret services rely on the efforts of ethnic Chinese émigrés and citizenry abroad rather than the willingness of foreign citizens to betray the trust afforded them.And third, that the Chinese intelligence services play a secondary role relative to large, informal networks of amateurs, vacuuming up information irrespective of Beijing’s economic, military, and political priorities.
But is this really an accurate picture?
The Tong case suggests Chinese spies work much as others do. Covered as a translator for Chinese delegations, Tong tried to find Russians venal enough to accept payment for classified documents. Both the cover and the method are time honoured hallmarks of espionage, whatever cultural or operational tradition analysts choose from which to draw.
The attempt to acquire a specific set of Russian documents, meanwhile, suggests Chinese intelligence collection may not be so much incidental or coincidental as it is targeted. The Russian announcement of Tong’s intelligence mission tied to the Ministry of State Security (MSS) should make observers rethink likening Chinese intelligence to a giant vacuum cleaner. Such characterizations provide no insight into what Beijing demands of its intelligence services, and no guidance for counterintelligence officials working against the Chinese services or trying to counter economic espionage.
The problem is that the vacuum cleaner perspective lumps together a vast body of Chinese activity that may or may not be related to the intelligence services or Beijing’s immediate objectives. What observers often call Chinese intelligence activity includes the acts of Chinese entrepreneurs exploiting Beijing’s tacit condoning of intellectual property theft and Chinese research institutes trying to overcome a technical difficulty. The transformation of China’s defence industries toward market-based and competitive contracts has given an added incentive for Chinese scientists and engineers to try to gain technological leaps from the West, intensifying their efforts to acquire parts and solutions – whether classified or not.
But what of the Chinese intelligence services? Research conducted by graduate students at Georgetown University found Chinese intelligence services’ activities bear different signatures than the entrepreneurial if criminal described above. In one such thesis entitled ‘Directed or Diffuse? Chinese Human Intelligence Targeting of US Defence Technology,’ Amy Brown, after reviewing roughly 30 confirmed technology transfer cases, concluded Chinese intelligence services use traditional, targeted espionage techniques to acquire significant defence-related systems. On the other hand, the amateurish, seemingly diffuse collection of low-level, sometimes export-controlled parts, usually involves companies, research institutes, and other non-government organizations—not the intelligence services.
Security officials the world over, meanwhile, have uncovered new Chinese espionage cases displaying a range of familiar clandestine techniques. Taiwan recently sentenced Gen. Lo Hsien-che, who Chinese intelligence both induced and pressured to spy through financial incentives and blackmail. In addition, Chinese intelligence paid American student Glenn Duffie Shriver $70,000 for three abortive attempts to join the US State Department and CIA. Also, a Chinese diplomat and journalist in Stockholm recruited and paid a Swedish Uighur for information on Uighur émigré associations and activists. All three now languish in prison for their covert and formal relationship with Chinese intelligence professionals.
All this means it should be clear that Chinese thinking about intelligence doesn’t justify the wildly different concept of intelligence many Westerners ascribe to the country. Long ago, Sun Tzu began his justification of intelligence with the admonition that foreknowledge of an adversary’s plans comes from the minds of men rather than divination. Qian Xuesheng, father of China’s missile programme, called intelligence ‘activating knowledge’ that catalyses policymakers to action.
Perhaps more recently and authoritatively, the Science of Military Intelligence distinguished intelligence from information by the former’s applicability to decision making. Whatever differences may exist between Chinese intelligence services and their foreign counterparts, they are more likely to relate to differences in institutional and cognitive style than some fundamentally alien concept of intelligence.
