China's Spies: Beijing’s Espionage Offensive

· Frontline Books
Ebook
224
Pages
Tools
Eligible

About this ebook

While many of President Xia Jinping’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies, manifested by expansion into the South China Sea, trade confrontation with Australia, and political suppression in Hong Kong, have become obvious, there has been a covert dimension that has gone largely unreported outside the Allied intelligence community. Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, or MSS, has increasingly shifted its priorities to hostile penetration of the CIA. That this is the case has been demonstrated by the recent cases of individuals such as Glenn Shriver, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, Ron Rockwell Hansen, Kevin Mallory, Dickson Yeo, and Alexander Yuk Ching Ma. Of these, Shriver, an American student studying in China, became, as the FBI itself points out, ‘a target of Chinese intelligence services and crossed the line when he agreed to participate in espionage-type activity’. For his actions, in 2019 Ron Rockwell Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, pleaded guilty to attempting to spying for the People’s Republic of China and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Similarly, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA case officer, was sentenced to nineteen years in prison for conspiring to communicate, deliver and transmit sensitive US information to the People’s Republic of China. Hitherto the MSS had concentrated, at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, on the collection of foreign technology and proprietary information, while also monitoring political dissidents, Tibetan and Taiwanese nationalists, and Uyghur and Falun Gong religious activists. The MSS also tended to recruit ethnic Chinese and were less interested in the collection of political intelligence or mounting influence operations. However, as Nigel West reveals, the MSS has undergone a radical change in doctrine, and, having consolidated its grip on supposedly independent commercial joint ventures and academic research institutions, is leveraging control over these ostensibly legitimate enterprises to access intelligence agencies now perceived as adversaries, such as the CIA and FBI. As the rhetoric and tensions between the West and China mounts, and with the current US administration calling America’s relationship with Beijing ‘the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century’, China’s unseen espionage offensive is one of the most serious developments in recent times. Its extent and effectiveness are explored in this absorbing – and chilling – new exposé.
While many of President Xia Jinping’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies, manifested by expansion into the South China Sea, trade confrontation with Australia, and political suppression in Hong Kong, have become obvious, there has been a covert dimension that has gone largely unreported out...

Discover more

About the author

NIGEL WEST is an intelligence expert and critically-acclaimed author. Such is his depth of knowledge in these fields that The Sunday Times noted that, 'His information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories.’ In 1989 Nigel was voted 'The Experts' Expert' by The Observer.
NIGEL WEST is an intelligence expert and critically-acclaimed author. Such is his depth of knowledge in these fields that The Sunday Times noted that, 'His information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. His books are peppered with d...

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.