China’s ruler Xi, like his friend Putin, is massively dependent on the spies who carry information to him and his small, elite circle. Based on what they bring, Xi makes his decisions. But his spies are apparently dangerously clueless.
The magazine “The Economist” warns in an article that China’s President Xi Jinping is receiving incomplete and therefore incorrect information from his secret agents. For a variety of reasons, they are not well enough trained and not well enough networked to carry out their task properly.
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However, their attitude does not coincide with that of the Taiwanese government. Should Xi consider military action, he would need intelligence agencies to provide him with reliable information, including at what point the United States would intervene in the conflict.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown just how incomplete the Chinese espionage network is. China’s leaders were taken by surprise, as was the Chinese military.
Just a few weeks earlier, Putin had met Xi in Beijing on the occasion of the Winter Olympics. The two dictators passed a communiqué in which they announced far-reaching cooperation, including on security issues. Putin is said not to have said a word about the imminent invasion.
And China is also spying on its friends, including Russia: in early July, the Russian authorities exposed two scientists who are said to have passed on sensitive information to the People’s Republic. One of them died shortly afterwards in prison.
Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. The PhD linguist and theologian teaches democratic theory in Germany, Austria and Spain as an honorary professor at Leuphana University. In the 2017-18 academic year, he was at National Taiwan University and City University Hong Kong to conduct research on China’s rise. He is currently researching new technologies at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and how they are used in democracies and abused in dictatorships.
According to the Economist, the People’s Republic is successful in industrial and economic espionage. As far as political operations are concerned, however, they have fewer access points. Too often people are recruited for intelligence work in target countries who no longer hold active posts. Beijing would therefore only have received information from second, Russian hands on what was happening in Ukraine.
Ironically, the Chinese spies demand written reports from their contacts so they can pass them up the chain of command. Because in the People’s Republic there is a fear that one could fall out of favor with a wrong word or a statement that runs counter to Xi’s wishes.
However, the slogan “Who writes, stays” is not useful in the work of the secret service, rather “Written is poison” applies here. The Chinese authorities will not be able to recruit the smartest spies with this unorthodox approach. For a long time, China celebrated successes in espionage with its Confucius Institutes disguised as cultural institutions. Through these university-based places, where a facade was erected through Chinese classes and cultural offerings, China directly influenced Chinese people living and studying abroad.
The institutes are said to have tracked down and intimidated students who were critical of Xi’s policies. After it became clear what was really happening at the Confucius Institutes, some of them had to close again. In Germany, too, the People’s Republic is trying to recruit spies, using portals such as LinkedIn, where people can share their careers and look for new jobs. Chinese spies write to people there in a targeted manner, through whose activities they gain access to knowledge that is available in German industry.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns against such contact. As early as 2009, the federal government publicly complained about economic espionage from the People’s Republic. At the time, the German authorities estimated the damage caused by Chinese spies in Germany at 50 billion euros and 30,000 jobs in industry every year.
At the moment there should be a wedding for spies from all countries. Also because of the threat of war looming in the western Pacific. China has announced it will hold similar military operations near the Philippines for a full month following the naval blockade of Taiwan. Chinese mercenaries have been occupying parts of the Spratly Islands, which belong to Manila, since March 2021. The US immediately announced that it would stand by the Philippines, one of its allies in the region, should the situation deteriorate. In the USA, the People’s Republic has enough informers for this case. However, it is questionable whether they will actually convey their findings to Beijing if they go against what Xi believes or wants.
