China: The 'Massive' Threat
by Judith Bergman • September 27, 2022 at 5:00 am
"The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party." – Ken McCullum, MI5 Director General, Joint Address by the heads MI5 and FBI, July 6, 2022.
Both directors emphasized that one of the greatest challenges to Western economies is China's theft of Western technology through a variety of means....
China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) uses its regional bureaus to "key in specifically on the innovation of certain Western companies it wants to ransack.... companies everywhere from big cities to small towns -- from Fortune 100s to start-ups.... We've even caught people affiliated with Chinese companies out in the U.S. heartland, sneaking into fields to dig up proprietary, genetically modified seeds, which would have cost them nearly a decade and billions in research to develop themselves." — Christopher Wray, FBI Director, address to London business leaders on National Security Threats Posed by the People's Republic of China, MI5 HQ, July 6, 2022.
Wray emphasized that effectively all Chinese companies are in the pockets of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)... those [companies] that aren't owned outright are effectively beholden to the government all the same, as Chinese companies of any size are required to host a Communist Party cell to keep them in line.... almost like silent partners."
Wray unconditionally warned businesses against partnering with Chinese companies. "Maintaining a technological edge may do more to increase a company's value than would partnering with a Chinese company to sell into that huge Chinese market, only to find the Chinese government, and your 'partner,' stealing and copying your innovation, setting up a Chinese competitor, backed by its government, that is soon undercutting you -- not just in China, but everywhere." — Christopher Wray, July 6, 2022.
The deal [to purchase farmland near a military base in North Dakota] has caused concerns that the purchased land could be used to spy on the base, as China most likely has done on other bases.
Additionally, there is widespread Chinese theft and spying in academia.... European scientists have been empowering China's military by sharing "militarily sensitive knowledge with the Chinese army on a large scale." Out of an astounding 353,000 scientific collaborations between Europe and China around 3,000 had taken place with the Chinese military, defined as "studies where scientists from Western European universities collaborated with Chinese colleagues directly linked to an institute that is part of the Chinese army."
Despite the massive threat that China poses, the Biden administration nevertheless ended the Department of Justice's "China Initiative" in February 2022. That same month, the head of the FBI said in an interview that Chinese spying had become so prevalent in the US that on average, the FBI was opening on average two counterintelligence investigations a day, with more than 2,000 such cases already underway.
Instead of the China Initiative, "the administration would be using a "broader approach one that looks across all of these threats [from China, Russia, and Iran; ed.] and uses all of our authorities to combat them." — Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen, Politico, February 23, 2022.
All right. Where is it? No need to shut down the China Initiative; just increase investigations of other threats, which the US should presumably be doing anyway.
The unmistakable signal that the Biden administration sent to China by closing down the China Initiative was one of weakness -- again -- this time, underscoring that the US does not consider countering China a priority at a time when China, according to two international prominent intelligence directors -- is unquestionably the greatest threat to US interests.
Could there be a signal to an intransigent adversary more dangerous than that?
In an unprecedented move, the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, and the head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, the MI5, Ken McCallum, came together in July to warn against the "massive" threat that both intelligence services consider China presents.
"We consistently see that it's the Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security, and by 'our', I mean both of our nations, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere," Wray said in a joint address by the two directors at the London headquarters of MI5.
"Today is the first time the heads of the FBI and MI5 have shared a public platform," McCallum said. "We're doing so to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge: China."
"The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party," McCallum said. "It's covertly applying pressure across the globe."
