July 20, 2007:
The FBI has
been taking a more direct approach to dealing with increased Chinese espionage
efforts. This has been in the form of ads run in Chinese language newspapers in
San Francisco. The ads ask Chinese-Americans to provide more tips on the spying
activities of Chinese diplomats, and members of Chinese state security. The
official Chinese response to the ads was to condemn the FBI for trying to make
China look like a threat, and reviving Cold War hysteria.
There are a growing number of
prosecutions, and convictions, of Chinese citizens, and Chinese-Americans
caught up in what the Chinese call the "a thousand grains of sand" espionage
system. Basically, China tries to get all Chinese going overseas, and those of
Chinses ancestry living outside the motherland, to spy for China, if only a
tiny bit. This approach to espionage is nothing new. Other nations have used
similar systems for centuries. What is unusual is the scale of the Chinese
effort. Backing it all up is a Chinese intelligence bureaucracy back home that
is huge, with nearly 100,000 people working just to keep track of the many
Chinese overseas, and what they could, or should, be to trying to grab for the
motherland.
Chinese intelligence officials
try to have a talk with Chinese students and business people before they leave
the country to study or do business, and after they come back as well. Those
going to the West are asked to bring back anything that might "help the
motherland." Most of these people were not asked to actually act as spies, but
simply to share, with Chinese government officials (who are not always
identified as intelligence personnel) whatever information they obtained.
Of course, it soon became open
knowledge in China, and in Western intelligence agencies, what was going on.
Quiet diplomatic efforts, over the years, to get the Chinese to back off were
politely ignored. Another problem is that China has never been energetic at
enforcing intellectual property laws. If a Chinese student came back with
valuable technical information (obtained in a classroom, in a job, or simply
while socializing), the data was often passed on to Chinese companies, or military
organizations, that could use it. Since there were few individual Chinese
bringing back a lot of data, or material (CDs full of technical data, or actual
components or devices), it was difficult for the foreign counterintelligence
agencies to catch Chinese spies. There were thousands of them, and most were
simply going back to China with secrets in their heads. How do you stop that?
Some of the more ambitious of
these spies have been caught red handed with actual objects (CDs, memory
sticks, paper documents). But most of the information moves back to China
unhindered. Naturally, the Chinese push their system as far as they can. Why
not? There is little risk. The Chinese offer large cash rewards for Chinese who
could get particularly valuable stuff back to China. Chinese intelligence
looked on these "purchases" as strictly commercial transactions. If
the Chinese spies got caught, they were on their own. The Chinese involved knew
the rules.
If you were successful, you
also won favor with the government, and
the Chinese government was agreeable to whatever business deals you later tried
to put together back in China. This kind of clout is important in China, where
a "friend in the government" is more valuable than in the West. But more and
more of these ambitious Chinese agents are getting caught because it is
becoming known, to the Western business and academic community, what is going
on. There are over ten million Americans and Europeans of Chinese ancestry.
Many are recent immigrants, or simply students or people working in Canada
temporarily for Chinese companies. They all have family back in China, and are
thus vulnerable to getting recruited, usually unwillingly, as one of the
"thousand grains of sand." Or perhaps "million grains of sand" would be more
accurate. Many of these overseas Chinese are not comfortable about betraying
their new homelands, and in the U.S., the FBI is taking advantage of that.