US Spy Agencies Fight for New Insight Into China

The CIA is still working to rebuild its spy network in China decades after Beijing intelligence rounded up Chinese insiders who had been working for the agency, leaving the United States without understanding of deliberations involving Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his regime.

"We have no real insight into leadership plans and intentions in China at all," a former senior intelligence official, who was reading classified reporting until recently, told The Wall Street Journal, which reported the issue Tuesday.

The Chinese crackdown cost the CIA as many as two dozen assets, who were either executed or put in prison. High-ranking Chinese officials were among those who were captured and punished.

The network of Chinese inside agents grew in the early 2000s, after the CIA's analysts started warning frequently about China's strengths, eventually moving forward a stream of classified intelligence reports known as the "Scary China Brief."

The CIA used the corruption being seen in the Chinese Communist Party and government ministries while recruiting officials to serve as paid agents, but the Chinese regime wiped out the network with its crackdown.

Now, the CIA and its fellow U.S. spy agencies are strengthening their human assets in China. One of their goals, coming as U.S. security policy has been shifting, is making preparations toward the "great power" conflict with China and Russia, rather than continuing with the strong focus on terrorism.

Still, terrorism is an issue, including with the Hamas surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The White House's resources have also been diverted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, making CIA Director William Burns' goal of making China a long-term priority more difficult.

The Hamas attacks came after the United States turned over its responsibility for monitoring Palestinian Hamas militants to Israel, but still, China is at the top of the CIA's list, Burns told The Wall Street Journal.

"We are approaching the PRC as a global priority, more than doubling the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years, and establishing the China Mission Center as CIA's only single country mission center to coordinate the full agency's efforts on this issue," the director said. "Even as we are balancing multiple priorities including ongoing conflicts, we remain intensely engaged on the strategic long-term challenge posed by the PRC."

Burns has traveled secretly to Japan and South Korea in the weeks after the Hamas attack, and in May made a publicly reported trip to Beijing.

Former U.S. intelligence agencies did not quit with aggressive targeting of China even after the Middle East and Afghanistan came more into focus after the 9/11 attacks, said former officials involved in the efforts. However, the United States didn't make China a priority until recent years and never acknowledged the loss of Chinese agents between 2010 and 2012 publicly.

But now, the United States is gaining knowledge of Xi's plans usually from inference and through his public statements, while spy satellites are monitoring military deployments and eavesdropping tools are being used to gather China's communications.

Further, U.S. intelligence agencies must also track China's work in artificial intelligence and synthetic biology at a time when the countries are clashing over U.S. restrictions on technology and military maneuvers.

"Unfortunately, China's goals and objectives are so vast that it really is very difficult to say that we're doing a great job," House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio, commented.

The U.S. spy network in China was lost after Xi became the Communist Party leader in 2012. CIA reports warned that he would be a more nationalistic Chinese leader, but U.S. intelligence officials said their analysis of him was ignored by President Barack Obama's administration.

The Obama White House believed that as China's economy grew, it would join the international world order, led by the United States, but Gail Helt, a former CIA East Asia analyst said there was a "lot of desperation" behind believing that would happen.

But since then, under Xi, China's aggressions have grown, including harassment of Taiwan through military drills and cyber hacks, as well as pursuing more claims in the South China Sea. China has also been using social media sites to recruit former U.S. intelligence officials.

Meanwhile, Burns is holding weekly meetings devoted to China in his office at the CIA's headquarters in Langley and has been calling for additional Mandarin speakers and officers who are experienced in technology.