Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A.
New York TimesDec 23, 2023
Ex-Democracy Activist in US Charged with Spying for China
Above: United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams speaks to the media outside of Manhattan federal court on July 16, 2024 in New York City. Image copyright: Adam Gray/Stringer/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The Facts
New York federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged an individual living in the US with conspiring to act, and acting as an unregistered agent, between 2018 and 2023 at the direction of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS).
According to the US Department of Justice's (DoJ) naturalized American citizen Yuanjun Tang, who defected from China to Taiwan in 2003 before being granted political asylum in the US, "regularly" received MSS instructions and supplied information on US-based Chinese democracy activists.
The Spin
Republican narrative
Despite open acknowledgement of the scale and intent of China's intelligence and espionage operations, the US continues to provide an inadequate response to the security threat Beijing poses to the international order. Unless Washington changes its attitude towards the CIA and begins treating the organization with a similar level of urgency and importance as the Pentagon, American security will continue to be undermined at the hands of its international competitors.
Pro-China narrative
America's accusations of espionage are merely a veil for the CIA's own malicious intelligence-gathering activities across the world. Much like its interventionist behavior in Ukraine and Gaza, the US remains insistent on pointing the blame elsewhere while simultaneously sowing discontent and destabilizing the international community for personal gain.