EDITOR:

The recent surfacing of a Chinese espionage network in Belgium revealed hundreds of spies working at all levels of European industry. The Belgian ring was identified as using a front name, "The Chinese Students and Scholars Association." According to the July 17, 2005 London Sunday Telegraph and a July 22nd BBC Online article, agents are collecting technological and commercial information to help China eclipse the West as the World's next Super Power. French officials have announced the arrest of an unassuming 22-year-old Chinese woman employed by the car parts maker Valeo for industrial espionage. In Sweden, Chinese "guest researchers" were caught stealing unpublished and patented research. And in Australia, Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who recently defected, claims China has at least 1,000 spies Down Under. Apart from infiltrating the business sector, Beijing’s agents are monitoring ethnic Chinese communities to extend repression at home; their activities include penetrating local religious organizations.

In the United States, hundreds of Chinese students and technicians have been hired to work in sensitive national laboratories, college research facilities and defense-related industries. Major American corporations such as Hughes and Loral, as well as many smaller companies, have willingly sold sensitive products to Chinese aerospace and hi-tech companies controlled by the military. Although the FBI has set up major counter-intelligence operations to attempt to neutralize China's aggressive spy networks, even senior FBI officials have been compromised by double agents such as Katrina Leung in California, who began as a telecommunications businesswoman in Canada apart from being a secret agent for the Chinese military.

The participation of many excellent Chinese students in U.S. and other Western universities has many positive implications, with only a minority involved in espionage. Can national security be protected from these very real non-professional spy networks, while not victimizing innocent people who enjoy and respect our societal freedoms?

Informal Spy Networks:

Unlike traditional US, Russian and European espionage operations, China's national espionage strategy utilizes a vast, informal, decentralized network of ordinary citizens in the roles of tourists, scholars and guest workers. China has set up hundreds of "fronts" in Silicon Valley and other high-tech and defense- related production centers. Around 150,000 Chinese students are currently studying in the United States, not counting some 700,000 tourists and business people. While most of these individuals are not a threat, Chinese intelligence professionals do task numerous "informal" agents to patiently collect small bits and pieces of information that eventually give a composite picture of an entire technology system.

The Wall Street Journal reported on August 9, 2005, many of the thousands of Chinese students and visiting technical workers may not begin as agents. However, the trouble often starts when Chinese government officials contact them and coerce cooperation by appealing to nationalism or threatening their families. These Chinese officials are professional operatives of The People's Liberation Army [PLA], the Ministry of State Security, the Liaison Department of the PLA's General Political Department, or military-controlled technology centers, such as the Institute of Applied Physics Computational Mathematics. They control more than 3,000 front companies in the United States. Paul Moore, who was the FBI's Chief analyst on China from 1978 to 1998, told the Wall Street Journal, "It's the mundane, day to day [ordinary citizen] contacts that are killing us, not the exotic spy operations."

3,000 Professional Espionage "Front" Companies:

In early August, 2005 a Chinese-born couple, Ning and Ahilin Wen, working in an electronics export firm in Wisconsin, were charged with transferring sophisticated electronic devices and computer chips to China that can be used for advanced missiles, radar or military communications products. Prior to his arrest, Wen worked as a paid informant for the FBI. He was employed as a manager of a firm that holds a multi-million dollar contract with the US Navy. Wire intercepts of Wen in China proved that he knew his products were going to the Chinese army, through the Chinese government's 54th Research Institute of the Ministry of Electronics Industry. According to U.S. Government documents obtained by Softwar.com, Wen received the exact requirements for the PLA's technology needs, and then faxed the information to his wife. "If the war breaks out, business will be booming," he bragged to an associate.

The Wen case epitomizes the danger posed by the 3,000 Chinese government espionage front companies operating across the United States, with hundreds more located in Canada. While many are located as store fronts in technology centers such as Silicon Valley, others are located in unassuming locations such as Wisconsin or rural New England.

U.S. policymakers would do well to read the military history of great empires of the past, such as Thucydides’ account of Greek folly in the Mediterranean during the Peloponnesian Wars. An additional review of Chinese histories, describing how upstart kingdoms defeated stronger rivals through superior intelligence, deception and guile, need to be seriously studied. Lack of strategic focus and the waste of national treasure and military morale in the name of the "war on terror" are no excuses for surrender of vital strategic intelligence and technology. Leaders of the rising Eastern Power remember well the celebrated historic feats of their ancestral empires. More importantly, China’s political and military leaders are united in their dedication to applying those proven techniques to modern conditions.

Recommendations:

It appears that the Chinese strategy is to send its students to the West to learn purely technical skills to bring home or to act as acquisition agents. In addition, as more reports describe the informal espionage rings, an aura of distrust could create alienation and prevent visiting students from learning and bringing home the values of an open society.

To better protect sensitive technologies it would be best if university research centers and defense- related industries put stricter standards on hiring foreign workers. And to help foster more openness, international graduate students who are more specialized in technology, should be required to take some liberal arts and Western civilization courses, to have a better understanding of the societal values of their host country.