Prepare for Spying Blow Back?
For Americans living in China, the announcement that two people were just arrested for passing business and military secrets along to the Chinese government is reason to be slightly tense. One of the two primary targets was American born, while two others were naturalized (born in China and Taiwan), and while the fourth appeared to be a Chinese national according to an AP article.
Countries have a habit of retaliating when espionage rings are broken up. You may remember in 2001 Russia and the US got into a nasty dispute after Robert Philip Hanssen was caught spying. Within a week Russia had arrested John Edward Tobbin, a 24 year-old who provided a convenient scape goat. He was not a spy, but from Moscow’s point of view that didn’t really matter. They wanted revenge.
Countries spy on each other. There’s no secret there. Remember a few years ago when the US sold the Chinese government a plane that was bumblingly bugged? Apparently the Bushies thought the Chinese were too dumb to check a presidential plane for bugs. Thank god we only have 343 more days of these dopes in power.
Anyway, the point is that it’s difficult to know how China will react. In the 2002 plane case Beijing was quite restrained in their response. Hopefully they will not go after regular Americans in China this time, but these things are difficult to know. It all depends on who is making the decisions and what their calculations are.
It seems to me that the Chinese would be hesitant to get drawn into a fight during a presidential campaign when they could make enemies with whomever the next president will be–and be vilified along the way. Americans are already in a bad mood, and China could pretty easily slip into the role of villain. I mean more of a villain than it already is in the eyes of many Americans.
More likely than looking for an American patsy here, China will either bite the bullet (since everyone spies on everyone), or find a more subtle economic way to send a message.
But if the police come a knockin’, watch your back.
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China Law Blog responds:
Posted: February 12th, 2008 at 3:32 pm →
I am sure many will laugh at your warning, but I think you are absolutely right. Now I know one incident in another country does not make a trend, but I had a very good friend who was picked up in Russia, interrogated for days, and then deported for taking a picture of a fish processing plant. Why? Because the US had just recently seized a Russian national. Tit for tat is a regular part of the spying game.
eric responds:
Posted: February 12th, 2008 at 8:37 pm →
i really doubt that china would make a move on ordinary americans in China. they are so passed that stage. what would probably happen is that they would quietly deport some known but tolerated spy networks, ACTUAL spies.
a simple message to the intelligence community in washington.
HaoJie responds:
Posted: February 12th, 2008 at 9:58 pm →
Now they have an excuse to arrest those annoying American ExPats who blog constant complaints about CHINA!
Pappi responds:
Posted: February 12th, 2008 at 10:38 pm →
@Eric
Which are the “tolerated spy networks”?
Your words intrigue me
rick shaw responds:
Posted: February 13th, 2008 at 10:44 am →
Did they ever determine it was the U.S. who placed the bugs? If I remember right, it seems that the technology was not one used by the U.S. at that time. I thought it was an inside job with the Chinese military. Something about the short transmission range of the devices would make them useless for the States, unless they had some moles in the Chinese military that would make the recovery of the transmissions feasible.
Shawn responds:
Posted: February 13th, 2008 at 12:34 pm →
Hey Josh,
I think when talking about spying (I am only going to discuss State-sanctioned, not industrial espionage), it helps to look at the motives. For the U.S. I think spying is more of a ‘what are they up to’, unless the target is considered an immediate threat. I think that the U.S. intelligence community is either weakened in the last 20 years, or they are just much more elusive. Maybe it is that technology is improved, and the human element is less visible. Still, I think the objectives between the U.S. and China are quite different.
Regarding the Chinese network, I think there are four prime areas. First, the Chinese have a huge ’social network’ in place around the world. Suprisingly, they have huge amounts of information on P.R.C. citizens, even those with foreign passports. This is for at least two purposes, one is to watch to see if there is anything contradictory to the P.R.C., and the other is in case they need to approach someone, they are armed with suprising information, which will give them the edge in ‘negotiations’ as for what they can do for the motherland. They also seem to forge into foreign-borne Chinese that they have a sense of duty for China, even if they never lived here. They seem to think that anyone who has Chinese heritage should help the P.R.C. so there is some recruiting of overseas, sometimes with the help of the information on family.
Second and third are the ‘normal’ operations, intelligence gathering and monitoring, and counter-espionage. The advantage here lies with the Chinese, as the States being the land of immigrants, it is easier to infiltrate. Think of all the Chinese working for defence contractors, versus how many westerners are working for the defence industry in China.
The biggest difference is with the fourth area (which is what this most recent ordeal is about). The P.R.C. has what could only be described as ‘knowledge transfer’. The P.R.C. is still far behind in most areas of advanced technology. The gap is closing quickly, but advanced technology is highly coveted. Some technology comes from overseas investment in China through joint ventures, but for most of what the P.R.C. really wants, they need to use human assets.
I have to wonder how much of the reported incidents were baited and controlled, and how much they are fed the wrong information. I have read that the Chinese AWAC plane that crashed in Anhui in 2006 was using some information from Israel, and some suspect ‘bad intelligence’ may have led to the accident. Nothing is ever really what it seems. Well, I guess it is time to destroy this hard drive.
nanheyangrouchuan responds:
Posted: February 13th, 2008 at 2:35 pm →
“Remember a few years ago when the US sold the Chinese government a plane that was bumblingly bugged? ”
There were two incidents, one was the Katrina Leung saga in which she seduced an FBI idiot into giving her details of US bugs on Zhang Ze Min’s plane. The second one was the US telling (or the PSB discovering) that the PLA had planted bugs on a group of aircraft used to ferry senior cadres. This ties in with theories of a soft coup in which the PLA has decided it can do a better job of managing certain segments of internal security and international relations than the CCP. The CCP after all, would not exist if not for the PLA.
As for retaliation, it would not be as bold or brash as what the Russians do, but more subtle such as foreign experts and business people in certain business sectors being harassed, having their apartments swept, computers and phone searched, etc.
I’d really watch for inflammatory stories in local newspapers, some stories may mention shipping these guys off to Gitmo, or life imprisonment, etc which would play into the “look down on China”, “contain China”, “hold China back” stories that the CCP loves to cook up.
BTW, China should be contained and held back…then de-constructed.