According to authorities, Chinese espionage in the West is rooted in virtually every aspect of its relations with Western nations. This includes sister-city relationships, land purchases, academic funding, tech theft, and influence campaigns. Nick Eftimiades, a veteran China authority on Chinese intelligence, says that the United States must grasp China’s culture-driven model of “whole-of-society” collection.
Eftimiades is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center and writes on Chinese espionage operations and tactics. He served 34 years in the U.S. government, including at the CIA, the State Department’s Diplomatic Security agency, and as a senior intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He received the National Intelligence Council’s Achievement Award and the DIA Director’s Intelligence Award.
In his view, “China breaks the mold.” Eftimiades says that unlike other countries, China’s approach is, “we’re going to have a whole-of-society approach,” and that means, “society becomes your spies.”
He points to national security laws in China that compel cooperation by every person in China. The government tells its citizens, “you must cooperate with our intelligence efforts,” he says. Networks then blend state security, the United Front, the police, state firms, private companies, and diaspora ties. “We are not set up to contend with that,” he says.
Leadership under Xi Jinping intensified the project, Eftimiades says. He links Xi’s vision to aggressive collection, from data operations abroad to political influence in Europe. It also results in “the greatest transfer of wealth,” according to Eftimiades, where “we lose trillions in intellectual property to China.”
Recruitment programs amplify China’s reach. “The Thousand Talents Program is designed to take the world’s knowledge and bring it to support the national advancement of China,” Eftimiades says. “People get paid anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 a month,” he says. In addition, “universities pay for research to be done in the U.S., and China benefits.”
American blind spots, in his view, help China. American leaders believed prosperity would liberalize China, while companies chased market access. “American policy is characterized by ignorance, arrogance, and greed,” he says. “These three things killed us over time,” he says.
Awareness has risen since 2018, but we are falling behind, according to Eftimiades. “The FBI says publicly that they have one case dealing with China once every 12 hours,” he says. “There are thousands of cases in arrears.”
He argues for strategic deterrence rather than whack-a-mole prosecutions. “We need to think at a strategic level,” he says. “Next time they do something… we’re going to kick a state-owned enterprise off the stock market–otherwise there is no reason for them to stop.”
State and local governments should be on alert also, according to Eftimiades. “Sister-city programs should be out and public,” he says, warning of clauses that constrain engagement with Taiwan, for example. He also says university contracts and funding should be transparent. “The population has to insist that those arrangements are open and transparent.”
Washington, in Eftimiades’ view, needs to lead a new national approach. “We need a strategy on how we’re dealing with China,” he says. “We need this to be put in law… with milestones… directing how this is going to go.” He urges organization across federal and state levels and incentives that bring industry and academia into compliance. We also need better cyber defense, and to recognize that the CHinese are playing a long game. “China is a patient society,” he says.
