China slams CIA recruitment ads as ‘naked political provocation’

BEIJING: China on Tuesday condemned recruitment adverts by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asking disillusioned Chinese officials to share state secrets as a “naked political provocation”.

“The United States not only maliciously smears and attacks China, but also openly deceives and lures Chinese personnel to surrender, even directly targeting Chinese government officials,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

The US intelligence agency last week released a number of videos it said were aimed at “recruiting Chinese officials to help the US”.

CIA director John Ratcliffe said the cinematic videos were “just one of many ways that we´re adjusting our tradecraft at the CIA”.

Beijing on Tuesday said the United States used “various despicable methods to steal secrets of other countries, interfere in other countries´ internal affairs and undermine other countries´ political power”.

“The videos released by the US Central Intelligence Agency on social media are another self-confession with solid evidence of this,” Lin said.

The United States and China have long traded accusations of espionage.

Last month, security officials said they had implicated three US “secret agents” in cyberattacks during February´s Asian Winter Games in the northeastern city of Harbin.

And in March, China´s ministry of state security said it had sentenced to death a former engineer for leaking state secrets to an unnamed foreign power.

Beijing on Tuesday vowed to take “necessary measures to resolutely crack down on the infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces”.

China will “firmly safeguard national sovereignty, development and security interests”, Lin said.In October, the CIA launched a drive to recruit new informants in China, Iran and North Korea by posting instructions online on how to securely contact the agency, following what it said was successful efforts to enlist Russians. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are known within the US intelligence community as “hard targets” - countries whose governments are difficult to penetrate.