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Tag: Chinese military

  • China claims CIA spy turned out to be military firm employee

    China claims CIA spy turned out to be military firm employee

    The latest in a long line of highly publicised espionage claims between Washington and Beijing, China’s civilian intelligence agency has exposed a Chinese national for allegedly giving secret military information to the CIA.

    The suspect, who goes by the surname Zeng, was employed by an unnamed Chinese military industrial firm, according to a statement released by China’s Ministry of State Security on Friday, and his position allowed him access to vitally sensitive classified information.

    Zeng, 52, was sent to Italy by his company, according to the ministry, to further his education. The statement claims that while he was there, a representative of the US embassy approached him. Over the course of their interactions, which included dinner parties, excursions, and opera viewings, they supposedly grew closer.

    The ministry asserted that as their relationship progressed, the US diplomat exposed his identity as a CIA agent. According to the statement, Zeng was allegedly offered “a huge amount” of cash in addition to family immigration to the US in exchange for confidential information regarding the Chinese military.

    According to the report, Zeng signed an espionage deal with the US and got evaluation and training.

    After completing his studies, Zeng allegedly travelled back to China where he repeatedly met with CIA agents to offer “a large amount of core intelligence,” according to the statement.

    After discovering proof of Zeng’s espionage activities during a probe, the ministry said it had taken “compulsory measures” against him. The prosecution has been given the case to evaluate and indict, it continued.

    A week after two US Navy sailors in California were detained for allegedly giving classified US military secrets to Chinese intelligence agents, China made its disclosure regarding the accused CIA spy.

    A civilian organisation in China, the Ministry of State Security is in charge of domestic and international intelligence and counterintelligence. Its mandate has prompted comparisons to a combined CIA and FBI, although it is much more clandestine about its activity, without even an open website outlining its operations.

    However, the ministry has become more well-known recently. It opened a public account on Wechat, China’s leading social media platform, on August 1. In it, it urged “all members of society” to join the fight against espionage and offered rewards and safety to those who provided information.

    On Friday, the ministry’s Wechat account also posted a message regarding Zeng’s case.

    The Chinese military has its own intelligence organisation as well.

    Although the two greatest economies in the world have always been rivals, the current worsening in relations has intensified this competition.

    While Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in a generation, has made national security his top priority, China’s Communist Party leadership have long promoted the idea that “foreign forces” are attempting to undermine the country’s progress.

    The scope of espionage was further broadened by China’s amended counter-espionage law, which was unveiled last month.

    According to The New York Times, CIA operations in China experienced a shocking setback starting in 2010 when the Chinese government assassinated or imprisoned more than a dozen sources over a two-year period.

    According to a CNN article from 2021, as part of a larger change to sharpen its emphasis on foes like China and Russia, the agency was revamping how it oversees and trains its network of spies.

  • Three-day military display by China causes more problems for Taiwan

    Three-day military display by China causes more problems for Taiwan

    This week, the Chinese military has increased its activities in the area of Taiwan, flying scores of warplanes over the Taiwan Strait’s middle line and into the main areas of the island’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ).

    Analysts claim that while the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) activities has a number of ramifications, none of them are good for Taiwan or the stability across the Taiwan Strait.

    38 PLA aircraft were spotted in the area of the island in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, 33 in the same period on Thursday, and 30 in the same period on Friday, according to data from Taiwan’s Defence Ministry.

    Over those 72 hours, 73 PLA aircraft either crossed the strait’s median line – an informal demarcation point that Beijing does not recognize but until recently largely respected – or entered the southeastern or southwestern parts of the island’s ADIZ.

    China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having controlled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. Beijing has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.

    The PLA aircraft detected this week included fighter jets, H-6 bombers, anti-submarine warning aircraft and reconnaissance drones, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

    The ministry said it tasked combat air patrol warplanes, naval vessels and land-based missile defense to monitor the PLA aircraft, along with nine Chinese warships that were present around the island.

    Their response underscores the problem that increased PLA activity poses to Taiwan, said Carl Schuster, a Hawaii-based analyst and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

    When Taiwan’s military responds to PLA operations, it taxes the island’s systems and equipment.

    “Constant use creates a maintenance headache that reduces readiness until (spare) parts are delivered and installed,” he said. “Also, air frames and hulls require inspection and refurbishment as certain age and stress times are reached.”

    He also says surges in PLA activity are aimed at wearing down the mental ability of Taiwan’s people to resist a potentialtakeoverby Beijing.

    “Beijing hopes Taipei will just accept unification as inevitable and allow Chinese forces in without resistance. They are trying to diminish if not destroy the Taiwan population’s will to resist,” he said.

    But even if that tactic does not work, the continued presence of large numbers of PLA warplanes and ships around Taiwan can lull the island’s defenders – both the Taiwanese military and any potential external reinforcements – into complacency, he said.

    Under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington has agreed to give Taiwan the ability to defend itself, largely through weapons sales, although President Joe Biden has said repeatedly that US troops would defend the island in the event of a Chinese invasion.

    Either way, with US equipment or even fighting troops, it may become too late for Washington to come to Taipei’s rescue if large amounts of PLA planes and ships are already on station around the island.

    “The longer the delay in reacting to PLA buildups, the less time available to match or counter that buildup. The US margin of advantage is too slim to achieve success if its forces move too late,” Schuster said.

    From the PLA’s perspective, sustained drills are a necessary part of readiness to execute any move on Taiwan, the former US Navy captain said.

    “PLA forces need constant training since such skills are perishable and exercises offer both training in those skills and opportunities to rehearse and examine some aspects of war plans,” he said.

    “Military operations are complex, like American football. The plays and drives require constant practice and rehearsal to be conducted effectively,” Schuster added.

    China last held three days of intensive military drills around Taiwan in April, exercises the PLA said “comprehensively tested joint combat capabilities of its integrated military forces under actual combat situation.”

    “Forces in the command is ready for combat at all times, and will resolutely destroy any type of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist or foreign interference attempts,” a PLA statement after the April drills said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

    As for this week’s drills, a report in the state-run Global Times said they “aim to safeguard national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”

    “Such drills are becoming more combat-oriented and more intensive in order to deter and prepare for interferences from external forces,” the report said, citing Chinese experts.

    Meanwhile, the activity in and around the Taiwan Strait in the past few days hasn’t been limited to the PLA.

    A US Navy P-8A reconnaissance jet transited the strait on Thursday, according to a statement from the US 7th Fleet in Japan.

    “The aircraft’s transit of the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows,” the statement said.

    On its English-language website, the PLA accused the US military of hyping the situation, and a spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command said PLA troops tracked and monitored the US plane.

    US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told CNN Thursday that he doesn’t see confrontation between the US and China involving Taiwan as “imminent” or “unavoidable.”

    “But having said that it’s my job to make sure that we have to continue to maintain a credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “The most credible deterrent is a combat capable force and that’s what we have today.”

  • US Navy vessels sail by a Chinese island heavily fortified in the South China Sea

    US Navy vessels sail by a Chinese island heavily fortified in the South China Sea

    The US Navy has dispatched a destroyer to a disputed island in the South China Sea that Beijing has militarized in order to assert its claim to the territory.

    The voyage took place as the Chinese military began its third day of a show of force surrounding Taiwan, a thousand miles away, close to the northern entrance to the South China Sea, in retaliation to a quick trip to the United States by Taiwan’s president.

    An announcement from the US Navy’s 7th Fleet on Monday claimed that the guided-missile destroyer USS Milius had come within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef in the Spratly islands, also known as the Nansha Islands in China.

    Mischief Reef, which lies in the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone, is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. But Beijing has asserted its claims to the island by building it up and placing military infrastructure on it.

    The US contends such actions are in violation of the Law of the Sea Convention.

    “Features like Mischief Reef that are submerged at high tide in their naturally formed state are not entitled to a territorial sea. The land reclamation efforts, installations, and structures built on Mischief Reef do not change this characterization under international law,” the US 7th Fleet statement said.

    China claims almost all of the vast South China Sea as part of its territorial waters, including many distant islands and inlets in the disputed body of water, many of which – like Mischief Reef – Beijing has militarized.

    A spokesperson for the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command said the US destroyer “illegally intruded” into Chinese waters near Mischief Reef, whichBeijing calls Meiji Reef.

    “China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and their nearby waters,” Air Force Senior Col. Tian Junli said in a statement.

    The US destroyer’s so-called freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) defended the rights for vessels of any nation to operate in the area, the 7th Fleet statement said.

    US warships regularly conduct such FONOPs in the South China Sea and Monday’s was the second in three weeks by the Milius, which on March 23 sailed near the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in the northern part of the South China Sea.

    “The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows – regardless of the location of excessive maritime claims and regardless of current events,” the 7th Fleet said in Monday’s statement.

    After the March FONOP, Beijing claimed the US had violated its sovereignty while “undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Tan Kefei, spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, said.

    Monday’s US FONOP came as Chinese forces entered their third day of large-scale military exercises around the island of Taiwan, the self-governing democracy to the north of the South China Sea that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its territory despite never having ruled it.

    Beijing launched the operations around Taiwan on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    Beijing had repeatedly warned against Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and had previously threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.