Some media focus on the ethnicity of Chinese spies. That’s a mistake. The most dangerous individuals compromised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are those snagged by methods known as “elite capture.” In most countries, these are typically non-Chinese leaders in business and politics.
I doubt the Chinese authorities wanted to pay those kinds of bucks, especially if they knew—and they do—that the bennies were a red flag to the FBI in more ways than one.
But some in the media are now calling out what they claim is a pattern of Beijing recruiting among the Chinese diaspora for its espionage and influence operations. “The clandestine activity usually follows a pattern, analysts said,” according to a report in The New York Times. “China recruits members of Chinese diaspora communities to infiltrate halls of power, or to silence Chinese dissidents and other critics of Beijing.” The NY Times describes the case of Sun in New York state, and presents anecdotal evidence of three other incidents of individuals of Chinese descent accused of spying or engaging in influence operations in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
The others probably got much less payola than Sun for their alleged influence or espionage. So maybe they were more influenced by their ethnicity. I myself have seen anecdotal evidence that Chinese intelligence agents selectively recruit Chinese Americans.
However, there are a number of other reasons to spy for the CCP. There are numerous cases of non-Chinese individuals conducting influence operations, espionage, and technology theft for China that are worse than the anecdotes mentioned in the article. Some engage in “forced technology transfer” that is not, in fact, forced. They choose to trade U.S.-origin technology for market access and huge profits in China. There’s no law against giving some of this technology away, even though doing so is horrible for the U.S. economy and our national security. It costs us hundreds of billions of dollars in lost business and risks war as the People’s Liberation Army gets more powerful through China’s use of stolen U.S. technology.
Some other non-Chinese who de facto act for China’s benefit are high government officials who, after leaving office, work as “consultants” who happen to promote CCP interests without ever registering as foreign agents. Some have access to individuals at the head-of-state or secretary level.
Non-Chinese agents of the regime in Beijing who can operate within the law and under less scrutiny, all else equal, make them arguably more dangerous to the United States and democracy generally. There is a strong argument to be made that Beijing’s own racism in how it chooses its low-level spies should not overly influence our understanding of the higher-level threat, our enforcement efforts in finding and prosecuting spies, or our vigilance in looking for the many traditional and non-traditional ways in which the CCP seeks to influence our democracy. That includes what is known in Washington and the academic literature as “elite capture.”
Appealing to some kind of shared ethnicity or race may be one method that the CCP uses to recruit spies or elites. But it is only one method among many, and it is only skin deep. The CCP is throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. It doesn’t really care about the color of one’s skin as long as one does what benefits the regime. In fact, the CCP’s appeal to race should offend Chinese Americans, not give them a reason to spy for Beijing. The more insidiously effective incentives, such as money and ideology, apply to any ethnicity equally.
