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Subscribe to RSSHONG KONG -- A Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, sources told Reuters, a case both countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive to prevent a fresh crisis in relations.
The official, an aide to a vice minister in China's security ministry, was arrested and detained early this year on allegations that he had passed information to the United States for several years on China's overseas espionage activities, said three sources, who all have direct knowledge of the matter.
The aide had been recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency and provided "political, economic and strategic intelligence", one source said, though it was unclear what level of information he had access to, or whether overseas Chinese spies were compromised by the intelligence he handed over.
Read more China coverage on our Behind The Wall blog
The case could represent China's worst known breach of state intelligence in decades and its revelation follows two other major public embarrassments for Chinese security, both involving U.S. diplomatic missions at a tense time for bilateral ties.
The aide, detained sometime between January and March, worked in the office of a vice-minister in China's Ministry of State Security, the source said. The ministry is in charge of the nation's domestic and overseas intelligence operations.
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He had been paid hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars and spoke English, the source added.
"The destruction has been massive," another source said.
The sources all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of punishment if identified.
China's foreign ministry did not respond immediately to a faxed request for comment sent on Friday.
The sources did not reveal the name of the suspected spy or the vice minister he worked for. The vice minister has been suspended and is being questioned, one of the sources said.
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The Ministry of State Security rarely makes public the names of its officials and does not have a public website.
The incident ranks as the most serious Sino-U.S. spying incident to be made public since 1985 when Yu Qiangsheng, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. Yu told the Americans that a retired CIA analyst had been spying for China. The analyst killed himself in 1986 in a U.S. prison cell, days before he was due to be sentenced to a lengthy jail term.
The vice minister's aide was arrested at around the same time that China's worst political scandal in a generation was unfolding, though the sources said the two cases were unrelated.
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The political scandal erupted in February when the police chief of Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, took shelter for 24 hours in a U.S. consulate. Chongqing's ambitious Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, was later suspended after it emerged the police chief had been investigating Bo's wife for murder.
Bo's wife is now being detained on suspicions that she poisoned a British businessman, Neil Heywood, in a dispute over money.
Washington kept an official silence on that incident, but in late April relations came under even more pressure when blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped from house detention and sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing.
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Chen spent six days in the embassy, sparking a diplomatic crisis that was only resolved when Beijing allowed him to leave the country last month to take up an academic fellowship in New York.
The exposure of the espionage case could put more pressure on the powerful Zhou Yongkang, who formally oversees the state security apparatus as a member of China's top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee.
The Bo and Chen cases have already raised questions over the effectiveness of the security establishment which, under Zhou, has become more costly to maintain than the nation's military.
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Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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Uhoh, I am sure Romney will be doing a press conference in front of the Chinese embassy now, claiming that because there was a chinese spy Obama is a foreign policy failure.
Hehe.. Or rather that our spy in China got caught.
No, the focus of attention should be:
If the answer is 2., then this is another FAILURE of this administration related to INTERNATIONAL SECURITY LEAKAGE.
Couple this with the Afghanistan doctor just sent to prison, and "our" contacts in other countries are probably running for the hills.
@ido, why don't you take a long walk off a short pier. And loose Uncle Sam you ain't that patriotic.
Gee, Ido, you mean a leak similar to Scooter Libby's despicable outing of a CIA agent's identity in 2003? I seriously doubt the current administration could possibly stoop as low as Libby, who was, after all, an adviser to then-VP Cheney and Assistant to the President under George W. Bush. Libby, fortunately, was convicted of two counts of perjury, a count of making false statements, and another count of obstruction of justice. So, to soothe your fevered brow, rest assured this sort of behavior is typical of Republicans but it is not the kind of behavior that one sees among Democrats.
Feel better? I knew you would.
I forgot to mention that Bush used/abused his presidential prerogative by commuting Libby's prison sentence shortly after he was sentenced. Just like a Republican, right?
China can blow it out their rump for all I care. How many cyber attacks from China have we withstood? China smiles in our face while hunting for the perfect place to stick the knife...
An aide to a vice minister? A minister in charge of vice?
It is the vice minister of state security.
If they'd known about our spy for some time but kept it under wraps so as not to further compromise US-China relations, as the article suggests, how dangerous could this guy have been to them? The article is a little confusing.
This being said, I doubt very much this guy is CIA's only or best asset... They're the one US agency I still have a lot of faith in.
I guess everybody's got to have faith in something.
CaliforniaFirst,
Did you forget about these adventures by the CIA???
1. CIA training Tibet fighters to combat the Chinese invasion of their country...
2. The CIA's involvement with the Bay of Pigs...
3. The CIA's funding of the Muslim radicals through the ISI, resulting in the current Afghanistan/Pakistan fiasco...
4. The CIA in Central America, Iran, Iraq, etc. It worked out well for those leaders and their countries...
5. The CIA with their armed drones, killing thousands, with ZERO - ACCOUNTABILITY...
Maybe you should place your faith in a US Government Agency that has accomplished something POSITIVE, while obeying the US Constitution...
VERY Few and far between, nice post though.
The CIA has always been since its inception a terrorist organization combating other terrorist organizations....
@ac robertson, Think about it training Tibet how to fight a military like China. That like me teaching you how to handle my Bowie Knife and telling you to go kill a Kodiak Bear with it. You could not withstand the bear and Tibet (with only ground force) could not withstand China's air, artillery, and ground forces.
If nobody has told you this, There is no Consttution, only Rules of Engagement. Depending on the situation I don't consider civilians to be friendly nor do I believe in killing them. Know your enviroment and tread lightly
6dogs,
When the Tibetan Government (Dalia Lama) asked the USA for help. The USA had the means to stop the invasion, but the POTUS did not have the intestinal fortitude to do it. His answer was the training school...
Ask Genghis Khan what was required to building the largest Empire the World has ever seen...
Or how flip-flop wearing illiterates have defeated the mighty USA forces 5+times during the last 60+years...
"Maybe you should place your faith in a US Government Agency that has accomplished something POSITIVE, while obeying the US Constitution..."
Like maybe the Department of Commerce? No, wait. The Department of Education? Well, no, but I guess they had good intentions. FBI? Not even close. The FCC? HA! That one was a joke!
Maybe you could provide some examples? I can't think of one off the top of my head.
It is common practice in spying (or drug trafficking, criminal gang crimes, etc.) to not jump at the guy too quickly just in case by monitoring his activities, you might find more in the net. You want to rip out the whole network, following the links, study their communication patterns, etc.
In this case, the State Security Department of PRC was, and is, under close surveillance because of the Bo/Wang incident. So far Zhou and Linq have been implicated. Probably more to come. This guy was caught when details of who did they talked to when and how were reviewed.
How many spies does our friend China have in the U.S.?? They steal and copy every damned thing we have here in the U.S. They have never had an Original idea of their own.
Well put. I was about to ask the same question.
Research Chinagate...
Then ask Hillary and the DNC how much Chinese money they have been forced to return and turn-over to charities...
Tarzan7: "They steal and copy every damned thing we have here in the U.S. They have never had an Original idea of their own."
You mean like the US never had an original idea in the 19th century and was pirating European knowledge and technologies to develop. Don't you just like rewriting the rules once you're in a position of advantage?! I say to hell with protection of foreign intellectual property. We should all play America's game. Interestingly, it's the developing countries bold enough to call America's bluff to steal technology that are also developing rapidly. Stealing foreign technologies pay after all. The U.S. has proved it. So has China!
Sund: Still whining about the European sunset in the 1800's? And only people that cant invent, compose or write would of course want free access to other's efforts.
China started using gunpowder 2000 years ago, i'd say that was an original thought. They are a very smart peoples, until they started smoking opium.
Bob, I'm not whining about anything, let alone "about the European sunset in the 1800's." Instead, I'm exposing what the American scholar Stephen Krasner called "organized hypocrisy" (note that I've used the American spelling, not my favourite English spelling!).
If, once as a developing country, you believed technology and knowledge were public, instead of proprietary, goods, you've got to appreciate why developing countries today would adopt the same the stance. If you oppose any form of foreign interference in your internal affairs, you've got to grant that other peoples feel the same way about foreign interference. The world would be a peaceful and better place if we all lived by the words of the great book: do unto others, what you want others to do unto you. Don't you agree?!!!
By the way, was the U.S. an illiterate society when it was pirating European books and technologies? Another case of America's amnesia?!!!
The Chinese copy our technology all the time, but not through spycraft (or at least, if they did do it through spycraft, we probably wouldn't know about it, now would we?). Mostly they partner with our companies that want to do business with them, learn all about the company, and then leave to start a competitor.
But hey, being original is hard. They still haven't completely gotten over Communism yet. Give 'em some slack.
I suspect it is in the tens of thousands, dealing with mostly commercial/industrial secrets, state secrets, military secrets, and activities of Chinese nationals in China (to figure out who is pro-Beijing and who is not). We all know that Chinese students in US are constantly invited for tea at consulates and embassies. Those refused to attend are automatically suspects, and they all know that. Those attended were all asked to monitor their friends and school mates, etc. Just those would be in the tens of thousands, given there are close to a million Chinese students, and those stayed behind after graduation.
Go China! Please come save this country, the jerks we have obviously can't do it.
Why don't you just move there. It is quicker.
Everything in China can be had for a price. Corruption runs rampant. A Chinese official or potential spy can easily be lured with the promise of money and residence in the U.S.
They might be risking their lives turning on their government, but they are risking their lives in the kinds of business corruption they engage in every day anyway.
There's a large and growing group in China that would like to take the money and run...........just give them a place and they will do it. Give them a job and potential prestige in their new country, and they are certain to do it.
By China's own admission, corruption is the #1 problem in their system, and they don't have a solution for it, besides finding a few high level officials and putting them on short trials and then giving them a bullet in the head.
Which is why the U.S. is taking advantage of China's weakness to corrupt its officials with bribes and promise of residence?
"Which is why the U.S. is taking advantage of China's weakness to corrupt its officials with bribes and promise of residence?"
You probably meant this to sound accusatory, but all I heard was the best idea ever.
In this case, it was a girl, in Hong Kong, was offered as bait. He bit, and got hooked by the US.
If china wants to play hardball, I say just stop buying form them, buy from other countries, and declare bankruptcy and not pay them the billions of dollars we ow them.
They will still get you one way or the other! And unfortunately for you, China might be much more able to internalise costs than can the U.S., and has enormous internal market capacity waiting to be unleashed, a market that the U.S. and many other countries around the world are counting on for future growth. Do you know why China is generously supporting economic growth in other developing regions? Have you heard of how the U.S. used the Marshal Plan to develop overseas markets in Europe for American products and capital? You just don't know what you're talking about. 'Been listening too much to the lazy analysts on the American media cycle, on Fox probably?
We can't "just" stop buying from them. Our economies are totally intertwined. That's not hardball, that's economic seppuku. Would you really want to see our economy collapse just to drag them down with us? And for what? Over spying? Pfeh.
There is no such thing as a nation declaring bankrupcy. But a nation can always refuse to pay. If you really want to play hardball with China, just lock up all their government and Chinese citizen assets in the US. There's lots, knowing that all banks in China are state banks. Just grab Bank of East Asia and you've got enough for retirement.
Are we gonna go save him like the blind guy? No? Come on Hillary, go save him! Send in the Seals! Something!
We don't rescue double spies.
Whats that the United States in involved in Spying? Say it isn't so Barack......Quick invite the Chinese leader to the White House for a basketball game and some beer. Then maybe the 2 of you can enjoy a trip to Columbia I hear the ladies are pretty cheap there.....
Ladies in Columbia are no where close as cheap as those in Dongguan, Guangdong, the sex city of Asia.
Everyone is spying on everyone. Get used to it, and looks like Zhou and his outfit is skimming.
With respect to the Reuter's article "Sources: China official arrested over claims he spied for CIA" I fully agree that the Chinese government was right in arresting the Chinese government official who passed secret information to the CIA. The reverse, a U.S. agent passing information to China, would, also, be prosecuted. When I finallyu return to China, I hope to remake China into the greatest democracy in the world. Wouldn't this be what every American dreams about and desires?
Putting aside those Americans who dream of China being swarmed with North Korean refugees and erupting into chaos as the entire country burns to the ground, yes, the rest of us think that would be AWESOME.
No way we should make China a democracy. We need their cheap products made by slave labors. With democracy, there won't be any slave labor, and no more cheap products. China is also sacrificing their environment, their water, their air, the land, their people, to make these cheap goods for us, and we want that to continue. It is much better to have a willing slave driver working for you slaving their own people, than to make those things here, polluting our land.
Americanism, or NEW WORLD ORDER has been quietly infiltrating, invading the WHOLE WORLD! What do you sLEEPING people think is happening when we have MILITARY BASES all over the world? How many other countries are doing that? There are no boundaries anymore as even AMERICA becomes another homgenous 3rd world country...we are all people on this Earth, and a few Greedy, Murderous, SELFISH, STINGY bastards want total control and domination over EVERY SINGLE BODY. Not persons, or people - but your VERY BODY! When you do not have a Spiritual Connection, or honor it, you LOSE ALL RIGHTS AS HUMANS ARE REDUCED TO ANIMAL LEVEL IN THE EYES OF THEIR MASTERS.
Don't forget the secret underground high speed trains that connect all of the United States domestic military bases and how the Reptillians are all in positions of power such as: Putin, Obama, The British Royal family, as well as the famous faces we see in the media like Christopher Walken, Charlie Sheen, and Barbara Walters.
Maybe the Chinese are harboring their leaders.......CHOMP - one just bit me and is dragging me into the tunnel....aaaaaahhhhhhhh......
Come on, zipper. Bed bugs don't drag you down a tunnel. Just give it a wag with your slipper.
How ironic, China catches someone spying on them.
My opinion: Probably a setup to nail the guy for refusing to spy for them, or refusing to make a payoff, or an affair with some Chinese officials wife. Something along those lines would be my best guess.
I am sure his family and friends will all be arrested for something very soon and not to be heard from anytime soon, if ever again.
Some one working in the Chinese State Security refuses to spy for China ? Which world did you come from ? When you work for Chinese State Security, you are a spy, for China. So this guy was turned as a double agent.
It is no surprising that one CIA agent was caught spying in China. This is only a tip in the iceberg. No doubt countless of other foreign agents, not CIA alone, are spying in China to gain vital strategic informations.
By the same measure, surely there are also countless Chinese agents working in USA.
Chinese who are convicted for spying for foreign intellignt agent will be dealt with by Chinese court. Their family or friends who are not involved have nothing to fear. Only morons would suggest otherwise.
Of course. Only MORONS would suggest that the Chinese government ever overreacts or punishes people who don't strictly deserve it. Get real, people! You're acting like the Communist party is run by a bunch of authoritarian, paranoid thugs with absolutely no practical limits on their control of state power!
Oh, wait...
cia is a @!$%#in joke
Yep. Only jokes can turn a Chinese State Department spy to spy for the US.
oh great more spy bull@!$%#. cant we all just get along?
Spy bull@!$%# is for when we're getting along. It's the peacetime equivalent of stomping your enemies in the face and taking their stuff.
Getting along you said. You got to talk China into it first. Don't forget there are at least two sides to this game. Furthermore, you had to spy on them to know who are spying for them on you. It is like telling the thief to say I won't catch you if you don't steal from me.