‘Naked Political Prized’: China slammed us on espionage recruitment videos; Mocks CIA’s drive as ‘absurd’ and ‘amateur’
Beijing has rapidly criticized the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that it tried “absurd” and “clumsy” to recruit Chinese citizens through social media videos. In a statement posted on its official WECHAT account on Wednesday, the Chinese State Security Ministry (MSS) called the CIA’s efforts “amateur gambles” and accused the US of “paranoid confusion”.The MSS said, “These two laborious ‘job ADS’, stuffed rhetoric and reproachful claims, bare the absurd arguments of American intelligence agencies and the paranoid confusion.” “Once again, the self-declared ‘top intelligence power’ has turned itself into an international laughter through its baffling disability.”In the CIA video posted last month on platforms including YouTube and X, the fictional narratives of Chinese authorities were secretly contacted on CIA’s concerns about corruption and concerns about progress within the Communist Party. The clip also included contact information on the dark web and encouraged potential informers to control their own fate.One of the CIA videos said, “Heaven helps those who help themselves,” a senior CIA official said fearing for the future of his family before reaching the CIA.CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed Fox News that the video was to “recruit Chinese authorities to help America by sharing classified information. He said, “One of the methods that recruit assets that can help us steal mysteries,” he said.According to AFP, MSS condemned the initiative as a “naked political provocative” and warned that “any attempt to incite betrayal among the Chinese people failed, and any conspiracy to infiltrate China for intelligence information would prove to be meaningless,” according to the AFP.This campaign made fun of Chinese social media. On Weibo, users jokingly made a video, asked with a commentator, “Can we organize a group of scammers to commit a telecommunication fraud against CIA?”There is a long history of espionage of each other in the US and China. Earlier this year, China claimed to have implicated three American “secret agents” in a cyber attack during the February Asian Winter Games. The MSS also said that in March it sentenced a former Chinese engineer to death for a foreign country to leak the state’s secrets.CIA’s latest attempt to promote human intelligence follows widespread push for the recruitment of sources in adverse countries like Iran and North Korea. The agency first launched a similar online campaign targeting Russia.
