Espionage with Chinese characteristics [electronic resource] / Stratfor Global Intelligence

March 2010.

Title from PDF cover screen (viewed on March 27, 2010).

China's covert intelligence capability seems vast mainly because of the country's huge population and the historic Chinese diaspora that has spread worldwide. Traditionally focused inward, China as an emerging power is determined to compete with more established powers by aiming its intelligence operations at a more global audience. China is driven most of all by the fact that it has abundant resources and a lot of catching up to do. China's intelligence services may not be as famous as the CIA or the KGB, but their operations are widespread and well known to counterintelligence agencies throughout the world. Although China follows a different intelligence paradigm that has often shown its rough edges, it is refining its technique. It is training a professional class of intelligence officers beginning even before the candidates enter the university, and it is involving its military, particularly its naval forces, in peacekeeping, foreign-aid and anti-piracy operations worldwide. This is doing much to improve China's international image at a time when the Western world may view China as a threatening emerging power. Meanwhile, China will continue to pursue a long-term intelligence strategy that the West may not consider very advanced, but STRATFOR believes it would be a mistake to underestimate this patient and persistent process. The Chinese may not be that keen on the dead-drops, surveillance and dramatic covert operations that permeate spy novels, but their effectiveness may be better than we know. Larry Chin achieved world-class status as a practitioner of operational security without following Western methods, and there may be plenty of others like him.

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