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Chinese Espionage Pattern Differs from Cold War Soviet Techniques

by Bill Uttenweiler
The Aerospace Corporation
Vandenberg AFB, CA

Perhaps one reason Chinese espionage against US targets, including the Department of Energy’s nuclear laboratories and the armed forces, went undiscovered for so long has to do with China’s espionage recruitment techniques. They do not use the favorite tools of the Cold War Soviet Union’s intelligence services: money, sex, revenge, and coercion. Instead, according to Paul D. Moore, a former FBI intelligence analyst on China, they have developed their own recruitment style. Moore, writing in the Los Angeles Times, advises that the Chinese use a combination of racial profiling and soft recruitment techniques.

Racial profiling has come under recent scrutiny in the USA because law enforcement departments have been accused of using it unfairly against minorities in the war against drugs. The Chinese government also accused the US of being racially prejudiced against Asians, claiming that the espionage charges stemmed from an American belief that they could not have made significant strides in nuclear weapons development without stealing the technology.

Moore says China over the years has displayed a very strong preference for recruiting individuals of Chinese heritage. These individuals are more sympathetic to the economic plight of the Chinese people and that nation’s desire to modernize than non-Chinese. The ties to the "motherland" are not cultivated to put pressure on family members still living there; rather, to encourage pride and friendship. Although Chinese Americans are only about 1% of the US population, they comprise an estimated 15% of the US research and development sector employees, and far more than that in some key defense-related industries.

As part of their soft recruitment techniques, the Chinese try to make as many friends as possible. The Chinese make so many contacts that even a miniscule positive response can provide great results. In this technique they are like bulk mailers, who are satisfied with a small percentage of returns from a large contact list rather than hunting for a small number of prospects likely to make big commitments.

The Chinese are also willing to take small amounts of information from each willing friend. The motivation for contacts is to "help China," not to hurt the US. They do not expect sources to illegally copy and smuggle documents out of the country. The key points a person remembers will be enough. The Chinese then rely on analysts to sift the many pieces of information into valuable intelligence. Because the contacts are done in a nonthreatening/nondemanding way, even people who rebuffed previous attempts to solicit information can be contacted later.

These recruitment techniques, chosen by the Chinese government because they play to their strengths rather than on our weaknesses, pose an extra hazard to the US. Chinese Americans at several of the Department of Energy’s laboratories went public with concerns that their loyalty was suddenly suspect. Our government and private industry security officers and counterintelligence specialists must beware of suspecting anyone of Chinese-American ancestry, and must focus on real indicators of wrongdoing.

[Webmaster's Note: This article was written in July 1999 for the VSAC News and NCMS Channel Islands Newsletter.]