China's spying efforts growing, with U.S. a top target
Source: CBS News
May 18, 2025 / 7:14 PM EDT
Chinese pro-democracy activists in the U.S. have become increasingly wary about who may be watching them. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China's spies no longer seem to fear the U.S., according to former diplomat Jim Lewis, whose direct experience with China's intelligence agencies spans more than 30 years.
China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, is the largest and most active spy agency in the world, according to Lewis. "This is – in scale and in scope and in brazenness – the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history," Lewis said.
China's espionage operation
According to the latest assessment from America's intelligence agencies, China is the most active and persistent cyber threat to the U.S., but hacking has not replaced Beijing's pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence. China's Communist Party leverages a worldwide network of covert agents to monitor and influence events outside its own borders. It's also surveilling and intimidating Chinese dissidents in the U.S.
A Ministry of State Security propaganda video posted on China's largest social network, WeChat, last year boasts that the spy agency "senses things before they happen" and "fights against evil." The video serves as a public message to both foreign adversaries and China's own citizens about the ministry's growing power. The MSS might have as many as 600,000 employees, according to one estimate.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-spies-in-us-60-minutes/
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