From police force to universities to nuclear secrets, Chinese spies are active everywhere in the US

In 2016, the FBI found evidence that the state-owned China General Nuclear Power had engaged in a conspiracy to steal US nuclear secrets stretching back almost two decades.

Will communist China ever take over as the number one power in the world replacing the United States? Observers say the Chinese dragon is straining hard to achieve this status not only economically and militarily but also through its espionage activities in the United States.

Chinese spies have long been active in almost all important sectors across the United States. Notorious Chinese spy Christina Fang for long used political rallies, conferences, and campus events to connect with elected officials and prominent figures in the United States. She volunteered for political campaigns and helped fundraise for figures like Tulsi Gabbard and Eric Swalwell. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation led a probe into her activities in 2015, Fang left the country. Senator Diane Feinnstein, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, had a Chinese spy on staff for over 20 years. The staffer reported to the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

Chinese spies are active in the US universities. They target their own dissident students on the US campuses. In May 2020, Chinese student Zhihao Kong of Purdue University publicly praised the protesters of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. Shortly afterwards, officials from China's Ministry of State Security visited Kong's parents and warned them against any such activism in future.

In 2020, the FBI arrested then chair of Harvard University's chemistry and chemical biology department Charles Lieber. Lieber was allegedly performing undisclosed work for the Chinese government through the Wuhan University of Technology. The FBI has identified Chinese programmes, such as 'the Thousand Talents Plan,' aimed at expanding espionage efforts to surpass the West's technological capabilities. In August 2019, the FBI charged Bo Mao, a Chinese academic who was a visiting professor at the University of Texas, with stealing technology from a California-based company and passing it to China.

China has sent its agents into US police forces. In 2020 a naturalized US citizen, Baimadajie Angwang, was charged with working as an illegal agent of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Angwang, a New York Police Department officer, was working with the Chinese consulate and reporting on the activities of the Tibetan community.

China has stolen classified information on every thermonuclear warhead in the US intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal. In 2016, the FBI found evidence that the state-owned China General Nuclear Power had engaged in a conspiracy to steal US nuclear secrets stretching back almost two decades.

(Jagdish N. Singh is a senior journalist based in New Delhi. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York)

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