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The New York Times reports that the Central Intelligence Agency faced one of its worst intelligence gathering setbacks in decades when many of its informants in China were killed or imprisoned between 2010 and 2012. To this day, it is unknown how the identities of the informants were compromised:
From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.'s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.'s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country's extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.
Also at BBC, which notes:
Last year, China warned government officials to watch out for spies - and not fall in love with them
This CIA story really helps put that "Don't date a foreigner!" campaign in perspective. You don't want to see your significant other bleeding out in the street, do you? DO YOU?!
Update: Chinese paper applauds anti-spy efforts after report CIA sources killed
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @02:43PM
I think you're missing one of the most important variables: nationalism. Chinese are, by and large, extremely nationalistic. That doesn't preclude change that 'goes against the [established] grain', to put it one way, but it does help ensure that that change is geared directly towards the greater good as rapidly as possible. Something trendy in just about every election is for popular voices in America to claim they'll leave the country if their preferred politician doesn't get elected. Now they never do, but the fact that their ties to country are advertised as so incredibly whimsical as to be upset by a single election is something that I think speaks to heart of the American electorate. And that heart fundamentally says, "It's my way or you're wrong."
Independence is a strength, but also a weakness. Should America begin to enter into chaos that cannot be completely mitigated and mediated by the powers that be, now that is going to a catalyst for self implosion. Chinese society may be fragile. I don't know. But I do know that ours is extremely volatile. Nationalism helps tie a country together, even in light of overt differences between themselves. In America nationalism has now begun to be used almost as a sort of pejorative.