How China Plays the Ethnic Card

The public concern over China’s intelligence activities in the United States has brought to light one particularly ugly facet of what China has been doing. The idea has seeped into the general consciousness that, in Chinese intelligence cases, all of those involved seem to be ethnic Chinese. Some observers have begun to wonder if China has managed to seed hundreds of “sleepers” or other agents into our defense effort, or if the Chinese American community is disloyal in some way. In turn, some Americans of Chinese ancestry in sensitive research or defense-related positions now feel themselves to be under increased scrutiny as security risks.

As a former counterintelligence analyst who has studied China’s intelligence practices for many years, I can confirm that Chinese Americans are subjected to oppressive ethnic intelligence profiling, but the profiling is by China, not the United States.

Over the years, China has displayed a very strong preference for collecting as much intelligence as possible from individuals of ethnic Chinese heritage, and when it recruits agents, it almost invariably recruits ethnic Chinese.

The Chinese approach is based on accomplishing what intelligence professionals call a “soft recruitment.” That is, a targeted individual is developed by intelligence professionals--sometimes over a period of years--with the goal of having him come to see himself as a “friend of China.” The intelligence professionals want their Chinese American target simply to perceive himself as more Chinese than American and to come to see that he has a special duty to help his ancestral land somehow, some day.

The main problem China faces in playing this ethnic card is that, however well it might work, it does not work often. People seldom will take the next step and provide intelligence to China and they rarely agree to out-and-out espionage. China tries to circumvent these problems in three ways:

First, China tries to make as many friends as possible, irrespective of whether it has a current intelligence need for them. Because they make so many contacts, the Chinese are content with only a minuscule positive response. This part of their process is similar to the principles that mass marketers use when they try to contact everyone in a given postal ZIP Code, with the aim of getting some response.

Second, China seeks only a little information from each willing friend, always for the purpose of “helping” China, not to “hurt” the U.S. They seem quite satisfied to get only a hint here or a small nudge there, again asking help from many people in the hope that a few will respond.

Third, the Chinese are able to approach even previously unhelpful friends over and over, since their requests are modest and nonthreatening. Also, because the Chinese normally are after only a small amount of information from any one person, a fully cooperative friend does not have to smuggle a document out of the country; he can carry the desired information between his ears.

So the reason that it is always ethnic Chinese who seem to be involved in Chinese intelligence matters is that they typically are the only ones China asks for assistance. It’s just that simple.

The most common explanation for why China focuses on recruiting Chinese Americans, even though they are only about 1% of the total U.S. population, is that it feels more comfortable going after individuals with whom there is a shared culture, language and history. Another factor is that Chinese Americans comprise an estimated 15% of the overall U.S. research and development sector, and far more than that in some key defense-related industries.

For my part, I believe that China focuses on recruiting Chinese Americans just because that’s what it does best. Even if its intelligence methodologies against Chinese Americans work only occasionally, they work much better than Chinese approaches made to people of other ethnic backgrounds. China prefers to solve its intelligence problems in terms of its own strengths, not our weaknesses. This explains why China never looks for or approaches individuals with personal or financial problems who are the staple of other nations’ intelligence efforts against the U.S. It may also explain why China seldom pays its agents for the intelligence they produce.

While government and private industry security officers and counterintelligence specialists constantly screen their employees for personal situations that might give rise to hostile intelligence exploitation, nobody considers ethnic background to be a reliable predictor of an employee’s possible covert intelligence activity. So by directing its offensive moves away from employees with personal weaknesses, China also manages to avoid U.S. security defenses. Because of its racial overtones, China’s strategy has proved very difficult to counter.