Spy report claiming China killed or jailed 18-20 CIA sources ‘won’t harm Sino-US ties’
Informants can face death penalty but ‘unimaginable without trial’
A New York Times report that Beijing “systematically dismantled” Central Intelligence Agency spy operations in China would not undermine Sino-US ties and could reflect political tensions in Washington, according to some Chinese analysts.
The report, citing unidentified sources, said the Chinese government killed or jailed 18 to 20 CIA sources from late 2010 to the end of 2012.
One informant “was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building”, the report said.
None of victims were identified in the report.
China killed or jailed up to 20 US spies in 2010 to 2012, report says
It said a joint counter-intelligence operation between the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, code-named “Honey Badger”, failed to determine how the agents were compromised.
Hui Ching, research director at the Hong Kong Zhi Ming Institute, an independent think tank, said the report would not undermine Sino-US ties.
Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank affiliated with China’s foreign ministry, said the disclosure of the operation’s setback in China “to a certain extent relates to the internal political struggle in the US”.
Zhang Zhexin, a researcher in Sino-US ties at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said it was “unimaginable” for Beijing to kill an informant or agent without trial.
Under Chinese law, people who sell state secrets or act as spies for foreign governments can face the death penalty.
Huang Yu, a Chinese citizen in Sichuan, was sentenced to death last year for selling military secrets to foreign intelligence services.
But most disclosed cases of leaking state secrets were punished by imprisonment.
Liu Weidong, a Sino-US relations researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the killing of “at least a dozen” CIA sources by China sounded strange.
Military expert Zhou Chenming said the reported shooting in a government courtyard, if it did happen, would be highly unusual. “If they have alternative ways to catch suspects, they will refrain from shooting them to death,” Zhou said.
Officers were only authorised to shoot when the suspect was targeting national leaders or deliberately damaging critical infrastructure, threatening to cause major casualties, Zhou said.
