Beijing arrests alleged Chinese spy in CIA pay

China is home to one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world, and also one of the most unknown.. Among his many counterintelligence duties, he is dedicated to hunting down foreign spies operating on Chinese soil.. This Friday, the MSS published a statement assuring that it had discovered and detained a Chinese citizen suspected of spying for the CIA.

The named person's last name is Zeng and would have been recruited in Italy, where he worked for a military industrial group based in Beijing.. “In Italy he got acquainted with a CIA agent. Through dinners, trips, and opera tickets, the two developed a close relationship, and Zeng became psychologically dependent on the agent,” the statement read.

The moment in which the events occurred has not been disclosed, but the MSS maintains that the CIA agent sought to extract sensitive information about the Chinese army from Zeng..

The Asian giant's agency also points out that Zeng would have signed an espionage agreement with the United States and that he even received CIA training before returning to China, from where he “provided basic intelligence on numerous occasions and pocketed funds for the efforts “.

The spy game played by the two main world powers is quite old. Specifically, since Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US media has reported on many occasions how Beijing has gone after CIA informants.

In 2010, the New York Times published that many of the sources that the agency had within the Chinese government had begun to disappear.. A couple of years later, always according to US intelligence officials, up to twenty spies collaborating with the CIA would have been executed in the Asian country.

A few weeks ago, the MSS called on social networks for “all members of society” to join its fight against espionage, offering rewards and protection to those who provide information.

China's parliament approved a new, broader version of the country's counter-espionage law last April. This expanded the definition of espionage: from covering state secrets and intelligence, to any “document, data, material or element related to security and national interests”. It did not specify the specific parameters on how these terms are defined, something that has generated a lot of concern among businessmen, diplomats and foreign journalists.

In July, in their WeChat account, the Chinese brother of WhatsApp, from the MSS they stressed that national security agencies should keep complaint channels open, such as hotlines and online platforms, to “handle complaints of suspicions of espionage within the country in a timely manner”.

The authorities of the Asian giant have been offering rewards for years for reporting foreign espionage activities. Last year, the MSS already introduced a new regulation that establishes the criteria for rewards, which can go up to 14,000 euros.