The US agency recently released a clip encouraging Chinese military officers to act as informants
China will adopt “all necessary measures” to combat infiltration and sabotage by foreign forces, the Beijing Foreign Ministry stated in response to a recent CIA recruitment ad aimed at Chinese military personnel.
The spy agency’s Mandarin-language video, posted on its YouTube channel on Thursday, urged officers and soldiers to disclose information about top Chinese leaders or sensitive military and technological areas.
“China will take all necessary measures to firmly combat the infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces and firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on Friday when asked about the CIA video.
The ad was released just weeks after Beijing launched an anti-corruption investigation into its top-ranking general, Zhang Youxia.
On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping addressed troops in Beijing and described the past year as “a revolutionary trial” in the Chinese military’s fight against corruption. Since Xi escalated efforts to crack down on high-level corruption in 2023, Beijing has removed multiple top officials and over a dozen generals.
Thursday’s video was the fifth Mandarin-language recruitment video the CIA has released since October 2024. In the early 2010s, Beijing reportedly dismantled much of the agency’s spy network in China, capturing or executing over a dozen agents.
According to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Beijing poses a top-level threat to President Donald Trump’s administration.
“No adversary in our nation’s history has posed a more formidable challenge or a more capable strategic rival,” he said in an internal memo cited by the media last April. In it, he claimed that Beijing was striving to “dominate the world economically, militarily, and technologically” and “outcompete the US in every corner of the globe.”
Last year, the two superpowers engaged in an intermittent tariff war after Trump imposed substantial tariffs on China, citing unfair trade imbalances. The conflict subsided last October after a deal was reached by the US president and Xi at a summit in South Korea.
Trump is scheduled to meet the Chinese president again in Beijing in April.