Beijing has sharply criticised the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for what it called an “absurd” and “clumsy” attempt to recruit Chinese citizens through social media videos. In a statement posted Wednesday on its official WeChat account, China’s ministry of state security (MSS) called the CIA’s efforts an “amateurish gambit” and accused the US of “paranoid delusions.”“These two painstakingly crafted ‘job ads’, riddled with clumsy rhetoric and slanderous claims, lay bare the absurd logic and paranoid delusions of American intelligence agencies,” said the MSS, as cited by news agency AFP. “Once again, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s top intelligence power’ has turned itself into an international laughingstock through its baffling incompetence.”The CIA videos, posted last month on platforms including YouTube and X, featured fictional narratives of Chinese officials secretly contacting the CIA over concerns about corruption and lack of progress within the Communist Party. The clips also included contact information on the dark web and encouraged potential informants to take control of their own fates.“Heaven helps those who help themselves,” one of the CIA videos stated, showing a senior Chinese official expressing fear for his family’s future before reaching out to the CIA.CIA Director John Ratcliffe had confirmed to Fox News that the videos were aimed at “recruiting Chinese officials to help the US” by sharing classified information. “One of the ways we do that is by recruiting assets that can help us steal secrets,” he said.The MSS condemned the initiative as a “naked political provocation” and warned that “any attempt to incite betrayal among the Chinese people is doomed to fail, and any plot to infiltrate China for intelligence will prove futile,” according to AFP.The campaign sparked mockery on Chinese social media. On Weibo, users joked about the videos, with one commenter asking, “Can we organise a group of scammers to carry out a telecom fraud against the CIA?”The US and China have a long history of accusing each other of espionage. Earlier this year, China claimed to have implicated three US “secret agents” in cyberattacks during February’s Asian Winter Games. The MSS also said in March it sentenced a former Chinese engineer to death for allegedly leaking state secrets to a foreign country.The CIA’s latest effort to boost human intelligence follows its broader push to recruit sources in adversarial nations such as Iran and North Korea. The agency had previously launched a similar online campaign targeting Russia.
