Wall Street Journal: China has mobilized government agencies, private companies and its citizens to undertake what Western officials say is an information-gathering campaign of unparalleled scale. Its aim is to glean technology know-how to grow China’s economy and upgrade its military so that the Communist Party can tighten control at home and project power abroad.
This global effort stretches from honey-traps and wide-scale hacking to investment in strategic businesses and the funding of sensitive academic research. One European intelligence agency estimates that the Chinese state has around 600,000 people working on intelligence and security matters, dwarfing anything the U.S. or European agencies can muster.
“The West isn’t used to this approach and doesn’t have mechanisms to defend against it,” says Nicholas Eftimiades, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who has written several books on Chinese espionage…