Bombshell: CIA Admits Covert Influence Campaign Against China
...the Reuters revelations place CIA operatives in China “leaking documents” for the admitted purpose of destroying China’s international reputation.
On March 14, Reuters released a bombshell report: in 2019 the Trump White House began a clandestine CIA influence campaign to smear China's international reputation.
According to three former U.S. officials with direct knowledge, “the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets.” The information releases “targeted public opinion” both internationally and in China itself. Along with influencing public opinion, the campaign sought to “foment paranoia among top leaders [in China]” as they tried to trace the leaked information.
The report specifically stated that CIA operatives “promoted [corruption] allegations” against Chinese government officials and “slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Although these specific efforts were identified, the former U.S. officials declined to name additional narratives that were advanced.
Reuters did not confirm that the campaign continued under the Biden Presidency, however two “unnamed intelligence historians” told Reuters that such “presidential findings” often remain in place across administrations.
The existence of this CIA influence campaign is probable given the broader historical context.
The Trump Administration marked the extreme acceleration of the United States’ New Cold War against China. This began when the Pentagon issued its 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared a refocus from Middle East “counter-terrorism” to “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China.
Subsequently, 2019 was a banner year for Western escalation against China. In October 2019, the Department of Defense created a new office focused solely on confronting China, called the “deputy assistant secretary of defense for China.” In December 2019, NATO named China as an emerging “challenge.” In 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration doubled U.S. naval transits of the Taiwan Strait over previous years and conducted approximately 1,000 reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea. Of course, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, it was immediately blamed on China.
The above efforts notwithstanding, the main thrust of America’s new cold war against China was informational. America sought to isolate China on the world stage by shredding its international reputation, justifying sanctions, and inhibiting trade. This was clear even before the CIA’s new revelation.
Aside from blaming the nation for COVID-19, the “Uyghur Genocide” narrative was the most prominent vehicle for achieving that goal. But just what focus, if any, does the CIA’s revelation provide to the facts of that narrative as we already know them?
Well, the CIA was there every step of the way.
2019 is the same year that an NGO called the “China Tribunal,” began petitioning the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the CCP of conducting an industrial organ harvesting operation that preyed upon Chinese dissidents and Uyghur Muslims.
In January 2021, the Trump administration weaponized this claim when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh off his post as CIA director, formally accused China of committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims in its Westernmost province, Xinjiang. To back this claim, Pompeo referred to the findings of a 2020 report written by a German sociologist named Adrian Zenz. The report was titled “Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang. In March 2021, Zenz published an additional report, “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Convention.”
News outlets the world over declared that these reports were being made by “independent third parties.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.
