FBI director: China seeks to become sole superpower 'by any means necessary'

By Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter
July 07, 2020 06:53 PM
www.washingtonexaminer.com/





FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a “whole-of-state effort” to supplant the global dominance of the United States and to become the world’s sole superpower “by any means necessary.”

Wray, who has often spoken about the dangers posed by Beijing's foreign influence as the Trump administration has stepped up its rhetoric and its actions against the Chinese government, issued his strongest warnings yet about the threat to the U.S. posed by China’s actions worldwide during an event hosted by the Hudson Institute on Tuesday.

“It’s the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” Wray said, adding, “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our economic security — and, by extension, to our national security.”

Wray said, “we need to be clear-eyed about the scope of the Chinese government’s ambition” as he warned that the Chinese Communist Party “believes it is in a generational fight to surpass our country in economic and technological leadership.” He said that China was not waging this fight through “legitimate” means but is rather “engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary.” To combat this problem, Wray called for a “whole-of-society response” to China's actions.

"If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data ... Our data isn’t the only thing at stake here — so are our health, our livelihoods, and our security,” Wray said. “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case approximately every 10 hours.”

The Justice Department has increased its scrutiny of China’s activities recently, starting the China Initiative in 2018 and prosecuting Chinese nationals in espionage cases, cracking down on hacking schemes, prosecuting efforts to steal trade secrets, and going after the Thousand Talents Program.

The FBI director said people in the U.S. “need to understand” that China “uses a diverse range of sophisticated techniques — everything from cyber intrusions to corrupting trusted insiders” as well as “outright physical theft.” He added: “They’ve pioneered an expansive approach to stealing innovation through a wide range of actors — including not just Chinese intelligence services but state-owned enterprises, ostensibly private companies, certain kinds of graduate students and researchers, and a whole variety of other actors working on their behalf.”

Wray also stressed that China “has a fundamentally different system than ours — and it’s doing all it can to exploit the openness of ours while taking advantage of its own closed system.”
The bureau chief said that of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases, almost half are China-related.
"At this very moment,” Wray said, China is “working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.” He said when progress is announced by a U.S. company related to coronavirus research, it is “not unusual” to see cyberattacks targeting the company and “tracing back to China” that are carried out “sometimes even the next day.”

When asked if China was attempting to interfere in the 2020 election, Wray said, “China’s malign foreign influence campaign targets our policies, our positions, 24/7, 365 days a year,” but he noted it wasn’t “election-specific.”

"All these seemingly inconsequential pressures add up to a policymaking environment in which Americans find themselves held over a barrel by the Chinese Communist Party,” Wray said.

Wray said the Chinese Communist Party is infuriated whenever it is criticized about Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, its treatment of the Uighurs, and its response to the coronavirus.

The Justice Department unveiled a superseding indictment against Chinese telecom company Huawei in February, charging it with racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets. The 16-count indictment charged Huawei and its U.S.-based subsidiaries with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and outlined new claims about Huawei’s deceptive efforts to evade U.S., European Union, and United Nations sanctions when doing business in North Korea and Iran.

“The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence, and it can execute that campaign with authoritarian efficiency,” Wray said. “They’re calculating. They’re persistent. They’re patient. And they’re not subject to the righteous constraints of an open, democratic society or the rule of law.”

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, released a report in June detailing how the federal government provided "little-to-no oversight" of Chinese state-owned telecoms for two decades and how China is illicitly targeting U.S. communications the same way it has targeted education, research, and personal data. That subcommittee previously released reports on China’s foreign funding on U.S. campuses, theft of U.S. research, and cyberattacks against U.S. companies.