U.S. former officials and experts are urging greater efforts to thwart Chinese espionage, which many believe has enabled Beijing to develop a range of advanced weaponry on the back of stolen American technology.

James Anderson, a former acting undersecretary of defense for policy, said China stole U.S. military technology for developing its J-20 fighter jet and has benefited immensely.

“They have profited greatly from their thievery over the years,” he said. “They’ve put it to good use, and they’ve come up with an advanced fifth-generation fighter,” noting that it’s “hard to say, short of actual combat,” how the J-20 matches up against the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter.

Matthew Brazil is a researcher and writer with Jamestown Foundation who served in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he both promoted and controlled U.S. high-technology exports to China. He said the FBI doesn’t have enough people to keep track of China’s activities in the U.S.

Brazil told VOA Mandarin, “Chinese communist espionage is not like an army of cockroaches crawling up our arms with daggers between their teeth. It’s spying. We can handle it with a better counterespionage system that includes both the government and the private sector working more closely together.”

He noted the FBI lacks “enough agents trained in Chinese language, culture and area studies. Congress should step in here and fund this sort of program to train people.”

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner last month urged the Biden administration to expand the use of existing tools and authorities at the Treasury and Commerce departments to prevent China’s military-industrial complex and entities from benefiting from U.S. technology, talent and investments.

As of March 14, Warner’s office told VOA Mandarin, “We have not yet received a response and are following up with the relevant departments.”

VOA Mandarin emailed the Chinese Embassy in Washington asking for a comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Anderson, who made his remarks to Fox News Digital last week, was sworn in on June 8, 2020, and resigned in November 2020.

US tech in Chinese weapons

China claims to have independently developed its fifth-generation stealth fighter J-20, which entered service in 2017. John Chipman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on February 15 at an IISS event that China’s J-20A production is expected to surpass that of the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jet by the end of 2023.

China’s sixth-generation fighter jets, hypersonic weapons and missiles, and even the spy balloons that crossed the continental United States last month all appear to incorporate elements of American technology, according to DefenseOne, a Washington news site devoted to military issues.

U.S. defense officials say China has the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal.

Terry Thompson, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and war planner at the Pentagon who blogs, told VOA Mandarin that China lacks a solid technological foundation and has a long history of stealing technology.

He said, “If you look back at the epic progression of Chinese aircraft, they say they’ve produced an aircraft that looks like and flies like the F-16 and like the F-15 and the F-18. I mean, they look just like our aircraft. They’re not building something new that comes from their own base of technology. They don’t have a base of technology.”

Thompson said China targets engine and power system technology, but also “the aerodynamics. They didn’t have the capability to coat airplanes with stealth material. They stole that from us.

“But now China is making its way right up to the table that the rest of the free world is playing on, because they are just stealing their pathway to that table.”

Old-style spies and cyberattacks

Anderson told Fox News Digital that China’s intelligence practices include the old-fashioned — spies and bribes to buy American contractors, university professors and government officials — and high-tech cyberactivity to steal key information on military weapons.

“In effect, we end up subsidizing a portion of their research and development budget because they are successfully stealing some of our secrets,” Anderson said.

Kris Osborn, president and editor-in-chief of the U.S. Military Modernization Center, said in an article published last month that China has hired at least 162 Chinese scientists who had worked at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory on deep-penetrating warheads, new hardened heat-resistant nanocomposite materials, vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones and a new generation of submarine “quiet” technologies.

“However, to put things simply and clearly, many of the U.S.-driven technological advances in these critical areas appear to have been stolen by Chinese spies,” Osborn wrote.

A report published in April 2022 by BluePath Labs, a consulting firm commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said, “Despite a wide body of research on China’s scientific progress, the laboratory system remains a less understood component. … This opacity not only leads to gaps in our knowledge of Chinese defense research, but in many cases has allowed these labs to fly under the radar, leading to cases of close interaction, and even cooperation between Chinese defense labs and U.S. and allied academic institutions.”

In 2023, China’s military expenditure will expand significantly, by 7.2% to $224.8 billion, according to the official budget discussed in an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

When meeting with a delegation of the People’s Liberation Army and the Armed Police Force on March 8, China’s President Xi Jinping said China should accelerate the promotion of high-level technological self-reliance.

Emily de La Bruyere, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Mandarin that China wants semiconductor technology for military functions, development of algorithms and valuable data.

“Stealing technology has been an escalating priority. And I also say that just general aggressiveness of China when it comes to the development of these capabilities, but also its use of international presence in order to coerce – all of those are increasing,” she said. “Not only are they working to catch up, but also if they’re stealing technology from the international system for their military modernization, they’re then able to modernize more cheaply than anybody else.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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New Zealand said on Friday it would ban TikTok on devices with access to the country’s parliamentary network due to cybersecurity concerns, becoming the latest nation to limit the use of the video-sharing app on government-related devices.

Concerns have mounted globally about the potential for the Chinese government to access users’ location and contact data through ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company.

The depth of those concerns was underscored this week when the Biden administration demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or the app could face a U.S. ban.

In New Zealand, TikTok will be banned on all devices with access to parliament’s network by the end of March.

Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said in an email to Reuters that the decision was taken after advice from cybersecurity experts and discussions within government and with other countries.

“Based on this information, the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment,” he said.

Special arrangements can be made for those who require the app to do their jobs, he added.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Speaking at a media briefing, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said New Zealand operated differently from other nations.

“Departments and agencies follow the advice of the (Government Communications Security Bureau) in terms of IT and cybersecurity policies … we don’t have a blanket across the public sector approach,” Hipkins said.

Both New Zealand’s defense force and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Friday they had already implemented bans on TikTok on work devices.

A spokesperson for the New Zealand Defense Force said in an email to Reuters the move was a “precautionary approach to protect the safety and security” of personnel.

On Thursday, Britain banned the app on government phones with immediate effect. Government agencies in the U.S. have until the end of March to delete the app from official devices.

TikTok has said it believes the recent bans are based on “fundamental misconceptions” and driven by wider geopolitics, adding that it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.
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The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible U.S. ban, the company told Reuters this week.

The move follows the introduction of a new U.S. legislation that would allow the White House to ban TikTok or other foreign-based technologies if they pose a national security risk.

Other countries and entities have also elected to ban the app.

TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, the world’s most valuable start-up. Numerous countries have raised concerns over its proximity to the Chinese government and hold over user data across the world.

Here is a list of countries and entities that have implemented a partial or complete ban on TikTok:

New Zealand

Became the latest country to target TikTok, imposing a ban on the use of the app on devices with access to the parliamentary network amid cybersecurity concerns.

United Kingdom

Would ban TikTok on government phones with immediate effect, and asked the National Cyber Security Centre to look at the potential vulnerability of government data from social media apps and risks around how sensitive information could be accessed and used.

India

Banned TikTok and dozens of other apps by Chinese developers on all devices in June 2020, claiming that they were potentially harmful to the country’s security and integrity.

Afghanistan

Is in talks to ban TikTok and video game PUBG, with the Taliban claiming those were leading Afghan youths “astray.”

Pakistan

Banned TikTok at least four times, with the latest ban ending in November, over what the government said was immoral and indecent content on the app.

Belgium

Belgian federal government employees will no longer be allowed to use TikTok on their work phones, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on March 10.

Canada

The nation has banned TikTok on government-issued devices due to security risks.

Taiwan

Banned TikTok and some other Chinese apps on state-owned devices and in December 2022 launched a probe into the social media app over suspected illegal operations on the island.

United States

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 unanimously recommended ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.

In early March, legislators from both major U.S. parties introduced a bill to ban the popular app in the United States.

Congress previously passed a bill in December 2022 to ban TikTok on federal devices.

US educational institutions

Boise State University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas-Austin, and West Texas A&M University are some of the schools to ban TikTok on university devices and Wi-Fi networks.

US states

Texas, Maryland, Alabama and Utah are among the more than 25 states that have issued orders to staff against using TikTok on government devices.

European Commission and European Parliament

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, has issued an order to ban the use of popular Chinese app TikTok on its staff’s phones due to cybersecurity concerns. Separately, the European Parliament also banned the app from staff phones.
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