On this episode of China Uncensored,
the head of the FBI has warned
that the CCP has spies
all over the United States—
including people who appear to be
ordinary students and employees.
Hi, welcome back to China Uncensored.
I'm your host Chris Chappell.
You know, some people call me paranoid.
At least that's what I imagine they're saying
behind my back.
But let me tell you,
you may laugh at this tinfoil hat now,
but I've heard from a very reliable source,
there are spies!
Spies everywhere!!!
Oh no, my source isn't the homeless guy
down on 10th avenue.
I'm talking about head of the FBI Christopher Wray.
"One of the things we're trying to do
is view the China threat as not just
a whole of government threat,
but a whole of society threat on their end."
Oh whoa, all Chinese people are a threat?
That sounds like something
my racist uncle Ted would say.
I mean seriously,
the head of the FBI is basically saying
Americans must band together
to resist the yellow menace?
I haven't heard anything that racist since...
the 1943 Batman movie.
"Known as Little Tokyo.
Since a wise government rounded up
all those shifty eyed Japs…"
Whoa, that was a dark night.
But back to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
He was speaking at
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
And China was a big concern.
"The biggest issue of our time...
is China and the risk they pose.
I'm not sure in the 240 some odd year history
of this nation we have ever faced
a competitor and potential advisory of this scale,
scope and capacity.
Wray and other leaders of US Intelligence agencies
like the NSA and CIA released this report,
detailing the biggest threats facing the United States.
And China is named dropped a lot.
Cyber espionage, intellectual property theft,
space weapons, drug warfare—
it's not looking good.
Also, the intelligence community
does not think you should buy
Chinese cell phones,
because they could be spying on you.
And when it comes to spying,
the NSA probably knows what they're talking about.
But it was Christopher Wray's comments
about Chinese students studying in the United States
that got some people's backs up.
"Use of non traditional collectors,
especially in the academic setting,
whether it's professors, scientists, students..
.it's across basically every discipline,
and I think the level of naivete
on the part of the academic sector
about this creates its own issues,
they're exploiting the very open
research and development environment
that we have, which we all revere,
but they're taking advantage of it."
The idea that all Chinese students are
potential spies for the Chinese Communist Party
is a bit shocking.
Especially to China's Foreign Ministry.
"I don't know where the United States'
sense of insecurity comes from."
Well, that sense of insecurity
probably comes from the fact that
the Chinese Communist Party has been
actively trying to influence
and infiltrate the United States.
The CCP has documented this
in its own strategic papers.
The way Christopher Wray explained it,
he said that it's not just official CCP agents
doing the infiltration and spy work.
It's "non-traditional intelligence collectors"—
like Chinese students at American universities,
and Chinese workers inside American companies
who are gathering small pieces of intelligence
on a large scale.
Christopher Wray's statement has upset
a lot of Chinese communities inside the US.
The organization United Chinese Americans said,
"painting all Chinese students
and indeed Chinese in America
with such a broad brush
as a national security threat
is paranoid, inflammatory,
un-American, and simply wrong."
The Organization of Chinese Americans called it,
"Dishonest and insulting."
And John C. Yang,
head of Asian Americans Advancing Justice,
told the Daily Beast,
"We cannot have every Chinese student or scientist
assumed guilty until proven innocent
of a national security threat."
So was the director of the FBI onto something,
or was he just being racist and paranoid?
For more on this,
I'm joined by China Uncensored's
senior Chinese person,
Shelley Zhang.
Shelley?
Thanks, Chris.
So Shelley,
was FBI director Christopher Wray
being very racist?
Or just a little bit racist?How about not racist?
But he said that all Chinese students
are a potential threat.
That's not what he said.
He said that the Chinese government
uses students and other academics as spies.
And that's not racist Chris,
it's just true.
You mean there really are
spies everywhere?
Where did I put that tinfoil hat?
Calm down.
We're not talking about James Bond, here.
Sure, the CCP uses professional spies.
But they also use part-time spies.
Part-time spies?
What, like they need some extra cash on the side?
Or they're pressured into it,
or told they're fulfilling their patriotic duty.
These aren't professional spies.
They're just ordinary students,
or employees,
or business owners who are in the US
for legitimate reasons.
The CCP just asks them to pass on information
every once in a while.
What kind of information?
Maybe you're a grad student
doing research in a lab.
Maybe you just take a few photos
of what you're working on
and send it in an email.
Are there a lot of these
unprofessional spies?
Well, it's hard to know.
But according to this article,
a Chinese diplomat who defected said last year
that Australia had about 500 professional spies,
and up to 700 of these part-time spies.
That might not sound like much,
but if the CCP has the same number in the US,
adjusted for population,
the US would have about 16,000 Chinese spies.
16,000 sounds like a lot of spies.
And I assume there could be even more here
because America is way more important than Australia.
Riiight...
But remember that there are more than
330,000 Chinese nationals studying in the US,
so it still would be a very small percentage.
So on a scale of one to infinity,
how worried should we be
about Chinese spies in the US?
Not that worried.
That's not the answer I was expecting.
Look, should we be aware of
what the CCP is doing?
Yes.
And it's important that the FBI is on it.
But most of us aren't in a position
to stop Chinese spies.
Hey, speak for yourself.
Ok, sure.
Look, I think the Asian American groups
were overreacting to what the FBI director said.
But they're also right in that we shouldn't start
another yellow peril red scare.
We can't suspect every Chinese person
of being a spy.
I was born in China.
Does that make me a spy?
I don't know.
Does it?
Are you serious?
Hey, you're the one who brought it up.
Ok, you got me.
The Communist Party secretly trained me
in espionage tactics until I left China
when I was three years old,
and since then I've been playing the long game.
First, I waited for YouTube to be invented.
Then I joined a YouTube channel
that exposes the Chinese regime.
Now I'm just waiting for the day
when I can take over the channel
and start broadcasting communist propaganda.
I can't believe you just said all that.
I'm not a spy, Chris.
Oh, I believe you.
You would make a terrible spy.
You just admitted everything!
Yes I did.
There is something that FBI Director Wray
talked about though,
that's even more important for Americans
to know about.
The CCP's influence activities.
How is that more important
than worrying about spies?
The Party puts a lot of effort into influencing
how the rest of the world sees China.
And they can do it in sneaky ways
that are hard to detect.
Like using the Confucius Institutes,
which the Chinese government sets up
in foreign schools and universities
to teach a version of Chinese culture
that's approved by the Communist Party.
I still think spying is a bigger issue.
Well, they're actually kind of related.
This is what Director Wray was talking about
when he said the FBI viewed
what the CCP is doing
as a "whole of society" threat.
Whether it's spying or propaganda,
the CCP will use all of Chinese society
to get what they want.
Here's another example.
The Chinese Students and Scholars Associations—
or CSSAs.
These groups are set up in universities
across the United States.
On the surface,
they exist to support Chinese exchange students,
organize fun group activities,
and so on.
But the CSSAs can also be
connected to the Chinese government
and help spread the Party line on China issues.
According to a defector
from China's Ministry of State Security,
the CCP views CSSAs as "information collection"
and propaganda organizations.
So they're part-time spying on us?
No.
Well, maybe some people are.
We don't know.
But we do know that CSSAs definitely help
the CCP push certain views.
Like last year when the Dalai Lama
came to speak at UC San Diego,
the CSSA there kicked up a fuss...
after coordinating with the Chinese Consulate in LA.
And this isn't something new.
In 2007,
a human rights lawyer
came to Columbia University
to give a speech about
forced organ harvesting in China.
The CSSA organized Chinese students
to protest that, too.
On the Columbia University CSSA's website,
they boasted that their constitution was reviewed
by the local Chinese consulate,
and their advisory board consisted of two members...
also from the Chinese consulate.
Wait a minute, these CSSAs
are directly working with the Chinese government?
Some of them are.
This Foreign Policy article showed that
the Georgetown CSSA gets half of its annual
operating budget from the Chinese Embassy.
People have been digging up other links as well.
Here's a video from the George Washington University CSSA
saying that they are directed by the Chinese Embassy,
found by the same reporter.
The University of Tennessee CSSA
says they get funding from the Embassy.
They also require members
to believe in the one China policy.
The Southwestern CSSA,
which is an umbrella organization that includes
CSSAs from 26 US universities,
requires any candidates running for office
to be approved by the Chinese Consulate in LA.
I could go on.
Please don't.
A lot of those statements you showed
are in Chinese.
Yeah, they don't always translate them to English.
Are they trying to hide their links to the CCP
by using a language spoken by 1.3 billion people?
These people would make terrible spies.
Well, remember, a lot of the spying going on here
is actually the CCP using Chinese students
to spy on each other.
Just to make sure that they're
not doing anything out of line.
Here's a case of a Chinese student activist
who recorded a call from the Chinese police
asking him to spy on fellow activists.
Chinese students in Australia
have found things they said in class
were reported back to the Chinese police
by other students.
Think about it.
Having something you say
in a college class outside China
reported to Chinese authorities.
That's awful.
I wouldn't want to be held responsible
for anything I said in college.
Ok, so you've convinced me that this is
an issue that's at least as important as spying.
Is there anything we can do about this?
Well, obviously we should all expose
what the CCP is doing.
But besides that,
I think the most important thing we can do
is to separate the CCP
from ordinary Chinese people.
We need to understand that the Communist Party
has a very specific agenda
that they use Chinese people for.
But we shouldn't blame all Chinese people
for what the CCP is doing.
But that's not the way
a lot of Chinese people see it.
Well, that's true.
The CCP has done a great job
of making Chinese people think
that the Communist Party is the same thing
as the country, and the people.
If we do the same thing,
we're helping them.
Look, imagine being a Chinese student
here in the US.
It's a completely different language and culture.
You can be pretty isolated
from mainstream American society.
And you're constantly told,
by Chinese media,
by the Chinese education system,
by your friends,
that America just wants to keep China down—
and therefore keep you down.
If people start calling you a Chinese spy,
doesn't that just make you believe it's true?
So what are you saying?
I'm saying:
Don't vilify Chinese people.
Treat them like individuals.
Isn't that part of what
makes America great?
So you're saying we should...
make America great again?
Why do I even bother?
Thanks Shelley.
So what do you think?
Leave your comments below.
Once again, I'm Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
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