Survey of Chinese Espionage in the United States Since 2000

This updated survey is based on publicly available information and lists 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000. It does not include espionage against other countries, against U.S. firms or persons located in China, nor the many cases involving attempts to smuggle controlled items from the U.S. to China (usually munitions or controlled technologies) or the more than 1200 cases of intellectual property theft lawsuits brought by U.S. companies against Chinese entities in either the U.S. or China. The focus is on the illicit acquisition of information by Chinese intelligence officers or their agents and on the increasing number of Chinese covert influence operations.

Chinese espionage is undertaken in pursuit of China’s strategic objectives. This is a change from the past where commercial motives were often equally important, but commercial espionage by both private and government entities remains a feature of Chinese spying. When Xi Jinping took office, first as Chair of the Central Military Commission in November 2012 and after he became President in March 2013, one of his first acts was to repurpose and reorient China’s collection priority to better serve long -term goals, clamping down on what appeared to be collection by some PLA units intended for personal gain (i.e. stealing commercial technology and providing it to private companies for cash or favors) as part of his larger campaign against corruption. 

Of the 224 incidents, we found that 69% were reported after Xi took office.

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