The unprecedented growth of the MSS, according to the paper, is occurring despite the fact that the CIA has doubled its budget on China under the presidency of Joe Biden. The American spy agency also launched a new China Mission Center under its current director, William J. Burns. A major concern for the CIA is reportedly the intense Chinese focus on cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced semiconductor design and manufacture. For this reason, the CIA’s China Mission Center works closely with the agency’s Technology Intelligence Center, claims the paper.

Through these and other efforts, American intelligence officials have reportedly concluded that the “urgency and intensity of technological espionage” by Chinese spy agencies has increased beyond parallel. According to the New York Times, the technological advancements taking place in the state-supported Chinese private sector and the military, known as the People’s Liberation Army, “are surprising the US government”. For this reason, the CIA has focused intensely on “rebuilding a network” of assets within China, a decade after Chinese counterintelligence managed to neutralize CIA operations on Chinese soil.

But the MSS is also increasing its output and “making its own aggressive moves abroad”, says the paper. Unlike Russian intelligence agencies, the MSS does not have a tradition of planting undercover spies inside the United States. Instead, MSS operatives prefer to operate online through front companies with innocuous-sounding names. They use these companies to recruit assets among Chinese expatriates, ethnic Chinese Westerners, and Americans without any ethnic connection to China. Many targets for Chinese intelligence recruitment are members of the scientific, academic, and business communities, the New York Times reports.