CIA mind games and the wages of betrayal in China

[The following report is derived from Marco Mayer’s recent conversation with Francesco Sisci in Rome.]

All main international media are highlighting the news that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has put two videos online [“Secure Contact with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)”, link here] to recruit Chinese officials as their informants and agents. How do you judge the technical quality and media impact of the message?

The videos are very well made; they go to the heart of the problems afflicting the Chinese hierarchy’s two poles – the boss and the secretary. Both can lose their job and their fortune or freedom in the radical selection process of the Chinese bureaucratic system.

The leadership in China is organized as a pyramid. So, the higher you go in the pyramid, the more people are eliminated or are at risk of being eliminated in the selection. Those people have grudges and reasons to be dissatisfied. They could betray because they first feel betrayed by the system by their leaders.

They once could think that by retiring, they could still be influential and
“go into business” using their network of relationships within the party. Today, however, they are sidelined and left aside. Furthermore, they risk being investigated and losing their privileges and their freedom.

In theory, many people are interested in this propaganda/provocation – most Chinese cadres and secretaries. In a closed environment of growing suspicion in which no one knows the intentions of the other today, with a history of illustrious defections in the past, the video is destined to multiply suspicions and contribute to poisoning the environment.

This applies to cadres at every level and to the supreme leaders who may suspect their subordinates of being ready to betray and sell themselves to the CIA. I don’t think that, in the end, many will choose to work for the CIA. In every case, the risk of being arrested for treason and the resulting penalty is infinitely greater than that of simply being sidelined.

However, the hanging risk is enough to increase the already high entropy of the system. The leaders will be more suspicious and, therefore, more demanding. The screws of controls will be tightened more and more; in turn, it could suffocate life in the party and increase dissatisfaction.

Then there is the concern that the CIA may say or leak that so-and-so or so-and-so have worked for America, meaning investigations and controls will follow.

There are already reports in China indicating suspicion that among the Chinese who are now returning home, they are infiltrated with spies and that relatives of Chinese abroad, in theory “patriotic,” are playing a double game or worse.

The videos in this atmosphere give substance to every distrust. China can shrug off the videos and the spies could then find more space or close in on themselves and increase repression – and thus create the conditions for which people spy or would want to sell themselves to America.

There is a system problem. The total Chinese control of imperial tradition works when it is indeed total, when China was the world (and there was no alternative to turn to, as with the empire) or was totally closed, as with Mao.

However, when the closure is limited to China alone because the Chinese can turn outside for economic issues and trade relations, they can escape totalizing control. Then, total control is not an advantage but becomes a ball and chain.

Other authoritarian systems can be totalitarian if they manage to impose a strong communist or nationalist ideology that brainwashes and closes off trade relations and does not push millions of Chinese to do business with the outside world.

However, China has a semi-open system and cannot close itself off at the cost of losing trade relations that constitute its great economic engine. The present Chinese nationalist approach becomes unconvincing, for its apparatuses are selected based on great loyalty to the leader, not just the system or the country.

The cure for this virus is only sunlight, openness and air, which makes everything more transparent. It then becomes more difficult to control and exploit the dissatisfaction of its cadres by foreign powers and agents, such as the CIA.

Moreover, in an open system, people can vent their frustration and grudges and have fewer reasons to feel betrayed and thus betray. But this means changing the Chinese political system. Is Beijing ready?

Otherwise, we could see in the coming months more games of cloak and dagger, of dogs chasing their tails, and the present paranoia risks becoming psychosis. In this case, with or without spies recruited, the CIA wins.

Another important thing is that the Chinese are well aware of the risks that the videos create, almost like a deadly plague virus, of their profound gravity. So, they will react, probably very harshly, and the possibilities of a trade agreement, even a limited one, are receding.

Beijing will not want to deal with those who make these videos and will not trust them. It will, therefore, try to put the American administration in difficulty.

This article first appeared on Appia Institute and is republished with permission. Read the original here.