China more ‘brazen and damaging’ than ever, says FBI director
theguardian.comThe threat to the west from the Chinese government is “more brazen, more damaging” than ever before, FBI director Christopher Wray has said, accusing Beijing of stealing American ideas and innovation and launching massive hacking operations.
The speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in California on Monday amounted to a stinging rebuke of the Chinese government just days before Beijing is set to occupy the global stage by hosting the Winter Olympics.
In another salvo from the US towards China on Monday, billionaire George Soros said Chinese president Xi Jinping was the “greatest threat” to open society throughout the world. However, he added in his speech that the crisis engulfing China’s “unsustainable” property market could be the downfall of Xi, along with other mounting problems such as containing Omicron, the pursuit of total social control, and a plummeting birthrate.
Wray’s remarks made clear that even as American foreign policy remains consumed by Russia-Ukraine tensions, the US continues to regard China as its biggest threat to long-term economic security.
“When we tally up what we see in our investigations, over 2,000 of which are focused on the Chinese government trying to steal our information or technology, there’s just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, innovation, and economic security than China,” Wray said, according to a copy of the speech provided by the FBI.
The bureau is opening new cases to counter Chinese intelligence operations every 12 hours or so, Wray said, with Chinese government hackers pilfering more personal and corporate data than all other countries combined
“The harm from the Chinese government’s economic espionage isn’t just that its companies pull ahead based on
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