Former CCP officials say the CIA videos may trigger a wave of defections despite the CCP’s tight social control.
After the CIA released two videos to persuade Chinese officials to provide intelligence about their communist regime, the Chinese foreign ministry denounced the effort, calling it “infiltration.”
Analysts said the Chinese regime’s strong reaction shows that the CIA’s videos are having an effect on officials within the system of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
On May 1, the CIA released two short videos in Mandarin Chinese, speaking directly to CCP officials and enticing them to work with the CIA.
The first video targets senior CCP officials who have watched their colleagues fall from power, go to jail, or be disappeared. After recapping the internal struggles among top CCP officials, the video calls on any senior CCP official who “wants to take control of his fate to find a path that will protect his loved ones and the fruits of his lifelong hard work” to work for the United States.
The video links to a page with instructions on how to contact the CIA through a Tor service—a secure, anonymous, encrypted digital channel.
The second video is aimed at lower-ranking CCP officials, empathizing with their dissatisfaction with the Chinese regime, and reiterating that their hard work only benefits a small number of party elites. The video concludes by saying, “God helps those who help themselves, and your fate is in your control.”
In response to the CIA videos, Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, on May 6 criticized the United States at a press briefing, calling the release of the videos “a serious infringement on China’s national interest and pure political provocation.”
Lin said Beijing will push back on the “sabotage activities from overseas.”
A China expert said the Chinese regime’s warning to the United States is aimed at intimidating CCP officials who are considering the CIA offer.
“But its deterrent effect [that of the CCP’s warning] is limited on those CCP officials who have been suppressed by the regime and for those who are pessimistic about the CCP regime because they are willing to fight to the death with the CCP anyway,” Chung Chih-tung, assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, in Taiwan, told the Chinese language version of The Epoch Times on May 8.
By Alex Wu
