CIA releases Mandarin-language videos to encourage Chinese officials to spill secrets

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in President Xi Jinping's government: Come work with us.

America's premier spy agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted to YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day.

The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost both the agency's use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted U.S. officials with its own espionage operations.

The videos are “aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to The Associated Press. He said China “is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically.”

“Our agency must continue responding to this threat with urgency, creativity, and grit, and these videos are just one of the ways we are doing this,” Ratcliffe said.

The more than 2-minute-long videos are of cinematic quality and feature scenes of Communist Party insiders, luxury automobiles and glittering skyscrapers as narrators share their growing disillusionment with the system they have served.

In one video, a man described as an honest party member speaks of his unease about the power struggles among his peers, and what it might mean for his family's safety. As the pace of the music picks up, he says, “I’ve done nothing wrong, I can’t go on living in fear!”

The man is then seen using his smartphone to contact the CIA, and the video ends with the agency's seal.

Links below the video offer instructions on contacting the agency securely, along with a warning cautioning potential informants about fake accounts that might impersonate the CIA.

The videos are the agency's latest attempt to make it easier and safer for potential informants to share information.

Last fall, the CIA posted online instructions in Korean, Mandarin and Farsi detailing steps that potential informants can take to contact U.S. intelligence officials without putting themselves in danger.

The instructions include ways to reach the CIA on its public website or on the darknet, a part of the internet that can only be accessed using special tools designed to hide the user’s identity. The CIA posted similar instructions in Russian three years ago.

A spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the videos.

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Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.