China calls CIA videos ‘absurd’ attempt to recruit spies
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The CIA videos are supposedly aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to help the US.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIJING - Beijing accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on June 25 of making an “absurd” attempt to recruit Chinese citizens via videos posted on social media.
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) said the placement of what amounted to job advertisements on social media platform X was an “amateurish gambit” to convince people to spy for the Americans.
“These two painstakingly crafted job ads, riddled with clumsy rhetoric and slanderous claims, lay bare the absurd logic and paranoid delusions of American intelligence agencies,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its official WeChat account.
“Once again, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s top intelligence power’ has turned itself into an international laughingstock through its baffling incompetence,” it added.
CIA director John Ratcliffe said that the videos, which were posted in May 2025 and implored the sharing of state secrets, were aimed at “recruiting Chinese officials to help the US”.
Beijing condemned the posts at the time as “naked political provocation”.
The MSS vowed on June 25 to “resolutely protect the nation’s strategic interests and core secrets”.
It warned the CIA that “any attempt to incite betrayal among the Chinese people is doomed to fail, and any plot to infiltrate China for intelligence will prove futile”.
The intelligence agency’s diatribe was among the top trending items on China’s X-like Weibo platform on June 25, with users mocking the alleged job advertisements.
“Can we organise a group of scammers to carry out a telecommunications fraud against the CIA? We can trick the US and make a little money at the same time,” one wrote.
The US and China have long traded accusations of espionage
In April, security officials said they had implicated three US “secret agents” in cyber attacks during the February 2025 Asian Winter Games in the north-eastern city of Harbin.
The MSS said in March it had sentenced to death a former engineer for leaking state secrets
