The Obama administration has delivered a warning to Beijing about the presence of Chinese government agents operating secretly in the United States to pressure prominent expatriates -some wanted in China on charges of corruption -to return home immediately , according to American officials.
The American officials said that Chinese law enforcement agents covertly in this country are part of Beijing's global campaign to hunt down and repatriate Chinese fugitives and, in some cases, recover allegedly ill-gotten gains.
The Chinese government has officially named the effort Operation Fox Hunt. The American warning, which was delivered to Chinese officials in recent weeks, reflects escalating anger in Washington about intimidation tactics used by the agents.And it comes at a time of growing tension between Washington and Beijing on a number of issues -from the computer theft of millions of government personnel files that American officials suspect was directed by China, to China's crackdown on civil liberties, to the devaluation of its currency . Those tensions are expected to complicate the state visit to Washington next month by Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
The work of the agents is a departure from the routine practice of secret government intelligence gathering that the US and China have carried out on each other's soil for decades. The CIA has a cadre of spies in China, just as China has deployed its own intelligence operatives into the US to steal political, economic, military and industrial secrets.
In this case, said American officials, who discussed details of the operation only on the condition of anonymity because of the tense diplomacy surrounding the issue, the Chinese agents are undercover operatives with the ministry of public security , China's law enforcement branch charged with carrying out Operation Fox Hunt.
US officials said they had solid evidence that the Chinese agents -not in the US on acknowledged government business, and most likely entering on tourist or trade visas -use various strong-arm tactics to get fugitives to return.The harassment, which has included threats against family members in China, has intensified recently , officials said.They declined to provide specific evidence of the activities of the agents.
PLA boasts of rockets more powerful than US, Russia
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has claimed that its artillery force rockets, capable of hitting targets at 150kms, are far superior in terms of automation and firepower than those of its US and Russian counterparts and can “inflict a metal storm“ on the enemy. “The power of each of my battalion's rocket launchers is equal to that of a whole battalion equipped with traditional artillery guns,“ said Wang, political supervisor of the PLA's rocket artillery battalions. “To be specific, each rocket can cover and destroy a vast area equivalent to several football fields, while each launcher can fire more than 10 rockets within several minutes,“ state-run China Daily quoted him as saying. In comparison, Russia's BM-30 Smerch has a maximum range of 90 kms and the American M270 multiple launch rocket system has a top range of 70 kms, the Daily report said.
