Mission Implausible: China media claims 'victory' over US spy killings, but ridicules report

An influential Chinese newspaper claimed a “sweeping victory” after a report that Beijing's intelligence agencies had killed or jailed more than a dozen covert sources who supplied information for the CIA.

But the state-run Global Times also dismissed the dramatic account of China’s dismantling of US spying activities as a Mission Impossible-style fantasy.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that US intelligence agencies suffered their biggest setback in decades between late 2010 and the end of 2012 when China uncovered their spying network in the country.

Intelligence officials never discovered whether the US was betrayed by a mole within the CIA or whether the Chinese hacked a covert system used by the CIA to communicate with foreign sources, the report said.

“We would like to applaud China's anti-espionage activities,” said the Global Times, which often publishes nationalist editorials.

“Not only was the CIA's spy network dismantled, but Washington had no idea what happened and which part of the spy network had gone wrong.

“It can be taken as a sweeping victory. Perhaps it means even if the CIA makes efforts to rebuild its spy network in China, it could face the same result.”

The most chilling detail in the NYT report – which cited 10 anonymous current and former security officers - was that Chinese agents shot a CIA source in front of colleagues, in an apparent deterrent to others.

However, that detail was rejected by the Global Times, a newspaper which is published by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece newspaper.

“That is a purely fabricated story,” the newspaper said. “Most likely a piece of American-style imagination based on ideology.”

The editorial, which appeared in both the Chinese and English-language editions, then goes on to ridicule the report, accusing the New York Times journalists of watching too many Hollywood spy-thrillers.

“The NYT report seems to be a white-knuckle beginning for a new version of Mission: Impossible: American spies who worked in China disappeared, and some of them died miserably,” it said.

“However, no one knew the reason for their deaths. The journalists who wrote the report must have been deeply addicted to the franchise.”

Hu Xijin, the Global Times’ editor, repeated the claim that the world of espionage was being over-dramatised by the New York Times in a video that was posted by the newspaper on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

The video also included publicity pictures from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a 2011 blockbuster staring Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg.

Mr Hu said: “The New York Times report depicted government buildings as places of executions, which is divorced from China's reality.”

The New York Times’s website is blocked in China, but many people have posted comments about the report on Chinese social media.

“I will put my hands up and support the shooting of these spies," said one Weibo comment.  "Anyone who has sold their souls should not only be executed, but their bodies should not be buried and instead fed to wild dogs."

Other comments reminded the netizen that Chinese spies were also operating abroad.

Additional reporting by Christine Wei

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