The C.I.A. issued a new video on Thursday aimed at recruiting spies within China’s military.
The video highlights allegations of corruption in the People’s Liberation Army that have contributed to the ouster of numerous generals and senior leaders on the Central Military Committee, the Communist Party body that controls China’s armed forces.
Last month, President Xi Jinping of China removed the country’s top military officer and another senior general. Chinese officials announcing an investigation into their conduct spoke of unspecified “grave violations of discipline and the law.”
Current and former U.S. officials have debated what Mr. Xi’s motives might be for pushing out the generals. He could be acting out of paranoia, defending himself against a real political challenge, or genuinely trying to address high-level corruption in the People’s Liberation Army, they say.
Corruption in China’s military has hampered its push to modernize and improve capabilities, and Mr. Xi has been on a yearlong campaign to root it out.
But the rising allegations of corruption have given the United States new opportunities to recruit members of the People’s Liberation Army who are frustrated by superiors who use their positions to enrich themselves.
The United States has been pushing to expand its recruitment of informants in China for several years. Last year, the Central Intelligence Agency unveiled its first two recruiting videos, and John Ratcliffe, the agency’s director, said the effort had begun paying dividends.
“Last year, C.I.A.’s Mandarin video campaign reached many Chinese citizens, and we know there are many more searching for a way to improve their lives and change their country for the better,” Mr. Ratcliffe said in a statement. “We’re going to continue offering Chinese government officials and citizens an opportunity to work toward a brighter future together.”
The new video shows a fictional midlevel officer in China going into work and listening to a briefing as he narrates in Mandarin his complaints about corruption, reflecting the public’s frustration with the problem.
“Each day that goes by, it becomes clearer the only thing our party leaders are interested in defending is their own pockets,” he says. “They built their careers on a foundation of lies. But those walls are slowly crumbling away, and we are left to clean up their mess.”
The video shifts to his home, showing the officer’s daughter and wife.
“I could not let their madness be a part of my daughter’s future,” he says.
The video concludes with the C.I.A.’s logo and the narrator’s suggesting that the best way to serve his country is to help the spy agency collect secrets.
“I was a soldier, I served to defend my countrymen, and the path I chose was how I served,” the narrator says.
A C.I.A. official said the United States faced a generational challenge with China, and one of the most important intelligence targets. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the agency’s deliberative process, said that the videos were getting through and that the campaign was working despite China’s ban on YouTube and other Western platforms.
The C.I.A. has published instructions on its YouTube channel and elsewhere on how Chinese nationals can use the dark web or virtual private networks to contact the agency without the Beijing government finding out.
China’s rapidly growing military and intelligence budgets have allowed ample room for corruption. The People’s Liberation Army gives out huge numbers of contracts to Chinese firms across a range of industries. Corrupt officers can easily double their official salary by steering contracts to specific firms, according to American officials.
U.S. officials believe that there is a large pool of Chinese officials frustrated by the corruption they see, and that those people might potentially be recruited by the C.I.A.
While Mr. Ratcliffe, like his predecessor in the Biden administration, William Burns, has said the agency is making strides in strengthening its network in China, the agency has had to rebuild after years of problems.
From the end of 2010 to 2012, China killed or imprisoned more than a dozen American sources. The covert system used by the C.I.A. to communicate with its assets was compromised by China and Iran. Some officials blamed a former C.I.A. officer who spied for China for the destruction of the network.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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