WASHINGTON: The CIA said on Thursday it will create a top-level working group on China as part of a broad US government effort focused on countering Beijing’s influence.

The group will become one of fewer than a dozen mission centres operated by the CIA, with weekly director-level meetings intended to drive the agency’s strategy towards China. The CIA also announced that it would ramp up efforts to recruit Chinese speakers and create another mission centre focusing on emerging technologies and global issues such as climate change and global health.

President Joe Biden’s administration has called out what it sees as Chinese aggression on a range of security and economic issues while also seeking common ground on issues like climate change and a nuclear-armed North Korea. Top administration officials have repeatedly signaled a shift of resources toward great power competition with China while maintaining a focus on counter-terrorism.

China is an especially difficult challenge for the US intelligence community given the insularity of its Communist Party leadership, its large military and security services and its development in advanced technologies that can counter spying. In a statement Thursday, CIA Director William Burns called the Chinese government the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century.

Throughout our history, CIA has stepped up to meet whatever challenges come our way, Burns said. And now facing our toughest geopolitical test in a new era of great power rivalry, CIA will be at the forefront of this effort.

As part of an agency reorganisation, the CIA will fold mission centres on Iran and North Korea into existing groups covering each country’s respective region. Both country-specific mission centres were created during President Donald Trump’s administration.

The CIA will also try to address the delays in recruiting through the often onerous process of completing background checks and security clearances, with a goal of reducing processing times to an average of six months.

And it will designate a chief technology officer for the first time as part of a broader effort to implement advanced computing methods.

Washington has publicly accused Beijing of failing to cooperate with efforts to understand the origins of Covid-19 and abetting criminal hackers targeting critical US infrastructure. China has in response accused the US of wrongly scapegoating Beijing and pointed to previous US intelligence failures as well as the collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan.

But both countries are also the two world’s largest economies and pre-eminent military and political powers. The relationship has been strained by China flying military planes near the self-governed island of Taiwan, which has long had US support and which Beijing considers part of its territory. A US official said that Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to hold a virtual meeting by the end of this year.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2021