Dispatch Case(The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 25, 1994, A37)

A new book on intelligent gathering by the People's  Republic  of
China  maintains  that  many of the students the country sends to
the United States are part of its vast network of spies.

The Book, Chinese Intelligence Operations(Naval Institute Press),
was   written   by   Nicholas  Efitimiades,  an  analyst  in  the
espionage-damage-assessment branch of  the  Defense  Intelligence
Agency.   The  author  says his book does not necessarily reflect
the views of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

"To collect information, the Ministry of State  Security  co-opts
vast  numbers  of Chinese citizens living or traveling overseas,"
he says.  "Most Chinese clandestine collection activities are not
sophisticated  operations,  but their numbers compensate for this
weakness."

According Mr. Efitimiades, the focus of much of the spying is  on
technology, specifically mid-level technology not cleared for ex-
port.  About half of the 900 cases of illegal technology transfer
investigated  by  U.  S.  authorities each year on the West Coast
alone involve the Chinese, he says.

Mr. Efitimiades also discuss how China's security apparatus tries
to  infiltrate  dissidents groups, at home and abroad, and how it
tries to recruit visiting academics, among others, for  espionage
and  other  opinion-molding  activities.  "For the most part, re-
cruitment methods tend to be crude by the  standards  of  Western
intelligence," he says.

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James V. Feinerman, director of the Committee on  Scholarly  Com-
munication  with China, said in an interview in last week that he
had heard allegations of such Chinese spying before, but also had
"never  heard  of  a  really authenticated case." His Washington-
based committee  is  affiliated  with  the  American  Council  of
Learned  Societies, the National Society of Sciences, and the So-
cial Science Research Council.

"Even among Chinese students and scholars in the U.S., there  was
suspicion,  more  pronounced before June 4, that every campus had
its informer or informers," he said.  June 4 was the date of  the
Tiananmen massacre five years ago.

Mr. Feinerman, who was not familiar with Mr. Efitimiades's  book,
said he was not aware of any cases of American academics in China
being pressured to spy.

"We have, however, had the reverse problem, where people there to
conduct legitimate intellectual research have been accused by the
Chinese" of spying for the United States, he said.

Mr. Feinerman said he doubted the existence of a massive  web  of
Chinese  student spies.  "If was such a widespread problem, there
would be more discussion of it," he said, "especially  with  such
an  enormous group of dissident Chinese students and scholars now
in the United States."