Spies and Lies Paperback – 18 October 2022

Any decent intelligence service can recruit spies, steal secret documents, and run paramilitary operations. This extraordinary book shows how Chinese intelligence took the dark arts to a much higher level. Through an elaborate web of front companies and undercover agents, the Chinese Communist Party’s spy agencies have infiltrated directly into the heart of American power, shaping and manipulating our nation’s foreign policy in a way that serves Beijing’s strategic aims. And they’ve done it for decades.This book should be mandatory reading across the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, State Department, White House, and Congress. Mr. Alex Joske has delivered a signal service to defenders of freedom everywhere.

Excellent!!

I bought this after seeing a review in the Economist. I acknowledge that the author has done a service to Western policy makers detailing Chinese influence operations in the USA and elsewhere. But this is not a book for the general reader, even one with a strong interest in politics and the rise of China. The prose is leaden and the reader is assailed by endless tedious accounts of Chinese front groups, their Chinese political connections and those they attempted to suborn in Washington. I recognise that the subject matter is inherently less “interesting” than accounts of espionage tradecraft, but nonetheless this has to be one of the most boring books I have ploughed through over the past 12 months.

Great book to see the extent of Chinese foreign interference everywhere. A must read to raise awareness and understanding of the indufuoud techniques used.

This is a very good summary of all the publicly known spy activity conducted by China. It is also a much needed insight and reference source for grasping how China's foreign intelligence organizations behave. Of course much more is going on under the surface, particularly in cyberspace. This is not an area covered by the book, but it is one of China's most cost-effective ways of conducting espionage, as well as state sponsored terrorism. However, this book is very useful for identifying the motivation of those peculiar Chinese agents whose job it is to turn up in every advantageous public gathering. They generally lurk around at Asian exhibitions at Museums and Art Galleries, Sinology lectures, trade conferences and any and every event within the Chinese community at large. They will insert themselves in every conversation and once they buttonhole you will experience the full "wolf culture" propaganda spiel. In the blink of an eye, they will commence aggressively asserting China's rights to seizing Taiwan, controlling the South China Sea and need to take down the USA and its allies. All of which is pretty confronting when all you wanted to do was look at the exhibition or sample the cuisine.