Chiang Kai-shek, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), suspected that the United States of America was plotting a coup, or potential assassination, against him.
CIA operators were fearful of Mao Zedong's entry into the war and estimated that a substantial amount of Kuomintang Nationalist guerillas were available to work with the agency.
The CIA responded by sending in a rescue unit, only to have its planes shot down and its principal agents assigned to the mission, Jack Downey and Dick Fecteau, captured.
[10]: 43 Anti-air brigades were able to shoot down a few United States spy planes in the early 1960s, but their overall inefficacy demonstrated the limitations of the People's Liberation Army in responding to aircraft incursions.
[11][12][13] In 2001, a presidential plane built in the United States for Chinese President Jiang Zemin was found to have listening devices installed.
"[16] In January 2018, a former CIA officer named Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested and would eventually plead guilty[19][20] on suspicion of helping dismantle the network[18] while the Foreign Policy article ascribed, notwithstanding the arrest, the failure to the ability of the PRC intelligence agencies to penetrate the CIA's communication system.
[16] The 2010s global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden demonstrated extensive United States intelligence activities in China.
[21]: 129 As part of its response, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2014 formed the Cybersecurity and Information Leading Group[21]: 129 and the National People's Congress passed the Cyber Security Law.
[21]: 250 Sun Bo, a general manager of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, was investigated for corruption and supplying classified information to the CIA, including technical specifications of the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to Asia Times.
[23] A December 2020 article by Zach Dorfman in Foreign Policy suggested that decades of corruption inside of the CCP had created vulnerabilities exploited by outside intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA.