With this timely study, a seasoned sinologist publicly examines the infiltration of Chinese espionage agents into foreign governments and private businesses. These efforts to collect state and technological secrets, he says, have been going on mostly uninterrupted for decades while Western intelligence services focused on the Soviet Union. Now, with the end of the cold war and the collapse of the USSR, attention must turn to these invasive operations.

Unstinting in his research, the author has made full use of Chinese sources and his own longtime study of China. In addition, he draws on his expertise as a counterintelligence analyst to examine the structure, objectives, and methodology of Chinese clandestine activities. The book specifically addresses the human source in intelligence operations, such as agent and double-agent recruitment, and how these tactics fit into the conduct of internal and foreign affairs in China.

The author's interviews with a number of Chinese diplomats, military and civilian intelligence officers, and secret agents reveal the cloak-and-dagger activities common to Chinese operatives in the United States. These astonishing descriptions read like a gripping espionage novel. Yet the book is uncompromising in its studious documentation. The monograph from which this work sprung was honored in 1992 as the best scholarly article on the subject of intelligence by the National Intelligence Study Center - a think tank founded by former top CIA officials.

Written in a style that will appeal to a broad range of readers, this book is a one-of-a-kind intelligence study. Intelligence and defense professionals congressional and foreign government staffers, industrial and business security professionals, as well as intelligence buffs will all find something of interest in this compelling and detailed book.