BEIJING: Beijing accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Wednesday (June 25) of making an "absurd" attempt to recruit Chinese citizens via videos posted to social media.
China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) said the placement of what amounted to job advertisements on social media platform X was an "amateurish gambit" to convince people to spy for the Americans.
"These two painstakingly crafted 'job ads', riddled with clumsy rhetoric and slanderous claims, lay bare the absurd logic and paranoid delusions of American intelligence agencies," the ministry said in a statement posted to its official WeChat account.
"Once again, the self-proclaimed 'world's top intelligence power' has turned itself into an international laughingstock through its baffling incompetence," it added.
CIA director John Ratcliffe said that the videos posted last month -- which implored the sharing of state secrets -- were aimed at "recruiting Chinese officials to help the US".
Beijing condemned the posts at the time as "naked political provocation".
The MSS vowed on Wednesday to "resolutely protect the nation's strategic interests and core secrets".
It warned the CIA that "any attempt to incite betrayal among the Chinese people is doomed to fail, and any plot to infiltrate China for intelligence will prove futile".
The intelligence agency's diatribe was among the top trending items on China's X-like Weibo platform on Wednesday, with users mocking the alleged job ads.
"Can we organise a group of scammers to carry out a telecom fraud against the CIA? We can trick the US and make a little money at the same time," one wrote.
The United States and China have long traded accusations of espionage.
In April, security officials said they had implicated three US "secret agents" in cyberattacks during February's Asian Winter Games in the northeastern city of Harbin.
The MSS said in March it had sentenced to death a former engineer for leaking state secrets to a foreign power. - AFP
