CIA releases videos to lure disgruntled officials to spy on China

The CIA's recruitment drive for foreign spies ramped up this week with the release of two Chinese-language videos.

- Helen Davidson

The US intelligence agency is targeting Chinese officials and workers it hopes to turn against Beijing via some newly released glossy videos.

The two videos touch on probable anxieties felt by some inside the Communist party machine - getting stuck in a lowly job assisting an increasingly wealthy corrupt official, or falling victim to the endless purges that have targeted millions of party members at all levels since Xi Jinping came to power.

"As I rise within the party, I watch those above me being discarded like worn-out shoes, but now I realise that my fate was just as precarious as theirs," a narrator says in one video, adding that he must protect his family, whose fate is tied to his.

In another, the narrator declares: "Our leaders' failure to fulfil repeated promises of prosperity has become a well-known secret... It's time I start working towards my own dreams."