Brookings Institution Partnered With Shanghai Policy Center Under Scrutiny for Spying

Shanghai Academy acts as a front for Chinese spy recruitment, according to FBI

The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China’s intelligence and spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents.

The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank’s hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the institution said. The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal government that has raised flags within the FBI.

The partnership raises questions about potential Chinese espionage activities at the think tank, which employs numerous former government officials and nearly two dozen current foreign policy advisers to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Since the partnership began, the organizations have teamed up to host a 2018 conference in Shanghai and a 2019 joint workshop in Doha. Both events focused on Middle East cooperation with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s multinational infrastructure project that the U.S. government has described as a global security threat.

"We highly value our partnership with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences," Brookings Doha Center director Tarik Yousef said at the joint workshop last December, calling the partnership a "very productive collaboration that is expanding, deepening, and allowing us all to better understand each other."

According to federal court records filed by the FBI, the Shanghai Academy, which describes itself as "the second biggest academic organization and comprehensive research center in the fields of philosophy and social sciences in China," is closely aligned with Beijing’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security. It has been used as a front group for Chinese intelligence collection and overseas spy recruitment, the FBI said.

The court records are part of a criminal case against retired CIA officer Kevin Patrick Mallory, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year for selling classified U.S. defense documents to China in 2017. Federal investigators said Mallory was recruited by a Chinese national who contacted him on LinkedIn and "represented himself to Mallory as working for a PRC think tank, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences."

According to the 2019 affidavit, the FBI believes that senior Chinese officials use Shanghai Academy of Social Science for...

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