William Hannas, James Mulvenon, and Anna Puglisi have written a richly detailed, methodically argued and must-have expose on Chinese espionage focused on the stealing of foreign science and technology. The authors have applied their varied backgrounds but common expertise in Chinese language to allow the primary evidence to speak for itself, almost all of it from Chinese government publications. To this they add a detailed examination of the effects of these policies in the United States, with sidebars for Japan and briefer discussions of Canada and Australia. For the casual reader (like this author, who works primarily on Pakistan-China relations), this book is a crucial addition, and in all respects a far more detailed account, to Nicholas Eftimiades' Chinese Intelligence Operations (Naval Institute Press, 1994), Howard deVore's China's Intelligence and Internal Security Forces (Jane's, 1999) and analytically superior to David Wise's Tiger Trap (Houghton-Mifflin, 2011). For the China specialist, the book is largely consistent with intelligence studies debated in journals like China Quarterly and Studies in Intelligence.

The book begins with a broad cultural-historical survey of the practice in China of adapting foreign ideas dating back to the late Qing dynasty, arguing convincingly that this is an efficient way of obtaining national power when sclerotic domestic governance suppresses the legal and social bases for technological innovation. Chapters 2 through 4 provide exhaustive (and exhausting) detail of how the national priority of obtaining foreign science and technology is managed and conducted. China has a covert national library system larger than any other in the world tied into nearly every government, military and, most importantly, industrial interest, responsible for the massive collation and redistribution of scientific data obtained from open sources and illegal means overseas. Chapters 5 through 7 examine the multitude of organizations responsible for industrial espionage involved within the United States, including joint research centres, student and professional organizations. The obligation of diaspora Chinese to bring technology back to China is frequently and explicitly stated in Chinese documents and even on Chinese websites. The mantra is an appeal to Chinese patriotism and the necessity of confronting “unfair” Western practices of technology control since the century of humiliation.

Chapter 8 is a concise survey and test of a series of misconceptions of Chinese espionage tradecraft and convincingly demonstrates that China engages in the same conventional practices that other states do: false flags, flytraps, payoffs, flawed personalities, dead drops, cut-outs, threats to relatives and use of ethnically white agents. The authors do find that the scale of the Chinese scientific diaspora permits China a more passive approach when making a first contact with a desired target. Chapter 9 is a dense and adequate discussion of cyber espionage, given that it is not the main focus of the book, and as the authors repeatedly emphasize, is a tortured sampling of a vastly greater issue. Chapter 10 and the conclusion make an argument for heightened legislative vigilance in US government and industry, and appendix 2 is a list of recommendations.

The publisher's lawyers at Routledge must have spent some time considering the more controversial aspects of the book's description and explanation of the role played by Chinese-American scientists in technology transfer to the US, given the extensive description of individuals in appendix 1 and related Chinese-American organizations. It is virtually inevitable that the Ministry of State Security, and other Chinese intelligence organizations, would target ethnic Chinese, just as post-Soviet SVR targets ethnic Russians. It is indisputable that since 2009, large numbers of Chinese-Americans (and lesser numbers of other Americans) have been convicted of industrial espionage.

I found interesting the citation of a survey of why Chinese PhDs educated in the US have returned to China (only 10–20% of Chinese PhDs ever return), and in another survey of why they have returned again to the US is telling. Chinese go to China primarily for business opportunities and lifestyle (which I read as tasty food, and filial piety—they want to see their parents), and least of all because of patriotism. Chinese PhDs then return to the US because of government red tape, the government's failure to keep promises about tax breaks and seed funding, rampant plagiarism between Chinese scientists, high personnel turnover, and dependence for the success of any project or enterprise on guanxi with government officials. I disagree with the authors and assert the validity of their alternative explanation that “Chinese scientists and businessmen are like us and work for themselves” (253). The Beijing bureaucrats do not appreciate how little patriotism has a role to play for diaspora Chinese. This reviewer has had extensive immersion in a variety of different Chinese culture(s) for four decades. Chinese students who travel abroad are a fortunate elite, who were often driven to science in order to improve the status and wellbeing of their families. Their impression of Chinese society is often a negative one. The patriotism Chinese diaspora learned in primary school most often re-emerges later among those Chinese who have difficulties in business or in assimilating because of poor social and language skills.

The book is also missing context: how concerned should we be? The KGB/GRU and MITI served much the same purpose, and neither of their patrons overtook the US. China may indeed be stealing proprietary formulae, but isn't technological diffusion a cost to be evaluated more thoroughly when constructively engaging a society with as much indigenously driven demand for responsible government, and eventually democracy, as China? The US could easily cut back on student visas to China, and displace the 250,000 student positions to India, but then Washington would be preoccupied with keeping the 250,000 students from visiting other Western states (even India).