CIA monitoring China's rise as world power, says chief Haspel

Gina Haspel, who is currently the acting director of the CIA, would be the first female head of the spy agency if confirmed. " The CIA has a very important role in monitoring China's rise as a global power," Haspel, US President Donald Trump's nominee for the CIA Director, told members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

"China efforts to diminish US influence, not only in the Pacific, but all around the world. China's unfair trade practices, and China's overt and illicit efforts to steal US technology and know-how and intellectual property," she said.

The CIA is raising its investment on each of these hard targets. "We have incredible expertise on China at the agency. It is a very strong team. I'm very proud of our analysts. It is a subject that a week doesn't go by that, either, the President asks for an expert briefing or Secretary Mattis asks for someone to brief him on China issues," Haspel said responding to a question from Senator Marco Rubio. For decades, American foreign policy towards China has been rooted in the belief that as they prospered, economically, they would embrace democracy, they would embrace the global rule of law, Rubio said in his remarks.

"That consensus, by all accounts has been catastrophically wrong," he said.

"On Thursday China is undertaking a comprehensive effort to supplant the United States and to undermine us. And they've benefited from the greatest transfer of wealth in history, through the theft and the forced transfer of intellectual property. They use unfair trade and other practices to undermine our industrial and technical base," Rubio said.

"They gather and exploit data at an unrivaled scale. They're building the most capable and well-funded military in world, second to ours," he said.