China’s spies have used local private investigators for years to watch dissidents

As US officials remain on high alert for spy balloons in the skies over North America, Chinese government operatives have already tapped into a network of local private investigators and federal agents to illegally obtain intelligence on the ground, according to a flurry of federal indictments. Over the past few years, indictments filed against US-based private detectives allege that some have traded on their federal law enforcement connections to obtain classified documents and private information on political dissidents living in the US and targeted by the Chinese Communist Party. In some cases, the private detectives offered their contacts in federal…