The career diplomat U.S. President Joe Biden named to lead the Central Intelligence Agency is creating a high-level unit aimed at sharpening the agency's focus on China, at a time of tense relations between the world's two largest economies.
CIA Director William Burns said on Thursday that the China Mission Center would cut across "all of the agency's mission areas," noting the CIA's concern was "the threat ... from the Chinese government, not its people."
A senior CIA official compared it to the agency's tight focus on Russia during the Cold War and its concentration on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. No such unit focusing explicitly on China had previously been set up.