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HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Chinese state security official has been arrested onsuspicion of spying for the United States, sources said, a caseboth countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive toprevent a fresh crisis in relations. The official, an aide to a vice minister in China's securityministry, was arrested and detained early this year on allegationsthat he had passed information to the United States for severalyears on China's overseas espionage activities, said three sources,who all have direct knowledge of the matter. The aide had been recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agencyand provided "political, economic and strategic intelligence", onesource said, though it was unclear what level of information he hadaccess to, or whether overseas Chinese spies were compromised bythe intelligence he handed over. The case could represent China's worst known breach of stateintelligence in two decades and its revelation follows two othermajor public embarrassments for Chinese security, both involvingU.S. diplomatic missions at a tense time for bilateral ties. The aide, detained sometime between January and March, worked inthe office of a vice-minister in China's Ministry of StateSecurity, the source said. The ministry is in charge of thenation's domestic and overseas intelligence operations. He had been paid hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars and spokeEnglish, the source added. "The destruction has been massive," another source said. The sources all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear ofpunishment if identified. China's foreign ministry did not respond immediately to a faxedrequest for comment sent on Friday. The sources did not reveal the name of the suspected spy or thevice minister he worked for. The vice minister has been suspendedand is being questioned, one of the sources said. The Ministry of State Security rarely makes public the names of itsofficials and does not have a public web site. The incident ranks as the most serious Sino-U.S. spying incident tobe made public since 1985 when Yu Qiangsheng, an intelligenceofficial, defected to the United States. Yu told the Americans thata retired CIA analyst had been spying for China. The analyst killedhimself in 1986 in a U.S. prison cell, days before he was due to besentenced to a lengthy jail term. STRING OF SCANDALS The vice minister's aide was arrested at around the same time thatChina's worst political scandal in a generation was unfolding,though the sources said the two cases were unrelated. The political scandal erupted in February when the police chief ofChongqing municipality, in southwest China, took shelter for 24hours in a U.S. consulate. Chongqing's ambitious Communist Partyboss, Bo Xilai, was later suspended after it emerged the policechief had been investigating Bo's wife for murder. Bo's wife is now being detained on suspicions that she poisoned aBritish businessman, Neil Heywood, in a dispute over money. Washington kept an official silence on that incident, but in lateApril relations came under even more pressure when blind Chinesedissident Chen Guangcheng escaped from house detention and soughtrefuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing. Chen spent six days in the embassy, sparking a diplomatic crisisthat was only resolved when Beijing allowed him to leave thecountry last month to take up an academic fellowship in New York. The exposure of the espionage case could put more pressure on thepowerful Zhou Yongkang, who formally oversees the state securityapparatus as a member of China's top decision-making body, thePolitburo Standing Committee. The Bo and Chen cases have already raised questions over theeffectiveness of the security establishment which, under Zhou, hasbecome more costly to maintain than the nation's military. (Reporting by Reuters China; Editing by Don Durfee and Mark Bendeich ). The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as China 3G Wifi GPS Mobile Phones , 9.7 Inch Android Tablet, and more. For more , please visit Unlocked Wifi Cell Phone today!
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