Yu Maochun Talks: the Chinese Communist Party's Global Data Theft Case, stealing not secrets but "national power" [Sayings Lecture Hall Enlightenment Forum] EP266

The video focuses on the long‑term actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stealing foreign individuals’ and institutions’ data, mentioning cases such as U.S. voter files, federal employee security clearance data, health and financial records, traveler information, and military data, as well as attacks or data leaks involving Canada, Australia, Germany, India and the African Union headquarters. The content argues that the CCP, through “civil‑military integration,” aggregates data from various sources and uses artificial intelligence to turn it into intelligence, technological, commercial, diplomatic and military advantages.

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President Trump recently revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies have long possessed about 220 million U.S. voter records obtained by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This incident should not be viewed only from the narrow perspective of “election security”; it actually fits the strategic behavior pattern the CCP has pursued for decades.

The latest declassified documents indicate that Chinese intelligence agencies even set up dedicated units to analyze and exploit this batch of data, and have listed the election database that aggregates massive voter information as a key intelligence target. The real issue is not any single election, but the CCP regime and its overall strategy.

For decades, the CCP has launched the largest state‑level information theft operation in human history. No other regime has ever collected such a massive amount of foreign citizen data, nor has any intelligence agency ever stolen information on this scale in such an organized manner. Beijing seeks not only secrets, but the raw material of national power.

Western democracies still tend to understand espionage through a Cold War lens: stealing military plans, recruiting spies, photographing missile bases, intercepting diplomatic cables. However, China’s ambitions go far beyond that. In the eyes of the CCP, every database is an armory, every server a strategic point, and every individual’s digital footprint a potential intelligence asset.

In 2015, Chinese agents infiltrated the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, stealing security clearance files of more than 21 million current and former federal employees. The content included fingerprints, financial records, overseas contacts, psychological assessments, marital issues, medical records, and various private details required for the most sensitive background investigations.

Intelligence experts immediately recognized the consequences: China obtained a “handbook” for identifying, exploiting, blackmailing, or tracking U.S. national security personnel. In the same year, Anthem, the second‑largest U.S. health insurer, had nearly 80 million health records stolen by Chinese hackers. Two years later, Equifax compromised about 147 million Americans’ personal financial data, which fell into Chinese hands. The U.S. Department of Justice eventually indicted four Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers involved in the case.

In 2018, the Starwood database under Marriott was breached by Chinese hackers, resulting in the leakage of personal records of 383 million international travelers, including passport numbers, travel histories, and personal preferences.

In 2021, Microsoft Exchange was attacked in an operation launched by the Chinese government, affecting tens of thousands of institutions in government, academia, defense, and industry. Two years later, Chinese hackers locked onto the U.S. Navy Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, stealing sensitive data on submarine operations and other military technologies.

Viewed individually, each incident is shocking; viewed together, they reveal an unprecedented, systematic construction of a global intelligence database.

The United States is not the only victim. Canada’s National Research Council had decades of scientific research stolen. Australian government agencies, critical infrastructure, universities and parliament also suffered a series of organized, planned cyber attacks. German federal ministries were infiltrated. India’s power grid, telecom companies, pharmaceutical firms and government departments repeatedly became targets, especially during heightened military tension along the Himalayan border.

According to reports, after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian institution associated with the prize was immediately attacked.

The most shocking case may have occurred in Africa. The headquarters of the African Union, built by China and equipped with Chinese hardware, had data copied nightly to a server in Shanghai for nearly five years until the operation was exposed.

Soviet espionage primarily served military and ideological competition, whereas the CCP makes no distinction between military, commercial, political, technological or personal intelligence. Under Xi Jinping’s “civil‑military integration” strategy, any information gathered anywhere can be used in any field. Data stolen today by the Ministry of State Security could tomorrow assist state‑owned enterprises, the following year be fed into the People’s Liberation Army’s AI labs, and a few years later become material for political infiltration operations.

In other words, China’s strategy is to steal first and decide later how to use it. The accumulation of data itself becomes a strategic advantage. This is what many Western observers fail to understand about the CCP. They ask, “Why does China want U.S. voter registration data?” When the real question should be, “Why wouldn’t China want it?”

The CCP’s intelligence mindset is built on continuous accumulation. Each piece of data is a puzzle piece. A single voter file may have limited value, but when combined with consumer records, health records, travel logs, social‑media footprints, financial information, leaked passwords, facial‑recognition data, genetic data, and then processed by AI, it can produce something far more valuable: an extremely detailed, society‑wide map.

Authoritarian regimes govern “people,” totalitarian regimes govern “information,” and the CCP wants both.

The emergence of artificial intelligence accelerates this ambition. Modern AI systems rely not only on sophisticated algorithms but also on massive data volumes. Whoever controls the world’s largest pool of personal data gains huge advantages in predictive analytics, facial recognition, behavior modeling, social‑network analysis, opinion manipulation, and intelligence targeting.

Data has become the oil of the 21st century, and China seeks to control all the fields. Therefore, labeling China’s cyber activities merely as “hacker attacks” severely underestimates the issue. “Hacker attacks” conjure images of isolated technical crimes; what China is doing is a state‑directed, systematic plunder of strategic resources, aimed not at profit but at gaining geopolitical leverage.

Thus, the exposed U.S. voter‑data incident must be understood within a larger strategic context. For a long time, democratic nations have treated each Chinese cyber intrusion as an isolated event: a company’s data breach here, a government system breach there, which is exactly the reaction the CCP wants.

It understands one thing that free societies often forget: history is never written by a single event but shaped by recurring patterns. Today, that pattern is clear and cannot be ignored.

China steals data not out of curiosity, but because in the digital age information has become the most critical strategic resource. Past generations fought over oil fields, steel mills and sea routes; this century's key battlefield will revolve around databases. Whoever controls information can gain lasting advantages in intelligence, technology, commerce, diplomacy and warfare. The Chinese Communist Party understood this long before the West noticed. The question now is: has the United States finally realized it?